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Review: Tekken 4 |
TIME TO REVIEW THE ULTIMAT… LONG AWAITED… SHIT GAME 4! LAME!!!!!
Right off the bat, I am going to say that if you liked DOA for it’s MASSIVE, bouncing breasts, that has NOTHING, not a DAMN THING on Heihachi’s MASSIVE, BOUNCING, CROTCH. Yes, you heard it here first folks, Heihachi walks out in a sumo outfit, with his bulbous man sausage swaying gently back and forth. It’s very well worth the price of admission for that alone. With that said…
There is no other way for me to start this review than to say that Tekken 4 OWNS it. I was at my mother’s house, playing Namco Museum on PS2, and it just amazed me that this is the same company that made Pacman. They are still as strong as ever in today’s gaming environment, and Tekken is a prime example of why. I really hope that fighting companies take notes, because while Tekken has its share of flaws, the direction that its going in is progressive, realistic, and intelligent. I haven’t liked a fighting game so much in a very long time.
Right off the bat, you can see that Tekken 4 has taken a very different direction than the previous series and even any other 3D fighting game before it. Most fighting games provide minimal, if any focus on storyline. They usually provide CG intros, but they are nothing more than character introductions. Tekken has been notorious of this in the past too. This year, Tekken takes the game into a different direction: while keeping character intros, they provide you with an opening cinema that immediately entrances you with a strong storyline. It is literally a short film, complete with voice acting and coherent progression.
After seeing the introduction to this game, I was not only impressed, but I was ready to play. I had to know what happened with all of my favorite characters. Namco did a really good job of capturing my attention. Many fighting games don’t do this. In games like Virtua Fighter, and even a lot of previous Tekkens, you don’t have the strength of a character’s background to rely on, only the character design itself.
Superficially, the game’s presentation isn’t anything stunning, it’s usual Namco fare. The game has a plethora of special modes for you to play in, but there is nothing to be seen that hasn’t been seen before. The only truly original mode in the game is “Training Mode” which seems pretty worthless to me. You are placed in a time-attack environment, and asked to execute 20 specified attacks as fast as you can.
The in-game presentation is very well done. Namco appears to have taken notes from Team Ninja, as each character has their own specific pre-fight introductions, where they perform various rituals, or say whatever it is that they need to say before the fight. There is a great deal of voice acting in the game, every character was provided with a full speaking role at some point in the game. I like this idea, in the name of progress and encouraged realism, but I can’t say that it was always well executed. Characters such as Hwaorang seem to suffer in their endings, from having an unneeded English VA. Hwaorang’s English VA sounds similar to his Japanese VA, but something about him just seems radiate, “GIVE ME THICK SEMEN!”
I haven’t come across one person that’s happy with it, myself included, and I want to be biased towards him. Other characters in English are dead on, such as Craig Marduk and Nina Williams. The Japanese VA movies are amazing. The movies themselves are excellent, some of the endings are over three minutes long, full of dialogue, animation and story. Many questions are answered, and other new ones are raised. For the most part, the steps taken here are a much needed breath of fresh air, when you think about how lacking the story modes have been in every 3D game released before this one.
The thing that I like most about Tekken, and that differentiates it from other fighting game series is that this chapter is not just about fighting, this chapter is about violence. Tekken 4’s main themes are violence and attitude- fighting is secondary. This
is illustrated in both the characters, and the varied dynamics that they have with other characters. For example, the entire relationship between Kazuya, Heihachi and Jin is all about hatred, revenge and blood. These are very angry people, it is conveyed through the aggressiveness of their attacks, and most importantly, through the actions of their win poses. Kazuya has a win pose in which he holds his opponent up in the air by the neck and mutters an evil statement to them. Heihachi slams his opponent’s face on the ground.
Other characters worth mentioning are Bryan Fury, whose rage is so uncontrollable, that he mounts his opponent after winning and literally mangles his or her face, bone-cracking noises included. And Hwaorang, who, just as is opponent is about to try and get up, sits on his or her back, exhausting whatever final iota of energy that his opponent was able to muster up in order to try and get back on his or her feet. Violence and attitude.
The character roster in Tekken was greatly decreased from Tekken Tag and even from Tekken 3. Under normal circumstances, this would be a bad thing, but in this series, it’s a great thing. Characters are more complete and fleshed out, those characters who had similar attacks were just melded together and complimented with new attacks as well, providing for very complete characters, with a lot of tools at their disposal. The problems come in with the fact that many fan favorites are missing, I won’t dwell on who, but considering that about half of the roster is gone, I’m sure that each returning player can think of someone that they miss. The best thing about this roster is that everyone is likable, all of their outfits are well designed, none of them are the ‘generic fighter’ and they don’t feel like they’re just in the game to fill up the roster.
