Tekken 8

• Genre: Fighting
• Time Played: ~5 Hours
• Too Short/Long: About right for a fighting game story mode, I wouldn't have minded a bit more, but I can still play through each characters little side story mode.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very pleased.
• Why I played: Because I like fighting games, and even though Tekken hasn't always been my favorite I heard a lot of positive reception on this one, so I might have grabbed it a bit sooner than I normally would have.
• Recommend to others: Yeah, this is probably the best Tekken yet.

I haven't always loved the Tekken series. Even though I've always loved fighting games. I played a little Tekken 3 when the neighborhood kids wanted to, but just to appease them so we can also play some Bloody Roar and Ehrgeiz afterward. The first one I actually owned was Tekken 5 because it had a huge cast compared to any previous, and it added a beat em up mode where you ran around as Devil Jin. From there, I think I have gotten each Tekken, but it's never been one of my favorites.

That doesn't really change with this. When it comes time to play some fighting games my go to will always be Guilty Gear, then King of Fighters, then probably something that gets bonus points for having a real tag-team with 4 or even 6 players(shoutout DBFighterZ), whatever is the newest fighting game at the time, some weirdo random obscure fighting game... then maybe Tekken.

That said, Tekken 8 shows a lot of promise. Haven't had the opportunity to whip it out for guests yet, but there are some mechanical choices that seem pretty fun/intuitive that will make it a bit easier to pick up and play. Tekken 7 was rough in that aspect. It's not an easy fighting game to just pick up and have fun immediately. Only time can tell the staying power Tekken 8 will have.

Tekken 8 doesn't have nearly the character selection the previous did, as 7 had tons of DLC fighters. Even at launch, it had a handful more characters than 8. Kind of annoying, and some of my favorites are nowhere to be seen. At least I can say I really like 2 of the 3 new characters. A new Jack doesn't count. And story only playable characters don't count either. I really hope all the various forms/styles of characters become options in standard modes in the future.

I don't know how I feel about some of the modes. The Arcade Quest mode seems to basically be trying to do what Street Fighter 6's story mode, which I didn't really like. I don't want to play like these avatars who are basically playing a fighting game or fighting randos in order to get better, whatever nonsense is going on with these kinds of modes just isn't for me. I'm sure there are people who like them. People who want to earnestly get better at the game and want a pat on the back for doing so. Also people who like ugly bitmoji-esque avatars.

What Tekken 8 just absolutely nails is it's actual story mode. Damn it was so cool. They just leaned so heavy into the ridiculousness and what has always been my favorite stuff in the Tekken series - the devil gene. Who cares about one military tech company fighting another, this series literally has demons, do demon stuff! Shoot I'd be pretty happy if they replaced half the standard cast with just new(and returning) demon characters.

But yeah, every once in awhile a fighting game comes around where it just has a really cool single player mode that just blows everything else out of the water and this is one of them. While there are a decent amount of fighting games with good story modes a lot of them come in the form of bloated visual novels, or just a movie you happen to interject with a battle here or there. Tekken 8 goes out of it's way to be exciting and make the fights feel like they are immersive and smoothly transition to and from the narrative.

There are a couple instances where it kinda has you do the same battles over and over for dramatic effect and I think that's it's biggest flaw. They could have leaned into the variety they were going for and mixed it up a bit more with the quick time events which only occur a handful of times total, and there could have been a few more beat-em-up style sequences to make it feel really fleshed out, but I can't complain much, it doesn't wear out it's welcome and I know some people will hate it and be like "I bought a fighting game, not an x game", but screw them. I would have been happy if the final battles was a shmup sequence. That said, I was pretty happy with what I got.