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Enter the Tekken...Again. For the 5th Time.
With
all the good buzz Virtua Fighter 4 generated, everyone's
sleeping on the latest offering from Namco, Tekken 4.
There's good reason for it. Aside from throwing in some
new characters, there really isn't anything new offered
in Tekken 4 that you didn't have in Tekken 3, or Tekken
Tag Tournament. Everything looks really nice. I like the
look and feel of Tekken much better than I do that of
Virtua Fighter 4, but in the long run, I don't think
I'll be playing either one much, and I foresee a pretty
big general malaise of the fighter front, unless CapCom
can bring me something that gets those juices flowing
again.
Then again, I'm really not THAT big on fighters.
I enjoy playing them and all, but I never master any of
them. They're fun, but make no mistake, I'm never going
to be entering any sort of tournament, or even trying to
knock someone off a machine at an arcade.
Plot
This is supposedly 2 years after the last tournament.
The really weird thing is, some characters, like
Marshall Law, have aged a lot. Others, like Ling Xiaoyu,
have not aged at all. Shouldn't she be out of high
school by now? I'm getting confused with all the
crossing timelines. It's like the Marvel Universe and
the Street Fighter Universe where they've crossed over
and gone back in time so much I don't know if there's
any history anymore.
The main arc in the game revolves
around Kazuya reappearing. He comes back after being
chucked into a volcano to beat down Heihachi, because
that's what everyone does. Especially when he's wearing
a sumo outfit. Every other character has their own
storyline, painfully narrated in English for the
Japanese version. They all also have their own CG
endings, a nice return to the days of Tekken 3, when
beating the game meant something. I guess the Namco
folks really, really wanted to make the Kazuya, Jin,
Heihachi story complete, because if you play any of
those 3 characters, you'll get fights that you don't
normally have, and all of their endings link together.
Controls
The controls are the same in all the other Tekken games.
Two punches, two kicks. The one major difference in
Tekken 4 is that you can now be cornered, and someone
can have a field day beating you into a wall, should you
get so trapped. To counter-balance this, you now have a
now type of grab that just reverses positions. It does
no damage, but you can return the whole beating against
the wall deal. I don't find this to be a big tactical
advantage, just as I didn't find the whole
"Tag" in Tekken Tag to do very much. Maybe
once you get to the supreme levels of play, like my
friend Jeff "Chinaman" Hsu, this will
represent a huge difference in tactics, but to me and
all the other average Tekken players out there, it's not
a big deal.
Graphics
The game looks really,
really good now. Some stages, like the "Fight
Club" looking one will have people in the
background that can get punched and taken out. The water
in areas looks nice, and other areas have pillars and
statues that can get destroyed during fighting. This
adds a level of visual impressiveness that neither
Tekken 3 or Tekken Tag had, and I would have to say that
this is probably the most visually polished game in the
series. You aren't able to knock characters from one
level to another, which is a bit of a let down, because
it doesn't seem like it'd be a thing that was all that
difficult to do, but for the most part, Tekken 4
impresses visually.
Characters
Unfortunately, the
number of characters in Tekken 4 has been dropped to a
mere 19, and two of them aren't even different
characters. This is a disappointment considering there
are less secrets in Tekken 4 than there were in Tekken
3, and that game was for the Playstation 1, and had more
characters. I figure with a DVD you could fit much, much
more into this game.
Some of the new characters are:
Steve
Fox
Steve's a bit of a wacko. He's looking for his
parents, but also is on the run from the mob for winning
a fight he was supposed to take a dive in. Steve ends up
being the Balrog of Tekken. He's got some fairly vicious
punches, but no kicks. Can be pretty devastating if you
use him properly.
Marduk
Marduk is a loser
wrestler who gets jailed for killing someone in a bar
brawl. He gets set free when an anonymous benefactor
bails him out, and gives him an invitation to the Tekken
4 competition. Marduk's really lame. He has this stupid
"flop kick" where he flips forward with a
short range kick. It's the equivalent of Dan's fireball,
except that Dan's actually sort of cool.
Christie
Montiero
Christie is Eddie with a low cut top,
shorts, and breasts. The Namco guys must have decided
that they didn't have enough jiggle in the game. (By the
way, our server logs are reporting that a small, but
disturbing number of people are getting to this site by
searching for "breasts". Don't you people read
the information for the links before you click on them?)
Combot
Combot is the same as Mokujin/Tetsujin.
Only Combot has a pretty pimpin' ending. Best ending in
the game if you ask me. =) Although, really, Mokujin had
a pretty sweet ending in Tekken 3 anyway. There are also
2 other characters which don't have their own endings,
Miharu (a character swap for Xiaoyu), and Eddie is a
swap for Christie. They're really only there for
aesthetic purposes only, and if you beat the game with
them, all you get is the ending for the other character.
It's really cheesy beating the game with Eddie, and
seeing Christie's ending where she's looking for Eddie.
I feel kind of ripped off again. Tekken Tag had a bunch
of characters, but only 1 new rendered ending, an obvious
rush job to capitalize on Tekken 3's popularity and the
new PS2. Tekken 4 gets new endings, some better
graphics, removes a lot of the characters, and adds in
lame ones. I think the average gamers loses in that
trade-off.
Tekken Force Mode
Force Mode is much
improved over the Force Mode in Tekken 3. Unfortunately,
there are still some problems with the camera, and
determining which character you're attacking. The
"chicken!" voice from 3 is still there, and
the whole, using chickens to regain health thing has
been done to extreme in Tekken 4, as you will be picking
up eggs, small chicklets, and big fat looking chickens
to revitalize your character. There are bottles of
Lipovitan or some other sort of energy drink that will
give you extra power and light trails from your punches.
There are a lot of little bits of humor, especially in
the 4th stage of the trials. For extra fun, read the
names on top of the enemies you're beating down. Along
with the characters, unfortunately, minigames are also
one of the sacrifices made in Tekken 4. The only thing
you have to play now is Tekken Force Mode. No Beach
Volleyball, no Bowling...just Tekken Force.
Overall
All in all, an average game. There really isn't a must
have fighter out on the PS2 yet, but you should probably
own either this or VF4 just so you can have something to
show off. I have to say that I personally liked this
better than VF4, but they were both a bit disappointing
overall. It feels once again, like Namco has skimped on
this iteration of the Tekken series. Tekken 2 was a big
jump from 1, and Tekken 3 was a remarkable leap from 2.
T
hose games were all on the same system. So, going up to
the PS2, Tekken 4 should have been at least as much of
an improvement on T3 as T3 was improvement over Tekken
2. What I'm really hoping for is a grand reunification
of everything for Tekken 5. I want to see every
character in the series that isn't dead unlockable in
the game. I want to see full rendered endings for all of
them. I want at least 3 minigames again, and I want to
be able to destroy more of the level environment and
knock people into different levels for stunning attacks.
Also, a replay function for the game like you have for
most sports games would be really, really nice. The
thing is, we've had most of this available in previous
versions of Tekken before, so I don't think that this is
too much to ask. Hopefully this all gets put together by
the time the PS3 comes around. If Namco can do
this...it'll probably have the best selling fighting
game of all time on their hands.
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