Bandai Namco Entertainment making the decision to forgo the last generation of consoles in favour of making TEKKEN 8 a purely new-generation fighting game experience was, in my opinion, the best one they could have made. With a fighting game series steeped in tradition and a storied 30-year history, they had already refined the experience and earned a loyal fanbase. Instead of reinventing the metaphorical wheel, they introduced a few small enhancements and focused on providing an experience that hopes to foster a thriving community, both single and online, for many, many years until the release of TEKKEN 9.
The best part of TEKKEN 8 is, as mentioned above, they haven’t tried to reinvent too much of the core experience. Fans of the series can enjoy many of the fundamentals they have built their skills up around over the years, providing a rich arcade fighting experience that is easy enough to jump into, but granted, very difficult to master. The game brings back different attack types, blocking, dodging, and more in a fluid manner, featuring an assortment of returning characters and a few new ones, without significant overhauls to their movesets.
While the foundations remain mostly untouched, the biggest change comes from the introduction of the Heat System. This system, new to the TEKKEN franchise, rewards players for aggressive play, allowing them to fill a gauge and enter a ‘Heat’ or ‘Overdrive’ state. This state, lasting ten seconds and usable once per round, amplifies offensive capabilities, unlocks special skills, and grants access to a devastating ‘Heat Smash’ ability. This move, consuming the entire heat gauge, inflicts substantial damage through a unique character animation, and if implemented right can offer a dramatic shift in battle dynamics. Another major overhaul is the ability to recover part of your health gauge by making successful attacks, a feature valuable in prolonged battles between equally skilled players – encouraging more active, unpredictable and intelligent combat, and will hopefully make the competitive scene more exciting to watch. A theme you will see throughout the game is that Bandai Namco Entertainment is trying to reward more active, lively combat compared to guarded, reserved combat in TEKKEN 8.
The assortment of playable characters on offer is once again diverse. I can’t say they are all equally balanced, as we will undoubtedly see tier lists made by those well-versed in the TEKKEN competitive scene come out in the following weeks with justifiable breakdowns. But as a novice fighting game player, all the characters I controlled were handled pretty well, with my favouring the new character Reina for most of my play sessions. They have tried to jazz these characters up with the ability to customise their appearances through unlockables and an in-game currency through doing in-game battles, though this component felt underdeveloped, potentially indicating future DLC content such as avatar costumes.
With TEKKEN 8’s gameplay mechanics only needing a few tweaks and polish, this seems to have enabled a greater focus on the overall experience around enjoying these mechanics, particularly around enabling their players to build the skills and confidence to enjoy the endgame competitive scene “in ways that don’t feel repetitive, like facing “yet another” AI opponent.
While TEKKEN 8 is easily approachable for returning players, for those who may be jumping into the series with this instalment or returning after a gap, I would argue there may be a considerable learning curve, as one learns the nuances of the gameplay mechanics that make TEKKEN, well, TEKKEN. Quite a few new features are tailored towards those learning the ropes, or perhaps seeking to diversify their gameplay options to new characters or newer challenges. I would like to preface that this is not a game someone should expect to jump into with the intent of button-mashing your way through, and getting too far into the game without being pummeled by AI or more experienced players.
TEKKEN 8 introduces a new Special Style control scheme, which shows a list of available moves in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and a refined moveset, designed with the idea of granting players time to focus on timing and spacing and enabling them to not feel overwhelmed by complicated controls. This is simple to remove with a button press, and not a unique concept to TEKKEN, but again, a nice feature to incorporate when getting into the game. Of course, with the fidelity of the game’s full battle system, it won’t see competitive players disadvantaged. The practice mode also makes a return, with a strong assortment of options
Regarding the game’s story mode, the new story mode titled ‘The Dark Awakens’ is a short and polished experience spanning 15 chapters that seamlessly transitions between cutscenes and combat and is aptly written, contributing to the world developed over the past three decades. Not familiar with the stories of past titles? Don’t fret, as the in-game gallery does an adequate job of getting you up to speed on the events of the former seven games. In a more traditional arcade fighting game style, each character, regardless of their prominence in the main story, also enjoys their own character story – a standard affair with similarities between the structures of each, but nevertheless a good way of trying your hand at different characters.
Arguably of greater interest to me was the brand new Arcade Quest mode, a very meta experience. In this mode, you create and take control of a custom avatar, a new human participant in the competitive TEKKEN fighting game scene. As this player, you rise through the ranks in local arcades and the competitive scene, facing off against tougher and tougher AI challengers, to become recognised as one of the best at the game. While I would argue they could have gone harder with some of the elements, particularly with how limited you are at customising your avatar, it is a creative and ingenious way of helping players build up their competency at the game – starting with easy-to-explain tutorials and the AI competitors serving as adequate stop-gaps to help a newcomer build their skills. At a time when players may otherwise be forced to play against just an AI to build their skills at TEKKEN’s combat system, it served as a fun, narrative-driven means of actively developing and putting said skills to practical use – hopefully building up the confidence to log into online multiplayer for the first time.
For more advanced players, or rather, those who complete Arcade Quest, you can also unlock Super Ghost Battle mode, a mode that allows you to play against ghosts developed on AI learning of your play tendencies during the Arcade Quest and online matchmaking, the habits of others, or those from the development team. It is always hard to tell just how well this functionality works without seeing the code and inspiration decisions behind it, but it proved ample challenge and was another creative implementation especially given the renewed interest in custom AIs in various aspects of gaming in recent years. On the lighter side, the more casual TEKKEN BALL returns, enabling PvP and PvC volleyball combat where players lose health whenever the ball hits them or touches the ground on their side of the arena.
Due to my being occupied during an online testing phase, a full comprehensive summary of TEKKEN 8’s online functionality will be shared at a later date upon the game’s full release this coming Friday. Will TEKKEN 8’s servers and netcode hold up to the onslaught of many players descending upon the game at once? Time will tell!
I mentioned at the very start of this review that Bandai Namco Entertainment to focus exclusively on the newest generation of consoles (and PC) was a wise choice, and one of the major reasons why I say this is that compared to other fighting games on the market, this feels like a true “new generation” experience. The character models, battle environments, lighting and animations are all eye-wateringly gorgeous and showcase an attention to detail quite unlike any fighting game released before. Additionally, the music backing is top-notch as always, and the diverse, multilingual voice cast lends a level of authenticity to the narrative, characters and world-building that is hard not to love the TEKKEN series for.
TEKKEN 8 is technologically an amazing fighting game experience thatconsistently kept me engaged, always tempting me with ‘just one more fight’. I appreciate that with them having most of the staples down pat and not needing to reinvent the wheel in twenty different prominent ways, they have been able to dedicate the time and resources to providing an enriching new-player experience that honours the time such audiences put into the game. Furthermore, they have made some notable amendments that encourage players to be more aggressive in their combat style, changing the pace of combat into one more active and interesting to watch. Although I cannot yet provide a detailed assessment of the game’s online functionality yet (expect that to come over the weekend or early next week), the single-player experience definitely left this relatively novice-intermediate TEKKEN player hooked for hours and craving more.
TEKKEN 8 will be available on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC platforms starting 26 January 2024.
An early-access review code for TEKKEN 8 was provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia for the purpose of this review.
