Australian Gamer Review

BECAUSE GAMESPOT ISN’T AUSTRALIAN

Tekken 5

Reviewed on: Playstation 2
Available on: Playstation 2

Tekken 5 is a best for the Tekken series so far, and a jolly good bout of fisticuffs. The few minor flaws really don't detract from the enjoyment of what is undoubtedly one of the best fighting games you can buy.

Players: Realistically 2 or more
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Release: TBA

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Tekken 5 is the latest release of the venerable Tekken fighting game series from Namco. The Tekken series has been going for year, and has had a number of previous incarnations. I'm not sure how many. 2 or 3, I think.

Seriously, though, I've been a fan of the Tekken games since Tekken (1) hit arcades. I spent a fair chunk of change on that thing, and Tekken 2 and 3 rocked both my wallet and my Playstation until 10 hit combos and air juggles filled what little of my dreams was not already taken up with Catriona Rowntree.

When Tekken Tag came out, bringing with it a new generation of PS2 based ass-kickery my response was surprising even to myself. With icy disinterest I spurned it, giving myself utterly over to the Dreamcast's vastly better Soul Calibur.

Tekken 4 also came and went without my affection. Like a lot of fans, the changed mechanics left me cold. It started to all fell odd and wrong. The levels were crowded and cramped, making "big" moves frustratingly hard to land.

But Tekken 5 is out now, and I have a message for Namco: All Is Forgiven.

I should take the opportunity now to fill the non-fans in on the elaborate back-story behind Tekken 5, and the Tekken Saga generally.

There is a competition held called the King of Iron Fist. You enter the competition. People challenge you. Punch them. Sometimes animals fight you. Punch them. Occasionally a story fight will occur, with the character meeting someone, such as a friend, or a nemesis. Punch them.

Congratulations! You now know all you need to know to play Tekken 5.

Tekken 5 is a bit of a mixed bag, but as it's mostly a mixed bag of whoop-ass, there's not really a problem with that.

The mechanics of Tekken are too dull to go into in any depth. It's a fighting game. Head + Foot = Win. Tekken has always had a likeable control scheme in that the buttons correspond directly to a limb. Each of the four buttons correspond to one of the four limbs. That's Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right Leg, for those unfamiliar with the basic human body shape.

Actual moves are similarly logical, with back + punch being something like a spinning back fist, while forward + punch might be a jab, down, towards + punch an uppercut. So it is, and so it always will be, yea until the end of time.

Naturally it's not just that simple, and Tekken has some fiendishly difficult and complicated moves and combos to work out and to master. There's enough depth for any serious nutcase (cough cough? me?) and enough instant thump that there can be a good bit of fun for someone who just picks the game up.

Tekken 5 has everthing the previous games had and more. The good bits, especially. The graphics are much improved from Tekken Tag, now a 3 year old game, though they aren't really all that different to Tekken 4. Maybe a little bit of detail here and there.

Tekken 5 improves on the earlier games with the addition of some new characters. Asako is a Japanese schoolgirl, with surprisingly good moves, and is a nice new addition. Whosit is an interesting character, as he uses a style of Kung Fu that is brutal, direct, and very effective. Whosit is particularly interesting as he is one of the few Kung Fu fighters in a game who escapes one of the various stereotypes, cast as being either an aging and peaceful grand master (Wang, Genyu from DOA? Yoda) or some sort of cocky young hero.

The other newbie is more of a question mark. He looks like Blade. I read somewhere that he plays like Blade too, but I can't really go with that. Blade's fighting style in the movies is fast and direct, but Raven plays much more like a transplanted DOA style fighter. Actually, the character he MOST reminds me of in a games is actually Bakuryu, the mole character from Bloody Roar.

It seems that Namco have been watching and playing other games with interest a little bit lately, and there seems to be a few nods towards other game, in particular DOA3. The breaking of floors, in particular feel very DOA3 inspired, though it might just be a natural coincidence.

Unfortunately, like everything, Tekken 5 is not perfect. There are few major gripes, but some of the minor ones are real head scratchers.

'Character selection' is the first one that comes to mind. When playing with two (or more) players, you have two choices. Arcade Mode, which is obviously the same as the Arcade setup, and Vs Mode, the standard home console multi-player mode. Both, however, are oddly flawed. Arcade Mode does not let you (as the winner) change characters after a game. So if you're passing around the controller, one player is stuck with the last player's selection. Vs Mode is a little more flexible, letting you select from all the characters after each game. The problem is, by stark contrast to every other fighting game Namco has ever made, the thumbnail type images of the fighters do NOT change larger versions in a cool rendered action pose, with their name. In fact, there's no large versions at all. In fact, there isn't even a name. There's no way you can tell who they are unless you can guess from the inch high headshot. Guess what, Namco? Your characters all look the same! This limitation is even more inexplicable (less explicable?) when you consider that there is easily enough room at the top of the screen, simply not being used, and not having SOMETHING there makes character choices, especially in large groups of newbies, a real chore.

