Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Initial release date: January 25, 2024
Nominations: The Game Award for Most Anticipated Game
License: proprietary license
Composers: Go Shiina, Shinji Hosoe, Yoshihito Yano
Genres: Fighting game, Action game, Adventure game
Developers: BANDAI NAMCO Studios, Tekken Project, ARIKA
I’m terrible at Tekken. Despite my belief that I am well-versed in the lingo and jargon used by the fighting game community, Tekken has always seemed especially resistant to criticism in comparison to its peers.
Whether it was because of the series’ peculiar contempt for tutorials in general, the abundance of poorly explained legacy mechanics carried over from earlier entries, or the needlessly complex instructions in a character’s already voluminous movelists, getting better in every new Tekken game has felt unachievable. Every new version of the game has brought me to the point where I have to resort to YouTube guides, which are usually recorded by some poor anxious guy who is huffing and puffing into his microphone while explaining what a just frame move is. This is because the information needed to play the game isn’t always easily found within the game itself.
For me, Tekken 7 embodied these issues in its entirety; it was a game that only showed you a small portion of what you could truly do in the main narrative mode, offered no additional tutorial, and then had the audacity to try to charge players for frame data intended for its practice mode as DLC after the fact. The two games feel very different from one another when compared to Tekken 8, and that makes them even more enjoyable. I can state with confidence that this is the first time in the history of the series that I truly feel like I know what I’m doing.
Unlike earlier Tekken games that did not include a tutorial at all, Tekken 8 devotes an entire mode to teaching players how to perform its essential skills. Arcade Quest will no doubt be compared to Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode. However, Tekken 8’s version of the concept is far more straightforward and does a fantastic job of emphasizing the multitude of mechanics that set Tekken apart from other fighting games. Both games aim to elevate what would otherwise be a boring tutorial by turning it into a story that players can follow as they learn.
In between fights at the arcades, Max, your teacher, will make you perform training exercises that are unique to the character you are presently using. Every new move you learn is designed with the opponents you’ll be up against in mind, and it’s always urgently required to advance. In one of the last arcades you visit, for example, the opponents are fiercely aggressive but also have strong defenses, so you have to put Max’s instruction to use by countering them with the reversals he just taught you.
That’s not to suggest Arcade Quest is all-inclusive, though; I did discover that several topics, like wall leaps and the ubiquitous low parry, weren’t covered in Max’s teachings. Rather, it does a commendable job of distilling the information it does cover into manageable portions. The advantage of keeping Arcade Quest and story mode apart from one another is that experienced Tekken players can ignore the mode completely since practice mode will provide them with all the information they need to become familiar with the newer systems included in Tekken 8, all without having to force a tutorial into the narrative, which would take away from the game’s hilariously ridiculous plot.
Da Bomb Beyond Insanity is what Tekken 8’s plot would be like if it were a spicy sauce. There’s not much the pre-launch tale summaries can do to get you up to speed on the lore, but what follows should not be too difficult for the uninitiated to understand. It’s impossible to overstate the narrative whiplash that happens when you go from watching Jin try and fail to defeat his father in an attempt to atone for his past sins to a cutscene where an Italian exorcist (voiced by Diego Baldoin, who plays Ezio Auditore) discusses the finer points of morality with a panda (named Panda). Despite this, the ride is absurdly entertaining. or perhaps more so as a result of it. Furthermore, given the story’s actual substance, the voice acting is surprisingly excellent. The passion with which the phrase is delivered only serves to heighten the absurdity, particularly when I keep reminding myself that Vincent Cassel, winner of the César Award, is the actor who plays Victor.
The use of Street Fighter 6’s “Special Style” control mechanism, which players can activate with a single button push during a match, is one area in which Tekken 8 falls short of that game. Similar to Street Fighter 6’s Modern control system, Special Style lets you execute intricate combinations by only tapping one button repeatedly. It does this by converting single button pushes into special moves that would often need precise inputs.
Unfortunately, unlike Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8’s characters have access to such a vast move set as baseline that employing Special Style feels constricting. When Special Style is engaged, there are just fewer options for safely approaching your opponent or finishing a combo. This effectively trades easier combos for a lower likelihood of ever landing any combos at all. Even so, it’s a good choice for story mode if you have to use a character you don’t know well or if you want to let your friend use it initially when they play the game for the first time; however, beyond this point, it is far too much of a barrier and will deliberately impede the development of players who sincerely want to get better. Nevertheless, considering that every effort to make a game more approachable and accessible deserves praise, the addition of a simpler control system is commendable. It indicates that their heart is in the right place, at the absolute least.
Given how amazing the game appears on PC, the performance was almost flawless. During the sixty hours I spent playing Tekken 8, I didn’t encounter any bugs or technical difficulties of any kind, with the exception of a few tiny frame dips when the game transitioned from gameplay to a cutscene in the story’s last act. It should be noted, though, that I finished both the story mode and Arcade Quest in about six hours, so players who intend to play Tekken exclusively for the single-player experience may be let down. Every character has 32 Character Episodes to finish, and each one has a distinct tale and cutscene that you must unlock. Completing these episodes should only take you five to ten minutes apiece.
