Tekken

 

Tekken 7 is a love letter to this long-running franchise and its staggering complexity. Yet somehow it still manages to be accessible to just about anyone wanting to mash buttons, and its huge amount of customization unlocks constantly give you something to strive for beyond its silly and slightly cliched story. In a pretty good time for fighting games, with Injustice 2 knocking it out of the park, Killer Instinct continuing to give us quality content years after its release, Street Fighter 5 hitting its stride after a rocky start, and a new version of Guilty Gear Xrd air-dashing our way, the King of the Iron Fist Tournament will not be outdone.

On the surface, Tekken 7 is familiar, taking place on the series’ signature three-dimensional stages which allow you to move to your opponent’s sides as well as forward and back. Attacks are inspired by Asian martial arts and other fighting styles from around the world, placing most of the emphasis on strikes and very little on the projectiles you typically find in other fighting games. Movement is more deliberate, and carelessly jumping or dashing can be disastrous.


Fighting games will always struggle to please their audience. For everything you need to include to ensure the hardcore remain entertained through the game’s lifespan, others simply want to hit buttons, see flashy images and be amused with only single-player content. It’s a tough balancing act, ensuring that the game is technical enough to allow for dedicated players to express themselves through the game’s systems, but also allow for instantaneous single-player fun.

The Tekken series has a long-standing reputation in arcades, but for many players it was the console ports that left a lasting impression. These versions often introduced offbeat, dramatic story campaigns, as well as more extensive additions such as delightfully odd beat-’em-up and sport modes. And in recent years, the goal of unlocking and customizing outfits for the game's large cast rounded out the most rewarding objective of all: getting good. Tekken 7 keeps most of these traditions alive and once again delivers the tight, hard-hitting action for which the series is known. The game has some server-stability issues at launch, but it's otherwise a great sequel that confidently claims its position among the best fighting games today.

Similar to other 3D Fighters like Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter, Tekken 7 focuses on utilizing space and lateral movement during combat. By and large this is a game of inches; most fighters punch, kick, and grapple up close to one another and there's little margin for error. A moment of indecision or a sloppy move against a more skilled player can lead to a string of pummeling strikes and a hasty defeat, courtesy of the game's long combo strings. Though Tekken 7 can be punishing, its fighting system isn't as difficult to get into as it lets on. With an intuitive control scheme that assigns one button to each limb, you can learn how to attack and retaliate, step by step. The long-term trick is putting in the time to dissect and memorize your favorite character's moveset to hone your reflexes and diversify your tactics.

Tekken 7 proves that family grudges are just as hard to kill as the franchise’s resilient characters, who reappear Lazarus-like as soon as they’re needed. The struggles between Heihachi, Kazuya, Jin and everyone else still caught in their webs may start to feel a little tired, but the fighting bits are the best yet.

We’re treated to a more beautiful, fluid and gratifying Tekken with this seventh iteration. Its unique take on 3D fighting has survived the ages, even though — or perhaps because — the basic recipe hasn’t been altered too much.
In 1994 Namco released Tekken, an outstanding 3D fighting game with a loose story based on the struggle between a father and his powerful son. In 2017 Bandai Namco gives us Tekken 7, an outstanding 3D fighting game with a loose story based on the struggle between a father and his powerful son. You know what they say: If it ain’t broke, slowly tweak it so each new installment is just as good as the last without feeling stale.

The Tekken franchise has made great strides over the course of its 23-year history, but it’s hard to tell if you’ve been following along. If you stopped playing after Tekken 2, for example, you’d be surprised that since Tekken 3 every character in the game has the ability to sidestep in and out of the 3D plane. If Tekken 3 was your last game, then you’d be caught off guard by environmental hazards introduced in Tekken 4, and wouldn’t know what to do when your opponent slams you against a wall for big damage.