The new characters, for the most part, are excellent. Christie is an Eddy palette swap, but her cheesy fighting style has been severely deprioritized, and even the things about her that are still cheesy can be forgiven in ways that they couldn’t with Eddy, as Christie is one of the hottest females to grace a fighting game in quite a while. Steve Fox is a British boxer. Steve is heavily based on Brad Pitt’s character portrayal in Snatch, even his story is based on the movie. Initially, I thought that this was faggotry, but the great thing about Steve is that he is a GREAT representation of boxing as a martial art. I think that he is a breakthrough character as well, I don’t know of any boxers in 3D games, or any characters that don’t attack with their feet. He is a very well done character, with many stances and a very innovative fighting style. His VA does a great job as well.
Another new character, also with an innovative fighting style is Craig Marduk. Craig is the biggest character that Tekken has ever had. He is even bigger than Kuma. Despite his size, he is deceptively fast, and his Vale Tudo (Ultimate Fighting) fighting style was exceptionally well executed. His attacks are all powerful and violent. Craig’s philosophy is that he doesn’t believe in playing games, so he just throws everything into every attack that he’s got. I initially expected him to be like Jack-2, but he’s his own man.
All of the other characters in the game are returning. Mokujin makes his return in the form of a character called “Combot,” and Lee makes his return in the form of a character known as “Violet.”
Another way that you can tell that this game has been doing its homework, and copying Team Ninja’s notes are through the backgrounds. The backgrounds in Tekken, for the first time, are very interactive and all very diverse. All of the stages not only have their own specific values and appearances, but they also have their own sizes and advantages and disadvantages that either you and your opponents can play off of. Some stages are wide and expansive like all Tekken games in the past, and in contrast, other stages are not only enclosed in all directions, but they are enclosed at the top too, changing the values of launching combos and whatnot. You can actually knock someone at full speed against a ceiling in some stage. The stages in this game are by far the most well designed Tekken stages ever. I feel that DOA pulled off stage construction in a much more effective way than Tekken did, but Tekken’s stages are just as aesthetically pleasing. The game has a dark, Fight Club theme to it, as many of the stages are set in either small, underground arenas, in parking lots, malls and in the inner city. As I said before, the game is very interactive, meaning that there are lots of pillars, phone booths, statues and people to break in half during your fights. One of the coolest things has to be the inclusion of innocent bystanders. In some stages, they stand by cheering you on, and you can knock them down or fall into them, and in other stages, they are busy running away and trying to avoid you if you get too close too them. They are all decently animated, and they don’t look out of place in the game’s environments.
Up until now, it has sounded like I’ve had nothing but good things to say about Tekken, and it’s true, because it’s a well crafted game, but now I have to speak on what really matters in a fighting game, or any kind of game for that matter - the gameplay.
The gameplay in Tekken has had many adjustments, but for the most part, it’s the usual fare. Tekken 4 is more like Soul Calibur in that you can move around your opponent freely, ducking is performed by “downback” now, which is awkward at first, and very hard to get used to, but functional… eventually. The new inclusions are the wall system and the position change function.
The Wall-System was a good idea, but a failure in terms of execution, when you hit a wall hard enough, you can take damage and fall down, or be juggled, or just pummeled into oblivion by a skilled opponent. There are functions that allow you to roll out of the way without taking damage, but they are extremely difficult to pull off in battle and just impractical for the casual gamer. The stages come into play heavily in the wall system.
When playing with skilled friends, they will occasionally choose a small stage like the underground fighting stage and just use it to their advantage the entire time, and you’re almost rendered defenseless. This is just gay. There is no other way to describe it. It’s something that disbalances the game if you learn how to use it well enough.
Another skill is the position change skill. One of your throw buttons was replaced with position change, which is a damageless throw, which serves the single purpose of moving your opponent to a place where you want them to be, such as… GASP, A WALL. This is a pretty cool feature actually, but it’s also one that is easily abusable, and I doubt that many people will like it.
As far as the actual gameplay from character-to-character, this game is not even close to
being as balanced as Tekken Tag Tournament or Tekken 3. This is hard to deal with, because one of the reasons that I play Tekken is because it’s… ugh… NOT broken… at high-l… yeah.
Well it is now. Basically, Jin, Heihachi, Bryan, Steve and Paul dominate this game. There is nothing that you can do against an intermediate Jin, and NOTHING you can do against a skilled player in any of these other characters that I have mentioned. Jin’s fighting style is new, so I expect it to have its balance issues, but some of it is absurd. I’m saying this as an avid Jin user as well. I am very ashamed to see that the already obscenely capable Paul Phoenix has been powered up as well. Bryan has a 1frame jab, try blocking it, it’s an exercise in tedium. Free damage whenever you want.