Rather, you’ll probably find yourself using the online lobbies and practice mode the most of the time. Although Tekken 7’s practice mode felt solid already, a few usability enhancements—like the ability to flip through your movelist without even opening the menu—have made labbing so much easier that I’ve found myself playing online more often than in practice mode. Regarding the online experience, matchmaking felt flawlessly seamless over the two days I had the opportunity to try it with active servers, irrespective of the distance between my rivals. Even when my opponents didn’t have flawless connections, matches from here in the UK with players from both America and Asia never went over two frames of rollback.
While there were limited customizing choices, the Xbox Live Arcade-esque characters that each user had made ultimately ended up looking very identical. Still, the capabilities for engaging with other players in lobbies were surprisingly sophisticated. I once saw two gamers at one of the arcades fighting against each other, and instead of waiting for them to finish, I decided to confront both of their ghosts.
Any player you come across in a lobby can have their ghost downloaded or fought right away, generating an AI-trained replica of their preferred character that changes each time the character is played online. You can even challenge your own if you’d like. It was a humiliating experience for me to see my own Hwoarang’s ghost repeatedly performing the single combo I had learnt. But considering how much it resembled their real playstyle when I eventually got the chance to confront them after their last fight ended, challenging the aforementioned ghost of my opponent was really surprisingly informative.
I didn’t have time to thoroughly test every fighter because there were 32 available in the base roster—the most of any high-profile fighting game at launch in recent memory. However, I did spend the most time with three fighters: newcomer Victor, my former main Hwoarang, and, to my own surprise, my new main Jun. It was difficult to choose who to play or who felt the strongest at first glance because each character has such a unique personality and range of playstyles, but the most crucial point is that they were all enjoyable to play. However, it appeared that some characters were more favored by the new Heat mechanic than others. For example, Victor only appeared to gain more damage when in Heat, while other characters were able to learn new moves or—in Alisa’s case—become capable of dealing a very offensive amount of chip damage to opponents when specific special moves were blocked.
I’ve already spent several hours trying to master three different Tekken games—Tekken 5, 6, and 7—but I always gave up after a while. At their core, these are legacy games—the fighting game version of an endless stew. Each returning character has enormous movelists that are the product of literally decades’ worth of character development, with changes made from one game to the next. That unbreakable characteristic I mentioned before resulted from more than simply a lack of training—it stemmed from a mindset of entering every battle with the disadvantage.
No matter what adjustments are made, a lifetime fan of any fighting game series will always have a significant advantage over a novice when it comes to the following installment. However, only the Tekken series has left me believing that it would be impossible to catch up.
But rather than just improving me, Arcade Quest and the more possibilities in Tekken 8’s practice mode have motivated me to improve even more. Long-time Tekken fans will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that mastering the hardest combos is still necessary to play Tekken 8 at its best; after all, it’s still difficult to perform the inputs for an Electric Wind God Fist or a Korean Backdash. However, this hasn’t come at the expense of making the controls any simpler or less complex.
Tekken 8 has therefore accomplished something that I had always thought was unattainable; it hasn’t simply improved my skills as a Tekken player; it has inspired me to become one as well. It has cursed me with the realization that I can no longer blame the game itself for my lack of aptitude by providing me with the means to get better and a big list of entertaining characters to test my increased abilities against.
All of that has also made it simpler to discover Tekken’s true magic. I once lost track of time while attempting to lengthen Jun’s aerial combos and ended up losing two hours. For example, there were three moves that could have extended my combo for every one that didn’t. Subsequently, I realized that my offense could be classified under the same general category. There were ten moves my opponent couldn’t block for every one they could block at any given moment. I’ve come to realize that Tekken 8 gives me more leeway and opportunity for experimentation than any other fighting game I’ve ever played. Professional players never seem to settle on a single combo or best way to play a character because every movelist in Tekken feels like a 600-word tome, but movelists in other games could contain an email’s worth of information.
The impenetrable aspect I mentioned abruptly changed from being a drawback to a benefit. I will never be able to become an expert on Tekken 8. I can continue to learn even if I play it every day for a year. You also become more aware of how much more you still need to study as you start to learn more. It’s exciting.
I fully understand now that Tekken 8 has taken the time to teach me the ropes, and as a result, I have to live with all of my Tekken-crazed buddies telling me “I told you so” forever. And all of this is because they gave me a helpful instruction and a pat on the back, setting me up to figure it out on my own.
Review Overview
Gameplay: 90%
Controls: 88%
Aesthetics: 92%
Content: 85%
Accessibility: 80%
Value: 87%
Overall: 87%
VERY GOOD
Summary:“Tekken 8” sets the standard for fighting games with its enhanced gameplay and graphically spectacular presentation. The fighting system finds the ideal balance between accessibility and depth, allowing players of all skill levels to participate in exciting conflicts. With accurate controls and a broad cast of characters, the game provides a fulfilling experience in both single-player and multiplayer modes. While the content is extensive, some may yearn for additional customizing options. Overall, “Tekken 8” is a standout product in the franchise, providing outstanding value and excitement for fighting game lovers.