But for those of us who’ve been playing since the beginning, it’s all part of the fighting game’s natural progression. Tekken’s been building off the original’s solid foundation for more than two decades, each new installment improving in incremental ways. Tekken 7 is the next satisfying step in the series’ evolution.
The introduction to Tekken 7’s pace comes from The Mishima Saga, the ambitious new story mode created for the console and PC versions (as opposed to the arcade). The Mishima Saga explores the healthy and emotionally stable relationships within the Mishima clan, where sons are obsessed with murdering their fathers and fathers can’t help but throw their sons into the nearest lava pit. Heihachi, his son Kazuya, and his grandson Jin all maneuver trillion-dollar corporations with militaries more advanced than most industrialized nations while trying to take each other out. While The Mashima Saga does attempt to portray Heihachi in an understanding light by giving motivation for his infamously chucking Kazuya into an erupting volcano decades ago, it is hard to find sympathy for any of the scions of the Mishima family.
It’s been a good five years since the last Tekken game, and even longer if you’re counting only the numbered entries. Tekken 7 has been playable in arcades, in tournaments and at trade shows since its release in Japan and South Korea in 2015, and anyone on the competitive scene already knows that it's a grand fighting game. As a result, Bandai Namco has spent this time adding content that aims to provide a fulfilling experience, with some mixed results.

The biggest complaint you can lob at Tekken 7 is that it doesn't do a good job of explaining the intricacies of its mechanics, let alone how you should approach learning your character of choice. The move lists for each character often hover around 100 entries, serving as a mix of one-off special attacks and combos. Save for a few icons--which represent attack properties that the game also fails to thoroughly explain--lists are disorganized, with no categories or hierarchy to speak of. The best you can do is hop into training mode and shift from one move to the next. Thankfully, you can scroll through attack hints live, during practice, and without repeatedly entering menus.
Tekken’s mechanics are different from those of other fighting games. Instead of light or heavy attacks, each face button is mapped to a limb: left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. Moves are built around a directional input and button press, instead of quarter- or half-circle motions. Most importantly, players can sidestep into the foreground and background, more fully utilizing the three-dimensional space.

One of the best things about Tekken has always been its fluidity of movement and combos, and that’s not lost in Tekken 7. It still feels good to dance around opponents, poke into their space and find that perfect opening to build a combo on. This entry’s new fighters — anime pop star Lucky Chloe, demon-fueled Kazumi, tricky ninja Master Raven — slot nicely into that framework. While it’s rewarding to master one or two characters, I was pushed to try many more, thanks to the game’s diverse, weird cast. Only a few characters really slide into the background.
The original Tekken laid the groundwork by creating a simple, intuitive fighting game system that was as easy to pick up as it was difficult to master. In Tekken 7, as in the original, each of the four controller face buttons represents a limb—two arms, two legs. In symphony with the directional pad, those buttons generated fighting moves that felt natural, immediate and quite brutal. It’s the core of the franchise, and a damn strong core at that.

Tekken 7 takes all of the franchise’s changes and refines them further. The rage system introduced in Tekken 6 has been expanded to include rage arts, flashy supermoves that trade the increased damage of rage mode for a 30 percent hit to the enemy’s health gauge. There are also rage drives, powerful moves that grant a player frame advantage to blocks and open up new combos. Both types of moves offer good comeback potential for players finding themselves on the wrong end of their health bar. These new rage mechanics add some excitement to lopsided fights without being obnoxiously overpowered.
there is a certain charm to the entirely over-the-top nature of Tekken’s lore and its embracing of anime tropes, and the short character-specific chapters included in The Mishima Saga help lighten the mood while also serving up nostalgia. When King battles Jack, Jack uses its artificial intelligence to adapt to King’s fighting style, so the famous luchador uses maneuvers borrowed from his long-time friend Marduk and from his rival Armor King. When Yoshimitsu attempts to infiltrate the Mishima Dojo, he finds Leo and battles the young girl before having a change of heart and catching a knee in the groin for his troubles. While it certainly isn’t sophisticated, I feel no shame admitting watching Yoshimitsu crumple to the ground had me chuckling while smiling and shaking my head.
At its heart is Tekken’s classic fighting system, with each limb mapped to a face button and, for the most part, special moves performed with directional inputs alongside a button. It still satisfies, since there's plenty to learn about every character to truly master them.

Different stances and positions unlock numerous moves, and understanding what is possible in any given scenario is a big part of the game, mixing up high, mid and low attacks to unlock your opponent’s guard and start a damaging combo.

