Tekken 8

[OCH]

^ That's the title screen, btw. He is moving the entire time. His left eye (right on the image) also glows red when you push the button. It looks awesome!

 

First Impressions

There is much to do, off the bat. Arcade, Character Episodes and Story, I haven't touched yet. That's because not only is there your standard practice mode. But there is a training mode that gives you some combos to practice for every character via challenges. There is also a avatar-based Arcade Quest that is similar in teaching you the mechanics of the game. Including the interesting new Heat system. Which seems very reminiscent of the Soul Gauge mechanic of SC6). This is where I've been spending most of my time. The newer characters IE Reina, I didn't really get a feel for yet. Old faithful main Bryan Fury has eased me into this entry. I tried Yoshimitsu and remembered some stuff (remember I have recently been playing SC6, with it's own Yoshi). But as Tekken likes to do, they have altered the inputs of some attacks. Which has affected my muscle memory. I aim to give a fair crack at most characters. But I know, due to story mode, I have to pay some attention to Jin. Doing more with him than just the button mashing I did in the demo. Definitely more impressed with this than with MK1, already.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've been playing it and enjoying more than expected. I have generally had great matches, but some absolutely terrible ones connection wise. I'm not sure what the deal is with Tekken but from what I recall it's not as robust rollback wise. Whether that's due to the inherently higher complexity of it versus a game like Street Fighter, wrt how moves can be predicted and rolled back, or something else I don't know. It's certainly a 'you must have ethernet' kinda game, or at least powerline (what I have). In the long run maybe it's best to play this with a regular group than with randoms, whether that's IRL or via a discord/forum. So you can at least make decisions with each other wrt connections

 

I picked Allisa, not cause of anything in particular other than she seems like she could be annoying and I'm motivated to pick annoying characters (i-no, Testament, Bridget in strive, JP and Kim in SF). Long run I might go with someone else though, the old French guy looks cool. Allisa's whole gameplan seems to be her chainsaw stance and unique movement options with her rockets, in general though learning the ways to move and defend in this is taking me a while cause it's fundamentally different to what I'm used to. I've at least started to get some of the BnBs with her down, a sort of overhead where you trip people up with her head and a basic launcher which can wall carry.

 

I've managed to win one match with her so far, against a shitty connection Reina. Hopefully I get better luck on that. On connection quality I mean, I expect to lose lots until the mental stack develops

 

The heat mechanic is one of the fundamentals I've still to really implement. Some basic strings go into it and you rush them down and your attack properties change, but there's such a laundry list of moves and the building blocks aren't so obvious from just a few sessions. You can do flashy things but it's another thing developing the gameplan here

 

No interest in touching the story mode, I might watch a stream of it while doing something else but I'm guessing it's mostly just cutscenes. The arcade quest thing is actually cool though, and they try to teach you the beginner babby fundamentals through it. You've even got a rival who's all like toxic try hard, calling you a fake-ass gamer, it's very meta and funny. I like it better than world tour in SF, which was just shit imo

[retroed]

I bought this on a whim yesterday, loved Tekken 1, 2 and 3 on PS1 but not played one since. In fact the first game I got for my PS1 was Tekken (along with Ridge Racer). Anyway I've just played through the story mode and had a jolly good time with it, and unlocked a ton of customisations and other bits after the credits rolled.

 

I'm not a serious fighting game person at all, but am definitely going to play a lot more and delve into the other modes. I might even give the online a try. 

[AndyKurosaki]

I’m very much looking forward to playing this when I get home from my holiday. Apparently the Platinum trophy is fairly easy, so I’ll definitely have a crack at that. From what I’ve looked at already, it has far more to offer than Mortal Kombat 1 did.

