Tekken

"A pretty good start to a fantastic series!"

I can safely say that the Tekken series is, in my opinion, the best fighting game series ever. I have every Tekken game up to Tekken 5, and I intend to review them all, in chronological order. Sure, Virtua Fighter and DOA are alright, but they just don't compare to the Tekken series at all in my eyes. Right, now that that's out of the way, let's start the review!

Story: 3/10
A bit bland, really. Basically, Heihachi starts up the King of Iron Fist Tournament, and offers a massive cash prize to the winner. And naturally a number of fighters enter for their own personal reasons. Boring. Then again, who cares? People don't play fighting games for the story; they play it for the fighting.

Graphics: 7/10
Bear in mind that I am rating the graphics based on what they would have looked like at the time it was released. By today's standards, they are, understandably, awful. The textures are bland, the backgrounds are flat, the ground has very visible pixels, the characters are blocky, the animation sucks, and all the characters have the same size legs (making the bigger characters look VERY deformed). Kuma's appearance can be likened to that of a massive chocolate bar with teeth and claws. However, considering the game came out in 1995, the graphics are pretty impressive. The game runs at a steady 50 frames per second (a great feat back then. On the back it is described as 'TV scorching') and most of the characters are recognisable. Also, the CGI ending movies must have seemed incredible at the time. And hey, it was one of the first 3D fighting games, after all!

Sound: 8/10
The music is fantastic! In fact, it contains some of the best music in any game ever! It's catchy and fits the background perfectly, without being too overbearing. The sound effects are also quite good, the various sounds being what you would expect from a fighting game (a punch sounds like a punch, a kick like a kick etc.). Two particularly cool sound effects are when P.Jack's drill turns in his win animation, and Kuma's infamous 'Backbreaker', which, unsurprisingly, sounds REALLY painful.

By contrast, however, the character voices are awful! It's not the fact that the speech consists of moans and groans, that's understandable for a game from 1995. It's the fact that loads of people have exactly the same voice. Anna and Nina have the same voice. Yoshimitsu and Kunimitsu have the same voice. Ganryu, P.Jack, Jack and Heihachi ALL have the same voice. Need I go on? OK, maybe they were short of voice actors, but they could have at least tried to make it sound different. Despite these bad voices, the sound is mostly good.

Gameplay: 8/10
Ah, the gameplay: the main part of any game. And this game does not disappoint. Like with most fighting games, you pick a character, and then fight opponent after opponent until the game is over. Simple, but fun. When you first start, you have a choice of 8 characters, but when you play through the game with each character, you unlock a new one, and eventually, you have 17 characters. The cool thing is that the character unlocked depends on who you finished the game as. It's a shame there aren't more fighting games like this.

This game also has a really great fighting system. Whereas in other games, there's either a strong punch/weak punch/kick button (like in Street Fighter), or a punch/kick/block button (like in Virtua Fighter), this game has the unique system of assigning one button to each limb. This allows more freedom and more moves to be implemented, which is one of the main reasons I love the Tekken series. As for The A.I., it is at the level it should be, which for me is challenging, but not so hard that it's frustrating. Another cool feature is the inclusion of an old Namco game: Galaga. Basically, you shoot down aliens in space, and if you get them all, you supposedly unlock a new character (I cannot confirm this, since I have never completed it). Either way, it's a nice little thing to include in the game.

This game is not without its flaws, however. As I previously mentioned, this game has 17 characters in total (or 18, if the aforementioned rumours are true), but really, the characters you unlock are extremely similar to the characters you have to start with. Seriously, with every character, I could find another that was the same except with different polygons, and maybe three or four different moves. This may seem like a minor thing, but it's still quite annoying. Also, there are many things that the other games have, that this one does not. I know this happens with every series, but in this case, when you play other games in the series, this one just feels very empty. The third (and biggest) flaw is the lack of modes. There are a whopping TWO modes: Arcade and versus mode, or if you prefer one and two player mode. Where's survival mode? And team battle and time attack? There isn't even a practice mode! It really puts a damper on the whole thing. These observations aside, it is still a fun game to pick up and play if you're bored.

Replay Value: 5/10
Because of the previously mentioned lack of modes, once you've beaten the game with all 17 characters (which is easily done in a day or two), there's not a lot else to do. Sure, you can play with your friends a bit, but even that feels a bit flat after a while.

Pros:
Revolutionary fighting system.
Good character design.
Pretty good graphics considering the time.
Brilliant music!
Realistic sound effects.
Perfectly balanced A.I.
Galaga! Hooray!
Sub-bosses for each character.
Steady framerate (no slowdown).

Cons:
Too many ‘clone' characters.
Awful voices.
Severe lack of modes.
Pales in comparison to all of its sequels.
Won't last very long.

Buy, rent or avoid: If I was writing this at the time of its release, I would say rent it, because you can easily complete it within the rental time. However, I highly doubt you can rent it in this day and age. If you can find it cheap, by all means pick it up. Otherwise, don't bother and get one of its sequels.

Well, that's my first ever review! And it was a lot longer than I intended it to be too! Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/08

Game Release: Tekken (EU, November 1995)