That leads me neatly onto something else. When I was younger I played Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 fanatically, pounding through Story Mode after Story Mod, crushing Devils and Ogres under my fists, claws, sword, or whatever I had. I unlocked the lot. I played Soul Calibur's Mission Mode until I had every item, and every character and every costume I could get. I pounded my way through Dead or Alive 3 to unlock cool new costumes for the characters.

You know what? I'm over it. I have very little gaming time now, or time for ANYTHING, and I certainly have better things to do with my time than play over and over in the "Story Mode" of a game to unlock characters that really should have been there from the start.

I don't mind playing through games like this, but it should be to unlock bonus things, like costumes, movies and art. Having half your game locked and have to sit one night and pound through a boring, frustrating single player mode to access multiplayer content is basically shit.

Speaking of which: Namco, we need to talk. Bosses. Stop it. Just stop it. Jinpachi is a terrible boss. Yet again Namco have gone with their tried and true "giant supernatural monster who is incredibly strong" tactic.

This failed in more recent games as bosses like Ogre turned out to be relatively easy, being slow. Also most of their damaging moves were long range, so sticking close and going for some short range whomping was always a winner. Namco don't like winners. Jinpachi is different. It's not that he's good. Devil Jin is a better fighter, for example. It's just that he cheats. Half his moves are unblockable. Quite a few stun you so that he can have his evil way with you, and his way rarely involves mending your socks. All of his moves do ludicrously high damage. One move, a cheap-ass cheesecake fireball, rips half your life off. And he does it ALL the time. It's really hard to dodge. If you do dodge it, he often does two. I've never successfully dodged two.

It's not always a problem. Tougher characters with heavy hits, like Bryan, Jack, Paul or Heihachi can tear through him like a hot knife through some sort of demon infected glowing purple butter. Skill based fighters like Nina, Baek or Jin are slower and take a few goes, but careful use of the "punch hard" technique will get you there.

Some characters, such as Xiaou, on the other hand, might as well be baking cookies out there. I got stuck in the fight against Jinpachi for two hours. Couldn't do it. Eventually, as the desire to snap the controller in half was replaced with the desire to hurl it through the TV I wisely decided to put it down, turn of the PS2, and get some much needed sleep.

It isn't that I'm crap. It's just that Xiaou lacks the hard, direct, heavy hits needed to win against him. I would be winning by far, then suddenly he'd pull out an unblockable series of moves that took me from three quarters full to dead in the blink of an eye.

This kind of frustration has nothing to do with skill, nothing to do with difficulty. It's cheating, and nothing more.

There's one last negative I really need to cover here. Devil Within. Namco seem to think that they need some sort of beat-em-up in Tekken games in order to make them better. Guess what, Namco? You don't. Devil Within is, quite frankly, utterly crap. It's easy to say that something that's a bonus really can't make the actual game worse. Anyone who says that hasn't played Devil Within. It's that bad.

The other bonuses are much better. The best thing that this game offers, apart from the fact that it's just a stellar game in it's own right, is that it has Tekken 1 - Tekken 3 built into it. The Tekken 3 is the arcade version, by the way, not the CG laden Playstation version. Speaking of which, I was somewhat disappointed by the CG in Tekken 5, expecting both more and better than Tekken 3, which realistically I don't think much of it is.

Another nice bonus is the Customise feature. Almost pure DOA3 (and hell? Beach Vollyball) you can get credits for things in the game, such as beating Story Mode, or Devil Within (if you have a strong stomach), and these credits can be spent on buying stuff to change the appearance of your fighter. Some things are cheap, like outfit colour changes, but some things, like a sword, or especially a new costume, are really expensive. This is kind of a neat feature, but to be honest, it's not really well enough implemented to be much more than a gimmick, and the ability to make your character look like an utter goose isn't that big a selling point.

Ultimately, Tekken succeeds where it needs to, and fails where it doesn't really matter. As a multiplayer round of fisticuffs it's almost unbeatable, challenged only by Soul Calibur 2 on our Xbox. As a game for the obsessively into memorizing moves and combos, it stands alone.

Tekken 5 is awesome, if you have any friends that you want to hit, you should buy it.

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Yug's Comments

I was personally highly dissapointed that Jin's spinning low-high-high-low kicking move isn't nearly as effective anymore. I personally blame this for the reason I continually lost to Matt.

Final Verdict

Despite minor quibbles, Tekken 5 is one of the best fighting games available today, and a real return to form for the slacking Tekken series. Get it now and humble your friends.

Pros
Deep game mechanics, but still accessible to noobs, nice graphics, good fun
Cons
Have to unlock too much, frustrating bosses