[one-armed dwarf]

Frosty Fausting was last night, the grand final was really good. There's so much going on this game, it's so dynamic with its interactions. Knowing when to sidestep, knowing what moves make a sidestep safer than others. Ducking under moves, just the general movement. The characters are so expressive that when I watch people like this play it makes me want to learn all their characters

 

 

The replay system in this is great cause it will pause a replay and point out where you failed to punish an opponent's attack, then allow you to train that punish and do drills against the particular unsafe attack that they used, and improvise combos off it. Both this and Street Fighter are so ahead of the competition when it comes to teaching players how to play it

 

I got to 'brawler' last night, the green ranks, and the fights have gotten more real. Unlike SF and Strive this does just sort of feel like a game where you really should do the combo homework early on. Because they're relatively easy to execute compared to 2d fighters due to their forgiving input buffering, but also cause the damage is lower here so you should try and capitalise on it. Wanna see if there's some onblock situations which get me some nice easy confirms off a side step, and practice whiff punishing

 

I'll say also this game looks very different in person than on a stream or any of those awful 32 trailers that they did, with all the annoying effects turned up to 11. It doesn't actually look like that in the real game for some reason, they just made it look way more shit in previews but it actually looks great 😕

[one-armed dwarf]

Took a small break from Alisa and tried Kazuya out in some matches. Defense is hard in this game, especially online. There's so many moves and so many ways to deal with it. Like a move which sweeps left, but not right, so you should sidestep right. Duck under this jab, throw out a crouching kick and try to frame trap an impatient masher. Kaz is more technical than Alisa and has just-frame inputs for his uppercut attack (the one that sounds like doorya, one frame window to execute it right), and I'll probably struggle in execution and gameplan with him but I find that also helps me in learning the 101s rather than running around with silly gimmicks, but I'll probably still keep playing Alisa anyway cause she has a funny super and at the end of the day that's what's really important. 

 

I found this spreadsheet on resetera which tells you some basic combos and followups you can do with the cast, it's useful as a starting point I find (the notation is explained on the first sheet)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTsgbCJNSTKajMNlJvQleJOl0eTiEcV-PbeU0obDg1lsSqmz0lTtcD2k6NzfTPt7Db9Ua2dz1o_34Sv/pubhtml#

 

Think this will be my GOTY tbh, unless FFVII actually lives up to hype

 

edit want to mention the AI ghost mode as well. I played against my ghost and 'trained' it to do things right, but also wrong. Kept seeing that my ghost was pushing buttons in disadvantaged situations (which is repeating my own impatience), so I did a repetitive frame trap over and over and it eventually did it back to me, so I blocked and taught it that back

[AndyKurosaki]

That guide looks a great starting point. I shall definitely be making use of that 👍

[AndyKurosaki]

I’m far from a Tekken expert, though I’ve been playing the series since Tekken 2. I’ve fond memories of playing VS with my best mate, him maining King and Jack, me Law and Paul. 
 

Put a few hours into this today. Bloody hell, this is SO good. There’s absolutely loads to do. The tutorials are really helpful. The issue I have with the tutorials in Mortal Kombat, and MK1 was guilty of it, is that they too often devolve into overly complicated combos that my dyspraxic brain can’t remember, much less use them in an actual fight. 
There’s an abundance of modes to choose from, which I’m still getting my head around, and puts the meagre selection in MK1 to shame. 
 

And I love the customisation options. There’s an absolute ton, and I always love putting my own spin on a character. Again, it batters the meagre selection that MK1 has to offer, and in that game, a lot of stuff was either tied into the monthly Konquest mode, or worse, micro transactions. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think you can buy currency in Tekken 8, you earn it by playing the game. Which is exactly how it was, back in the good old days.

 

I’m definitely going for the Platinum trophy, it doesn’t appear too bad (Tekken 7’s wasn’t really difficult). I just won my first online Ranked match as Lee, and had a few rematches against the guy where it went from Win/Loss, which I found fun.

But you know what? Even when I’ve got the Platinum, I can see me still going at this. Unlocking all character endings, customising everyone.

 

This is really, really fun.

