For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fan of fighting games. This can be traced back to my parents’ basement, where my brother Isley and I would play Super Smash Bros Melee on the Nintendo Gamecube. Since then, I’ve branched out to the Street Fighter franchise, and as of recently, the Tekken series as well. This week, I was able to purchase and play Tekken 8.
Tekken 8 was released on January 26, so the game is very fresh. At a pretty steep, but soon-to-be standard, price tag of $70, it was more of an investment than the triple-A games of past years. Even so, Tekken is definitely living up to the hype. As usual, I’d like to cover four aspects of this game: visuals, gameplay, soundtrack, and story.
Visuals: 9/10
This game is stunning. Each of the stages has so much character, and the new design of every character is perfect for the next Tekken installment. Truth be told, the game is quite visually busy, which can be overwhelming at times. In addition, this game is built on Unreal Engine 5, which is a large computational task. For you computer geeks, I have a GeForce GTX 1660 and a Ryzen 5 2600, and I can run the game at all Medium settings.
Gameplay: 10/10
This game has everything a fighting game fan would dream of: brutal offense, evasive and punishing defense, and a wider variety of characters than ever before. One of the core mechanics of the Tekken series is character depth, both in moveset and in story, which I’ll discuss in a bit. For example, Kazuya Mishima, the main antagonist of Tekken 8, has 96 moves in his kit. Even this number pales in comparison to King’s 197-move list. In short, the game has a higher skill floor than any game I can think of, but the payoff for sticking with it is one of the most fun fighting games ever.
Soundtrack: 10/10
The core genre of the Tekken soundtrack across all games is heavy electronic music, with some elements of dubstep. For a game with such intense gameplay, the soundtrack does a perfect job of hyping up the player. Up until now, the soundtrack for Tekken 7 has been my favorite among the Tekken games. With that being said, I think the Tekken 8 soundtrack is on par to take second place in the franchise.
Story: 10/10
The story for this game is simply incredible. In Tekken 8, we follow the conflict between Kazuya Mishima, the current head of the Mishima Zaibatsu, and Jin Kazama, son of Kazuya. Impressively, after completing the story mode in-game, the opening cutscene does an excellent job of summarizing the plot, without giving away too much.
That’s all I’m willing to share in this article, so I highly recommend playing through it yourself! You don’t need to be familiar with the rest of the franchise’s stories, as Tekken 8 offers excellent summaries of each game.I truly can’t understate how good of a game this is! I don’t remember having this much fun with a fighting game in a long time. If you’re ready for a long-term commitment to a new fighting game, then this is absolutely the game for you!
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