Tekken

Hej og velkommen til ToriJ videospil anmeldelser. We have reached the end of Fightbruary and I thought I would close this month of fist pounding action with another of Namco's finest, Tekken! Tekken is a 3D fighter that was available in arcades everywhere back in 1995 before being ported to the Sony PlayStation becoming the start of one of the greatest fighting franchises of all time.

The game starts off with an arcade. I'm not even joking, as soon as I turned the game on I was playing an arcade and honestly thought I put the wrong game in, but eventually the arcade ends and you're taken to the opening cut-scene. Now, if you happened to play Tekken 2, the opening cut-scene isn't going to look all that impressive. A lot of the game isn't going to look that impressive.

We have around just as many characters as Soul Blade did, and a time limit that counts down how long until the game chooses your fighter for you. The downside to this screen is that there's no way back to the title screen unless you reset or beat the game. God forbid I push a button on accident.

I know what you're thinking, “Oh, Tori is going to play the woman again, right? Right?” Wrong! I'm shaking things up this time around, for you see my favorite character is not Nina, Anna, or even Michelle. It's the King of the jungle! King! The jaguar. His name really is just King. Anyways...

  The windy city.

Fighting comes down to a few punches, kicks, and a couple of grabs you can do when your opponent blocks too much. For example, since King is a professional wrestler he can straight up vertical suplex your ass! This is still pretty early in the 3D era of gaming where everyone was trying to figure it out so the game itself plays more like a typical 2D fighter except with polygons and 3D environments. You can still only go left and right, and your up/down buttons are the usual jump/duck we've come to know so well. The controls also feel pretty clunky. I can't put my finger on it, they're just not as smooth as they could be.

One of the things Tekken executes very well is that it does away with set mini-bosses, and introduces individual mini-bosses for each character you play as. King has Armored King, Nina has Anna, and so on and so forth. Then when you beat them you unlock them and that gives the player incentive to play the game with every characters. After that the final boss is the one and only Heihachi Mishima. The host of the Tekken tournament and the man you must beat to win. He wasn't so tough. I think I had a harder time on the mini-boss at one point. I was playing Anna against Nina and kept getting my ass whipped. Heihachi was a breeze after that.

  Looking spiffy, King.

The endings aren't too impressive looking by today's standards, but they are a treat to watch. No voice acting at all. Just visuals combined with sound and music to provide an enjoyable climax for the character you finished the game with. Unfortunately, the unlockable characters do not have any endings of their own. They just fight their counterpart as the mini-boss, face Heihachi, and then roll credits. Heihachi gets the honor of fighting all the mini-bosses and even a new ending boss in Devil Kazuya. Get used to seeing devils in these games, by the way.

I know it's probably due to hardware limitations, time restraints, or whatever, but it's kind of disappointing that the unlockable bosses don't have their own endings in arcade mode. It would have been nice to see what they came up with. Especially with Heihachi with how much they change for him. They could have at least made something for him, but I guess it's just a treat to be able to play as Heihachi. Unlike in Tekken 2 where you have him as a playable character right off the bat.

  Take me out to the ballgame!

Tekken is about as straightforward as you can get with only two modes and a relatively short trek through fighters to get to the end. If you've played either Tekken 2 or 3 this game can be very difficult to get back into. There just isn't that much to do besides unlocking characters, which might have worked for the time but not so much now. If you're curious to see how the series started, or never played a Tekken/fighting game before in your life than I guess it wouldn't hurt.

Try it

That concludes Fightbruary. Don't worry because the theme months aren't over yet. We're approaching March and that means it's going to be all about the ladies. I can't wait to sink my teeth into some of these gems. Stay tuned.