Tekken Hybrid

Review from Matt - Thursday, 08 December 2011 @ 6:18pm

Sometimes the hardest part of writing a review is figuring out not what you're going to say, but how you're going to say it. Do you just start with a typical formula: introduction, plot, characters, gameplay, sound, bugs/flaws, conclusion. Or do you put in some sort of gimmick, or consistent theme.

But no, Tekken Hybrid lends itself to a simple approach. Breaking it down into chunks and assessing them individually and then as a whole.

For that's exactly what Tekken Hybrid is. Three separate projects, all put together in one convenient location for the fans. So let me break down each one individually, so we can see what it is we're dealing with here.

Tekken Hybrid is divided into three products. So the plan here is obvious. We look at each of these, then we assess whether the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The bulk of this title is a remake of Tekken Tag Tournament, originally for the PlayStation 2. Of all the Tekkens, TTT is probably the one I've played the least. I didn't have a launch PS2, nor in fact have a PS2 at all for a long time. So this generation of Tekkens sort of skipped by me a little bit, though I played them quite a bit in arcades. I do know one thing, though. Tekken Tag Tournament looked terrible. It was an early game for PS2, and it had terrible aliasing. People jokingly called it Tekken Jag Tournament, in referrerence to the aliased "jaggies" that plagued the characters.

Just like me - it has not dated particularly well

It's fun to see old favourite characters again. I used to play as Kunimitsu a lot, a character that oddly vanished after Tekken 2 only seeing light in Tag. She doesn't even return in Tag 2. But while popular among Tekken fans, Tag Tournament hasn't really dated very well. The combat mechanics feel rough and limited, and the graphics are distinctly average. An upgrade to them has clearly just been in the area of resolution, and the whole thing is still in 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the widescreen default. None of the menus or CG have seen any love, and it all looks pretty rough. And plays pretty rough.

There's little reason to play TTT now. If you really want a PS3 Tekken either get the much better Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online or Tekken 6. I found my copy of Tekken 6 from an EB pre-owned for $23.

This is not a game. It's a CG movie by Namco, basically since they have some CG artists doing (pretty kick-ass) CG intros for games they figure they might as well crack out a feature film. It's not a bad idea in principle. In practice, though, the movies don't tend to be all that good. I haven't yet seen (and really should see) Resident Evil: Degeneration, but movies and games often mix surprisingly poorly. Especially fighting games. They're almost invariably a piss-poor story to justify punching people. There have been live action movies of Dead or Alive, Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and others, and none of them have yet to even be nominated for an Oscar.

Hey Alisa... hold that pose for a few minutes. I got somethin' for ya.

Tekken: Blood Vengeance probably also won't be nominated for an Oscar. Because it's not very good. T:BV is a basic story, focused strongly on the rivalries between various established relationships in the Tekken franchise, such as sisters Nina and Anna, and three generations of the zany Mishima boys. Blood Vengeance is set between Tekken 5 and 6. The story revolves around Xiaoyu being sent to a new school to investigate a kid named Shen, on Anna's behalf. While there she meets a new friend, Alisa, and gets a new teacher, Lee. Lee is so boring in Tekken that I don't really remember him even though he's been in it since the original Tekken. But here he really stands out. He's eccentric to the point of being insane. He's highly entertaining, and doesn't fight at all.

T:BV is a fan service film in every way. The "camera" lingers over breasts and too-short skirts, and characters are arbitrarily and idiotically squished into place. Ganryu as Xiaoyu's PE teacher, for example.

The film lurches from place to place with very little consistency. Surprisingly long periods pass with no fighting to speak of, turning the whole thing into a rather dull highschool anime. The fighting is actually pretty good. Lots of nods to the characters' actual fighting moves, and that's entertaining. But an awful lot of what happens is flat out nonsensical, and horribly contrived.

Moody. So very moody.

If you're a serious Tekken fan this might be worth a rent. Just on principle. But you wouldn't buy it.

This is basically just a demo of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. It has Xiaoyu, Alisa, Jin and Kazama. It looks amazing, it really does. And it's quite a lot of fun to play. But without a proper roster of fighters, the game is left pretty limited and gets boring quickly despite having lots of nice features. Honestly there's not much more to say than that. It's just a demo.

Notably better than the original Tekken Tag. But no Kunimitsu!

On the whole... Is this more than the sum of its parts? Well, the point about that concept or phrase or cliche or whatever it is, is that a piece of art or food or whatever can be improved by a combination of ingredients or materials, music improving the experience of the visual, etc. That doesn't work when all of the elements are utterly separate and unconnected in any way. And that's the case here.

Pros

• Nice trip down memory lane
• The movie/game bundle idea is kind of neat
• Movie is not without entertaining moments
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue IS a nice taste of what's to come

Cons

• Tekken Tag Tournament is surprisingly dated, and not well presented here
• The movie is, objectively, not particularly good
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue takes way too long to write