Tekken 8. Review «The most powerful iron fist».

Fighting games do not give a rest, and after a powerful and forceful year 2023 where the remaining great exponents dueled to win the GOTY of fighting game, I talk about Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1, today I finally come to you Talking about who stepped aside from that battle to be the undisputed king of this 2024, I’m talking about the greatest exponent of three-dimensional fighting, Tekken, it has returned with everything in its eighth installment, and here are the reasons why it is number one.

Development:

Tekken 8 follows the story of the predecessor, Tekken 7, where we were amazed and expectant for more than six years after an amazing final battle between Heihachi Mishima and his son Kazuya Mishima, an epic and exciting battle to the extreme; This outcome left us with a final and decisive confrontation between the victor, Kazuya, and his son; Jin Kazama, the family drama reaches its climax in the best way.

After this extensive prologue, Tekken 8, unlike its predecessor, has a long and large number of game modes; On the one hand, we have the story mode that continues and will try to put an end to the saga, I am not going to spoil anything for you, don’t worry, the truth is that this mode is full of varied emotions everywhere.

We will have battles of all kinds, from with an army to the classic hand-to-hand ones, always focusing on the protagonist “Jin Kazama”, it stands out that although the duration of the story mode is almost the same as Tekken 7 this time they focused much better the plot, without any kind of interventions or guests like “Akuma” from Street Fighter in Tekken 7 added that I think was totally unnecessary in the story of the predecessor game.

Here the family plot was delved much better. Mishima was more direct and blunt, and never lost the thread.

There will be many surprises, which I don’t plan to talk about, but as I said and I reiterate, now everything has absolute coherence.

Speaking of the other modes, playing the demo or the first chapter we find out that the current villain Kazuya Mishima decides to organize a new “Iron Fist” tournament where the combatants will fight so that their country and continent is not erased from the map, this The same premise is reflected in the “Story by character” mode, which is the same as the arcade mode, we can choose between a roster or list of fighters that is immense like never before; It is so big that it seems as if we were playing Tekken Tag Tourtnament 1 or 2 (a game from the Tekken saga that does not have a plot arc or story, it is only arcade or online in the case of Tag Tournament 2 and with the possibility of fighting in groups of two) these games always brought together fighters from all the previous Tekken games, in short the same thing happens with Tekken 8, the list is so large that my jaw dropped, among the fighters the game is super mixed, they range from the most classics like Paul, Nina, Law, Jun Kazama, Raven, some not so veterans like Lars, Leo, or Leroy, and even some totally new ones like Azucena, in total there are thirty-two fighters each with their corresponding story and ending.

In this mode there are five fights in the iron fist tournament per fighter, where in each of them we will find coherence since if we are experts in Tekken we can see that we will face the rivals of each character we play.

Arcade Mission Mode and Tekken Ball Mode:

Does all this seem little to you? Well then we have more for you. In the Arcade mission mode we will have to create an avatar and play in different arcades in the world against other avatars to be the best Tekken 8 player in the world, a mode that lasts more than eight hours, can be played as a single player, and the best We unlock things and rank up every time we win a fight. Tekken Ball mode is a fun mode to play with a friend more than anything, a kind of “killer” or “Dodgeball” game where you can only hit the opponent with a ball.

Online mode, mouthguard and gloves that comes with everything.

The online mode was the one I tried the least, however, what I played I can say that there is a tremendous level, and you need to train a lot at the highest levels against the CPU if we want to achieve something online.

Graphics and optimization:

At Tripton Games we played it on PC and the game was incredibly enjoyable, it has an enviable optimization, we achieved 60 stable FPS with almost everything in Ultra, and in 4k, and with a mid-high range PC, no PC Master race For the moment, however, at Tripton Games and to continue offering you the best,  so nice things are coming.

Conclusion:

Tekken 8 is everything that is good about a game, a clear example of how things should be done in a fighting video game. Make way the king of the iron fist is back.

Note: 10. Masterpiece
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Writing: Joe Tesone

Thanks to Bandai Namco for the copy given that made possible this review.