Following the events of Tekken 7, the stage is set for Tekken 8’s story which is perhaps the most over the top yet. In the six months since Heihachi Mishima’s defeat, his son, Kazuya Mishima, has used his demonic powers to establish a reign of terror on the planet. And while the setup is, quite frankly, a lot to take in, if the first four chapters I played are any indication, the level of spectacle and bombast reaches new levels in Tekken 8’s story mode.
The first chapter begins with Lars Alexanderson on a high-tech plane. He mentions that the mission is to eliminate “evil incarnate”, as he points out the man he hunted in the previous titles, Jin Kazama, may be their only hope. This scene shows Jin passing through the busy streets of the city on a motorcycle. To my surprise, he rides his motorcycle over the edge of a building and, in a move that is jointly Fast and Furious And Marvel blushes, grabbing the motorcycle with his hands and throwing it at a nearby helicopter. Jin lands on the ground and sees the horrific helicopter crash. From the flames, his target emerges – Kazuya.
After a heated exchange, the first story mode battle begins. Playing as Jin, I take it to Kazuya. Every time I’ve played Tekken 8 so far, I’ve been amazed at how the themes of aggression shine through in highly effective strategies. I run at Kazuya, launch him into the air and wake him up with an air combo before blasting him with a heat smash. From there, I use Jin’s now increased speed from the heat gauge to pull over Kazuya. He takes a few good licks, but I take him down. Between each round, short cutscenes set up the next round, giving it a more cinematic feel than a standard fighting game.
In this instance, Kazuya unleashed his demon, allowing me to play as a demon. I put his powers to good use, including his powerful Rage Art. After this second round victory, Jin takes the action to the next level when he grabs Kazuya and slams him off the roof of a skyscraper, bringing the entire building down around him. I couldn’t help but laugh at how far the team was pushing the events of this story mode, even in this first chapter.
“If you’re comparing it to a movie, movies are usually 90 minutes or longer, so relatively speaking, it’s not that long; you can pretty much assume that your audience is will stick with it until the end,” says director Katsuhiro Harada. . “But for games, we have data that maybe in some cases, 70 percent of people don’t actually make it to the end of the game. So, we were thinking that we need to make sure that we Really grabbed the audience. That opening scene to make sure they stick with it.”
The next three chapters, which feature Kazuya setting up the King of the Iron Fist tournament to destroy the world’s military satellites and determine a new hierarchy of world power, show that we are in the narrative. Get ready for a wild ride with At the same time, Jin struggles to regain his powers while not allowing them to use them. It’s silly and funny, and I can’t wait.
“Since this isn’t a free-to-play game – it’s a complete product package – we wanted to make it so that even if you’re not a fighting game fan, you’ll still feel compelled to pay the full price. The price of the story alone. ” says Harada. “That’s the barometer of what we’re thinking about. That’s what went into achieving the high level of quality and volume of the story mode, so people think it’s almost a game in itself.”
On top of the story, I got to play Arcade Quest, a new secondary story mode that focuses on the Tekken 8 player as they travel through the arcade scene in hopes of winning gold in various tournaments. Its setup and production values are odd in contrast to the main story mode, but I love going to different arcades and challenging NPCs to Tekken 8 matches, all while learning new techniques through in-game coach Max. Through the various avatar creation options, I was able to create a funny-looking character to represent myself during my demo, though I’ll probably make it a bit more eye-pleasing when the full game rolls around.
This avatar created by Bandai Namco is much better than the idiot I created.
Those customization elements also carry over the main roster of characters. Unlocked customization elements let you creatively rearrange the visual elements of your favorite fighters. After playing around with different hair colors and outfits for Tekken newcomer Victor, I realized that everything I changed about his original look was worse than his standard character design. As a result, I added a baguette to his back to complement the sword on his hip and called it a day.
When it comes to actually learning how to play Tekken 8, Bandai Namco has given you a variety of ways to learn the ropes. In addition to the special style control scheme, which lets you pull off combos by pressing simple button sequences, Tekken 8 extends and improves on many of the other learning tools found in past games in the series. My Replay + Tips lets you study how you can improve your game with tailor-made pointers, while Super Ghost Battles lets you play against an AI opponent in real-time. I learn player tendencies. And of course, there’s a full practice mode where you can really learn how to nail that move that’s been giving you trouble.
When you think you’ve studied enough tape, you can take a break and play a little Tekken Ball, which debuted after the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Is. Back and forth, dealing damage with each successful point. It’s silly and far from the most in-depth feature, but it’s a lot of fun.
After a strong year for fighting games thanks to releases like Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1, Tekken 8 hopes to carry that trend into early 2024. With 32 fighters at launch, including some incredible additions like Viktor (who will probably be my new. Man), Reina, and Azucena, I rave about Tekken 8 every time I get my hands on it. I feel better.