It may sound like I’m brutalizing the gameplay, but I’m speaking as someone with relative expertise in the series. At ANY level of play, this game is GREAT fun. The learning curve, however, for newbies, and people who have decided to hate the Tekken series without ever spending time with it, is utterly sinful. Most people who already hate the series will be turned off by the sheer volume of attacks that they have to learn, and that they have to watch out for from their opponents.
The game’s AI is usual Tekken stuff. The default difficulty is pretty much child’s play, even ‘Hard’ is pretty easy. The game doesn’t show very much mercy on ‘Very Hard,’ and it gets very interesting. The gap between Very Hard and ULTRA HARD is drastic. For experts, this game will provide an ENORMOUSLY enjoyable challenge on ultra hard, as I haven’t been able to find any type of predictability in the computer’s patterns yet, and I get the nostalgic feelings of boss fear, whether facing Lee Chaolan or Captain Asscheeks, Heihachi Mishima, himself.
The game has an intense learning curve, as I’ve mentioned before, but the difficulty levels serve as nice teachers, and the training mode is very comprehensive, including, as always, CPU training, where you can really learn the ropes. I would say that the curve to become DECENT is about 2 hours, which is a pretty good amount of time for a fighter.
I’m proud to say that the music in Tekken 4 is a refreshing change from the music in the past Tekkens. Some stages provide remixes, such as the remix of Paul’s Tekken 2 New York stage, and others provide totally new and bouncy tracks. I like the music in this one because it’s less of that “aura” sounding crap and more actual beats. It’s a little bit too techno-ey, but its very upbeat in most stages and in some stages, very angry, such as the Parking Lot. I do indeed like it a lot. Some of the tracks, like the building track are quite a bit repetitive, and I don’t like that at all, because I’d prefer something more dynamic and stimulating, especially on those short fights, because by the time the fight is over, you haven’t heard anything but the same 4 or 5 bars over and over again. One of the phatter tracks is the Shinjuku stage track; it’s really fight club-esque, but it is one of those tracks that really gets you in the mood to fight, and occasionally, a certain trumpet sound will hit right as you crash in with an attack and it’s almost as if the fights are choreographed to it. Makes the game more cinematic. So in the end, I guess the music comes off as decent, but in comparison to past Tekkens, it’s great.
Tekken 4 has no shortage of extras, but like I said not much is really new. The biggest extra has to be the exceptional story mode. It’s just beyond what I expected, complete with both artwork and CG cinemas. None of the cinemas are up to par with the opening cinema, but they are all well done and very long. The greatest ending of all time is Kuma’s ending. I won’t reveal anything about it, but you’ll have to see it to believe it.
The correlation between the Kazama/Mishima endings is great too. Some of the endings are poor, like the Christie ending, or the Ling Xiaouyu ending. Very unfortunate, because those are characters that I liked.
A couple of other extras are the inclusion of Eddy Gordo, as a Christie palette swap and Miharu, Ling Xiaoyu’s schoolmate. Both of whom are just worthless palette swaps, but I’m pleased about their inclusion, nonetheless. A few characters get third and fourth outfits, and Jin Kazama has two sweet Enbus in the cinema theme as well.
A returning extra from Tekken 3 is the Tekken Force mode. Tekken Force is a side scrolling game, where you run through the stages, beating up endless Tekken Force cannon fodder and then you face a boss at the end of the stage. This game, to say the least, is harder than sin. They included a nice targeting system so that you can stay focused on an opponent, but they are quick to gang up on you and rape you like you had some self-esteem to begin with (GAMERS LOSRS LOLOL).
This is not really an extra, but for me it is. Ling Xiaoyu in a pink sun dress. Thank you Japan for the fan service and gratuitous panty shots, my penis quakes with appreciation. Oh yeah… She kicks high.
In closing, this is by far, graphically and story-wise, the best Tekken that has ever been created. The gameplay is a little bit lacking, but by no means is it problematic, there are various collision issues with the whole wall thing, and this serves to create a truly agonizing experience at times. The play mechanics are very good and the characters are responsive. Yes, Hwaorang was weakened, and yes, Paul was powered up, but so what, this is by far the best fighter out right now. It’s not the greatest fighter ever created, but the steps that Namco has taken with this game are very impressive, a lot of changes have been made, and lot of revisions, and the game is far more interactive than any other Tekken. I hope that 3D fighting games continue to take progressive steps like these, and that Tecmo,
Namco and Sega continue to compete with and learn from each other, because this release, in my opinion, is a testament to all three companies’ accomplishments.