The two new additions to the core combat are the Rage Arts/Drives and Power Crushers. A Rage Art is the new comeback mechanic – when you’re at 25% or lower health – and you can perform a Rage Art by inputting a simple two-button command (with most characters). Should the over-the-top first hit land, your character will perform a highly damaging and cinematic attack that gains more power the lower your health bar is.
None of this is to say that Tekken 7 is too deep, which would be a ridiculous complaint--the depth of its roster and fighting styles is to your benefit. The point is that new players will have very little help learning anything beyond the basics once they jump into battle. This is disappointing, given that other fighting games have demonstrated that the best way to retain new players is by giving them a fighting chance, and the lack of instruction is odd for Tekken, which only one game prior (Tekken Tag Tournament 2) gave players Fight Lab mode--a place to study how mechanics and different types of attacks can dictate the flow of a match.

But if this isn't your first King of Iron Fist tournament and you've kept up with Tekken over its more than 20-year tenure, you’ll find that Tekken 7 delivers the same great combat you know and love with a hefty batch of new characters--and a few new mechanics. The game includes notable new supermoves that can be triggered when a character's health is dangerously low, which is also the right time to unleash a rage drive--a powered-up standard combo attack. The most important new addition is the power crush attack attribute: Relevant attacks can absorb incoming hits mid-animation, allowing you to risk a little health to increase your chances of landing a critical blow, which injects Tekken's otherwise familiar fights with a renewed element of surprise.
Each fighter has their own unique Rage Arts and Rage Drives, attacks that are accessible when players drop to 25 percent of their health bar and can knock off a third of an opponent’s life. Tekken has never been a franchise about powerful finishers, but Rage Arts don’t feel out of place. They’re a tempting counter to reach for when you’re in trouble, but you can definitely miss, or even get countered.

These new special moves struck me as a strong addition to the series’ repertoire, but Tekken 7’s biggest problem may be the sheer number of options available at any given moment during a bout. Each character has some 50 to 65 different moves, including stance changes. Even if you’re a fighting game connoisseur, that’s a lot to page through. For casual players, the number of attacks to learn may feel paralyzing. It almost encourages that button-mashing behavior so loathed by anyone who knows what they’re doing.

Depth is something Tekken is known for, something that helps set it apart from other fighting games. But at this point, the game needs additional tutorial modes that help players prioritize the most important concepts to learn. Practice mode is great — especially with included videos that show you how each move works — but I wish it clarified the broad strokes for new players.

There’s also power crushes, special moves that allow players to power through enemy attacks, ignoring high and mid attacks. These slow-but-strong blows are also excellent for turning the tide of battle, but they’re easily avoided by seasoned opponents.

By Darry Huskey Tekken 7 is a love letter to this long-running franchise and its staggering complexity. Yet somehow it still manages to be accessible to just about anyone wanting to mash buttons, and its huge amount of customization unlocks constantly give you something to strive for beyond its silly and slightly cliched story. In a pretty good time for fighting games, with Injustice 2 knocking it out of the park, Killer Instinct continuing to give us quality content years after its release, Street Fighter 5 hitting its stride after a rocky start, and a new version of Guilty Gear Xrd air-dashing our way, the King of the Iron Fist Tournament will not be outdone.

On the surface, Tekken 7 is familiar, taking place on the series’ signature three-dimensional stages which allow you to move to your opponent’s sides as well as forward and back. Attacks are inspired by Asian martial arts and other fighting styles from around the world, placing most of the emphasis on strikes and very little on the projectiles you typically find in other fighting games. Movement is more deliberate, and carelessly jumping or dashing can be disastrous.

Tekken 7: Every Rage Art Ability
06:09

The introduction to Tekken 7’s pace comes from The Mishima Saga, the ambitious new story mode created for the console and PC versions (as opposed to the arcade). The Mishima Saga explores the healthy and emotionally stable relationships within the Mishima clan, where sons are obsessed with murdering their fathers and fathers can’t help but throw their sons into the nearest lava pit. Heihachi, his son Kazuya, and his grandson Jin all maneuver trillion-dollar corporations with militaries more advanced than most industrialized nations while trying to take each other out. While The Mashima Saga does attempt to portray Heihachi in an understanding light by giving motivation for his infamously chucking Kazuya into an erupting volcano decades ago, it is hard to find sympathy for any of the scions of the Mishima family.

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There is a certain charm to the entirely over-the-top nature of Tekken’s lore.

