Tekken Guide 

There are a few new characters making their debut in Tekken, all bringing a new fighting style to the table. Katarina fights in the savate style, while Lucky Chloe the anime-inspired cosplayer uses dance and acrobatics. Alongside other newcomers Shaheen, Gigas, Claudio, Josie and Master Raven, even the hardcore Tekken fan will have fun experimenting with their styles. There’s an Arcade mode, which is little more than six fights against the CPU and, shockingly for a Tekken game, no endings to unlock on completing it. Finally, there’s the Treasure Battle mode, which is the pick of the bunch. Essentially this is an endless Arcade mode against increasingly more difficult opponents and some ‘special matches’ that require you to fight a boss character, or under a certain rule set, such as increased damage or at double-speed. Every win unlocks customisation gear for your characters, or fight money to unlock specific bits of content.

Tekken’s mechanics are different from those of other fighting games. Instead of light or heavy attacks, each face button is mapped to a limb: left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. Moves are built around a directional input and button press, instead of quarter- or half-circle motions. Most importantly, players can sidestep into the foreground and background, more fully utilizing the three-dimensional space. Some combatants have roughly 100 command moves, or specific stances that can set up around 10 moves each. The story, which functions as a sort of tutorial (there's no proper option) is a decent enough way to learn the ropes, but the series as a whole does not do a good job of onboarding people, especially in the wake of some of the better fighting game tutorials in recent years. That said, it's something you can pick up if you stick with it. Training mode wonderfully displays each command or combo on-screen, and you can cycle through them all with a quick button combination or view every single move in clip form, so you can see how it's supposed to play out.

You’ll find that Tekken delivers the same great combat you know and love with a hefty batch of new characters and a few new mechanics. The game includes notable new supermoves that can be triggered when a character's health is dangerously low, which is also the right time to unleash a rage drive a powered-up standard combo attack. The most important new addition is the power crush attack attribute: Relevant attacks can absorb incoming hits mid-animation, allowing you to risk a little health to increase your chances of landing a critical blow, which injects Tekken's otherwise familiar fights with a renewed element of surprise. With more than 30 playable characters, Tekken offers plenty of fighters and opponents to study. Impressively, nearly a quarter of the roster is brand new. The most conspicuous Tekken freshman must be Akuma, the red-haired bad guy of Street Fighter fame. The introduction of fireballs and hurricane kicks might seem like an odd fit for Tekken, but they don't feel overpowered in light of the fact that every character comes with their own advantages. And when it comes to facing down Akuma's projectiles specifically, they can be easily sidestepped given the game's 3D movement. Street Fighter fans will appreciate how easy it is to fight as Akuma, since many of his traditional moves and inputs are present and accounted for. Even Street Fighter's meter-based mechanics have been carried over for his Tekken debut.

Using Fight Money earned by playing the game's various modes you can purchase both cutscenes and cosmetic items for characters. Tekken offers a lot of basic variations of hairstyles or glasses to buy, and an equal amount of stranger outfits and accessories including neon butterfly wings, a floating clownfish companion, and automatic rifles, to name a few. There's also training mode and an arcade mode where you can practice your moves, but Treasure Battle is easily the most attractive way to spend your off-time in Tekken. If you're going to practice before hopping online to fight, you might as well have something to show for it.

Where Tekken’s content does not disappoint at all is in its character customization options, which put it truly in a class unto itself and sets the new standard for letting you express yourself. Cosmetics are modifiable on an unparalleled level, going beyond thousands of individual fashion pieces to include attack effects, colorful auras, portraits and tile backgrounds, and multiple alternate costumes whose top and bottom pieces can be mixed and matched. You’re even allowed to choose from hundreds of options for the frame art around your health bar; it’s something so simple, yet it adds another cool way to make yourself unique when playing online. Extra content is unlocked by completing matches in online Tournaments, Treasure Battle, or by spending Fight Money, which you earn simply by playing. The sheer amount of content in character appearance alone would give a completionist a hell of a lot of fights to finish in order to collect all the hats, shirts, accessories, costumes, and alternate artwork. Online multiplayer between strong connections has been smooth with minimal frame delay, though we've seen some weaker connections drop during matchmaking.  Each character has various unlockable outfits, tops, bottoms, hats, accessories and hairdos. Going beyond costumes, Tekken 7 includes options for special particle effects, player bio card frames, title plaque shell, players can even change the health bar that appears in battle. Dressing up your character and customizing your display are certainly things to do by yourself, but I wouldn’t call them single-player content. You’ll want to take your custom characters online. Maybe Akuma will be laughing hard enough at the pizza strapped to your Leo’s back to let you get a couple of good hits in.

The fighting part of the story is abysmal.  Many battles take place against the same character multiple times, and if you lose once you start that section again. The game attempts to ease you through by adding a modifier that lets you spam special moves, but it’s like adding stabilisers to a speedboat. Instead of understanding how Tekken works, you cheese your way through fights using specials you never properly learn. It’s a terrible introduction to the series and the system, and it’s only worth completing to grab yourself the amazingly easy Achievements / Trophies that come with it. On top of this, the Mishima Saga is a strange fit for a sequel. The new characters barely feature, squandering a cool opportunity to embed them in the Tekken mythology. Instead, you unlock additional, single-shot character stories you can play separately. These side missions are simplistic and daft - they make the character motivations in Injustice 2 look like Raging Bull - but  they’re exactly what’s missing from the main story. Tekken is a cheerful, self-deprecating series, and this stuff could have added some much-needed levity to the Mishima Saga. I’m not suggesting  we ditch all the patricide and frowning - just that adding the occasional angry panda could add soul to an otherwise drab tale.The reason it gets four stars is because despite the shaky story mode, Tekken still feels amazing to play. And it really is about ‘feel’, in a way that most beat ‘em ups aren’t. You get the same thrill from pulling off your first big special as you do from mastering a chain throw or blocking a 10-hit combo. Matches roll back and forth brilliantly - you can perfect your opponent one round and suffer a crushing defeat the next.
 

You are able to unlock new costumes and items for your characters in the game by playing a 'Treasure Mode' - quick matches against the CPU which net you extra gear to customise and more Fight Money, which you can use to buy items, outfits and hairstyles. These are all cosmetic changes that you can bring into any mode in the game, from the simple Arcade Mode all the way to the Online Matches. The online mode is split into ranking matches, quick battles and lobbies. Lobbies and the invitation system work very well, with stable connections making the experience easier, but the game continues to frustrate, particularly in 1v1 lobbies. There is no simple 'Rematch' option, kicking you back to the lobby whenever you want to fight again, causing minutes of waiting time between matches. Matchmaking is an equally abysmal affair, with it being almost impossible to find a match in Ranked or Casual modes without almost immediately being disconnected, whether that's down to the high volumes of players online or otherwise, in its current form the matchmaking is completely broken. The new Rage system changes the game somewhat, but it’s implemented in a very Tekken way. As you reach the end of your health bar, you’re given a buff you can spend on special, one-shot attacks. They act rather like Street Fighter’s Super Moves, but by assigning them to characters with low health, it adds tension to the end of every fight. The psychology of it is fascinating. Connecting a Rage Art will turn a match around, but you can still take damage while you’re executing them, so they become a microcosm of Tekken’s best back-and-forth moments. There are some Tekken purists who might sneer like Bryan Fury at unnecessary tweaks to their favourite game, but for me, they add just enough frisson to justify their inclusion.