Tekken

The Good
Tekken. What other game besides Street Fighter comes to your mind when you think of fighting games ? Besides Virtua Fighter, DOA, King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat, oh never mind.

Gameplay-

Gameplay is what makes or breaks a game. Does Tekken make the cut ? Press start to continue ! OK, there's nothing out of the ordinary here. Punches, kicks, and throws. What makes it different from every other non-descript fighter before it ? It's in 3D ! Sure, there was Toshinden and Virtua Fighter, but neither of those were this smooth. For masters of all the awesome combos, you can be an unstoppable machine ! Pummel, throw and fight your way to the top ! And in addition to regular throws and such, you can punch and kick opposing fighters while they're still on the ground ! There are two different kinds of throws for each character to make it extra juicy. (Extra juicy if it's your friend playing against you !) If you beat the game with all eight characters, you get eight more to play with. Oh, did I mention you get to play Galaga at the load screen ? Why did that never catch on ? So much fun.

Sound-

HIGH-YA! Sound is really not a strength for fighting games, so the sound here is pretty average.There's plenty of easy to listen music.(Why did I say easy to listen to ? Because most game's music of that time when on a CD format was total garbage.) Most of characters have their own unique sounds, but some are recycled for opposite personality fighters. It's not bad by any stretch, but not terribly inventive either.

Graphics-

This is where Tekken has showed it's age, but I'll get to that later. The animation is still as smooth today as it was back then. I was shocked when I got to the boss fight and saw how fast he moved, without loosing his smooth animation. The fighters are all polygon based, and are fairly well designed. It's still easy to tell what part of the fighter is what. With some older polygon games, it's awfully confusing to tell what exactly you're looking at some times.

One thing that's not confusing are the backgrounds. All are very varied, and highly imaginative. The baseball field is really cool. You can even see yourself on the big screen TV in the distance ! I personally like Windermere and Fiji the best. (Nothing says bloodsport like a tropical island.)

But aside from it's excellent graphics, Tekken is also know for it's highly realistic FMV. As always, there's one true ending, and fancy endings for the other characters. (It's Kazuya ! I won't spoil what it is though. Maybe.) FMV and all, this is still a great looking game.

Control-

Another reason Tekken is so long lived. The controls are dead simple. You have a left and right punch. A right left kick, and you press two of those buttons to throw your opponent clear across the screen. The controls are responsive, but really flexible. I'll get to that later though. To help, you can customize the button layout, but there's no real need. All in all, a good setup.

The Bad
Gameplay-

THIS GAME IS HARD ! Even with the fights down to one round, and the time set to twenty seconds, this game can still be unreasonably difficult near the end. I have always played Tekken on the medium setting, but this was almost too much for me. OK, a lot of this stems from the controls, but we haven't got that far in the review yet. (Unless you're skipping you lazy bums !) And some of the unlockable characters aren't worth the time. Devil Kazuya, and Heihachi require PERFECT precision to unlock. No two characters are worth all that trouble.

Graphics-

This game has aged better than most, but still shows it's age just like other games. Even by 1998 this game would have old. The characters are made up of lots of polygons for a 1994 game (It was in the arcade first.), but it still looks awfully blocky at times. Particularly Kuma. And the texture mapping on some of the characters looks ugly. (Kuma and King come to mind.)

Control-

The controls are smooth, but only after you spend more time than you should getting used to them. For new comers, and people that have other Tekkens first, they're awfully stiff. And even when you get good with them, you'll still be trounced by characters later on in the game. This makes the game harder than it should be.

The Bottom Line
Definitely a must have for Tekken junkies like myself, and great fun for anybody looking for a good fighting game. And since you can get it so cheap, there's no reason not to get it !