However, there is a certain charm to the entirely over-the-top nature of Tekken’s lore and its embracing of anime tropes, and the short character-specific chapters included in The Mishima Saga help lighten the mood while also serving up nostalgia. When King battles Jack, Jack uses its artificial intelligence to adapt to King’s fighting style, so the famous luchador uses maneuvers borrowed from his long-time friend Marduk and from his rival Armor King. When Yoshimitsu attempts to infiltrate the Mishima Dojo, he finds Leo and battles the young girl before having a change of heart and catching a knee in the groin for his troubles. While it certainly isn’t sophisticated, I feel no shame admitting watching Yoshimitsu crumple to the ground had me chuckling while smiling and shaking my head.

Can a Noob Fake It as a Tekken Pro? Episode 1: Training Begins
09:17

The Mishima Saga takes an approach similar to the story mode in Injustice 2, changing points of view between Heihachi and his progeny, Tekken Force rebel Lars, and special guest Akuma - yes, that Akuma. I found this approach to the story slightly frustrating in Injustice 2, as being thrust suddenly into the boots of a new character meant I had to stop to learn them, and the same could be said of Tekken 7 and The Mishima Saga. However, Tekken 7 does offer the ability to use simplified inputs while playing The Mishima Saga to perform a handful of pre-selected attacks, easing the transition into playing a character with whom you might not be familiar. Also, while there are multiple points of view, there is a manageable number, so I didn’t need to spend a huge amount of time learning moves in order to progress.

At the same time, The Mishima Saga’s short, three-hour duration and slimmer cast made the events of the story feel important only to the Mishima clan itself, rather than all the fighters in the King of Iron Fist Tournament. Other fighters are given a brief time in the spotlight with optional side missions contained within Mashima Saga mode. While I found some of these, such as Yoshimitsu’s ill-fated excursion into the Mashima Dojo, entertaining, I was slightly disappointed to see so little focus on anyone other than Heihachi, Jin, and Kazuya and their struggle for power over the Mishima Zaibatsu and one another.

They’re quite easily dealt with after you’ve seen them a few times, and provided you’re not just hammering buttons wildly, they're easy to block, so you really have to catch an opponent sleeping for them to be effective. However, they’re easy to do and look good, so casual players will enjoy blasting their friends with them.

A Rage Drive is a little different. Activated in a similar way, it retains the properties of the Rage Art, but allows you to perform follow-up strikes should you use them in the correct manner – which varies across the roster of characters.

After a few hours of play, it was clear that although the Rage Arts are the more spectacular move, the Rage Drives tend to be more practical and far more difficult for your opponent to block.

Power Crushers allow you to absorb high and mid-attacks, blasting through them to deliver a strike of your own. Like Street Fighter 4’s ‘Focus Attack’ (with Akuma literally having one, taken straight from that game!), used strategically they’ll catch a button-happy opponent.

All these costume options are particularly important for setting yourself apart when you jump into online play. Once I was ready, I had a pretty stable connection to servers on Windows PC. There weren’t always a variety of matchup options — Tekken 7 lets you select your opponent from a list that shows rank and character pick — but the matches were consistently exhilarating. (Even if I was getting my scrub butt whooped.)

For those who play Tekken games for their ludicrous stories, the seventh entry may leave you wanting. It’s another chapter in the continuous power struggle of the Mishima clan, so naturally, Heihachi and Kazuya’s rivalry — and its casualties — take center stage. The Tekken series has always reveled in weirdness in its plot, but despite nearly two hours of cutscenes in Tekken 7, I didn’t find much of the campy fun I had hoped for.

The bound system from Tekken 6, which produced some spectacular but unrealistic juggling combos as characters bounced off hard concrete into the air, has been replaced with the screw attack system. Now, characters twist sideways when landing after launched. Sidestepping has been slowed down across the board, making the game more about ducking and blocking than sliding. And combo scaling changes mean that keeping your opponent in the air longer yields diminishing returns, which makes stringing together moves more strategic.

The changes made to Tekken 7’s combat system all lend themselves nicely to the brutal, up-close and personal battles the franchise is known for. Where other fighting games encourage players to fly to the far corners of the screen and launch screen-spanning special moves, Tekken has always been more grounded. For the most part you’re not going to win a fistfight from across the arena.