[one-armed dwarf]

I've been bouncing between characters in the low ranks, started with Alisa, went to Kazuya and am now trying out Jun. Figure I'll cycle back to Alisa afterwards and figure out her gameplan with the chainsaw pressure. I think what this game does well is present a lot of depth and possibility in its numerous interactions, the way you can duck and weave and punish stuff, or sidestep or whatever, but makes learning a lot of that quite seamless with its excellent replay system which will pause a replay and say when you should crouch and punish a string. It's also fun teaching other players what things are unsafe, a Jun kept doing these slow sweeping kicks to me that are completely unsafe outside of an airborne combo, so I started learning how to low parry them and punish Jun into a combo through the floor with Kazuya into his devil super thingy. Which probably taught that player something, lol

 

But it's also fun to just learn the fundamentals with lots of characters, it's the most fun I've had with that I think. Everything is knowledge checks though, there's certain characters with gimmicks that feel unstoppable without studying them. Jun is one of those characters, so is the coffee lady. As far as forgetting combo strings go, I have a cheat for that lol (says blockstrings but it's a combo. comes from the spreadsheet I shared, some of the notation is Jun specific here with her stance swaps)

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Got Jun to warrior last night, which isn't amazing or anything but still the first time I've hit that rank. They don't start docking you points until you get to warrior tho, so I've been moving pretty slowly cause I've been playing 3 characters while also trying to understand how to defend against the other 29. My last replay before patch deletes them all. A slow, boring match but had to learn some of the interactions with Lee

Spoiler

 

Was happy to hit the super conversion out of a rising combo. Will stick with Jun for a little longer before going back to Alisa to figure out pressure and wall combo situations. But tbh, most of the learning you have to do at this early level is matchups. Character gimmicks are unstoppable if you don't know what they are and there's so many of them. 

 

I don't love the heat crush stuff in this game tbh, heat crush being the powerful armoured move you do when you want to spend all your blue meter. At least with SF6 drive impact you could see the counter play early on even while it was annoying, how it impacts your pressure and neutral approach. You could set up frametraps and do really devious things against other player's DI. Here with the crush system they all seem very safe on block and it feels like a form of MAD between two characters who have their blue stuff ticking down. They seem to track sidestep pretty aggressively too. Jun also has the most powerful and cheap heat crush as it does lots of chip damage, 13 frames startup and heals her. Fucked up, even though I play her

 

Apparently Jun is the strongest character in the game. JunP 💪

[AndyKurosaki]

Finished the Story mode, it was a lot of fun. And in contrast to the anemic Mortal Kombat 1, theres still a ton of stuff to do.

 

Ive just spent ages customising all the characters to the way I want them. How much actual money did that cost me? Not a single penny. 
Beat that, MK1.

[one-armed dwarf]

I've heard the story is kinda nuts but I'm guessing it's all about Jin. Maybe I'll practice my god fists and hell sweeps and get on with it at some point. 

 

I had a really fun match as Jun against a Kazuya last night, which I lost, but I was low parrying (a quick downforward against low hits) the hell sweep quite often and I think it surprised him. Cause I also play Kazuya you can sometimes start to read the other player's flowchart when it's a character that you're familiar with. 

 

This game is so... complete? There's a few things which can be criticised about it, I actually find the customisation options a bit weak tbh. The rollback is not as good as Strive, Granblue or SF. But it does a good enough job in both single player, multiplayer, casual and hardcore content and has such a huge roster with unique, expressive gimmicks that it's hard to think of a recent FG so good out the gate. I hope they continue to improve the AI ghost mode

[retroed]

Yeah, it definitely feels like a complete package here. I've just finished Arcade Quest. I'm playing as Jun who was my favourite player in Tekken 2. I've been listening to the Tekken and Tekken 2 soundtracks in the jukebox too which has hit certain nostalgic parts of me in a very positive way. I've not gone online yet as my Game Pass Ultimate expired last week and I haven't renewed.

 

Great game, goty contender.

[AndyKurosaki]

Got the Platinum after 13 hours. And I’ll still be keeping this on my hard drive, as there’s still lots to do. If that isn’t praise, I don’t know what is. I got rid of MK1 a long time ago. Tekken 8, is a definite keeper.

[one-armed dwarf]

Someone made a macro for 3ddy just to spam 3 (x) over and over and he got to a really high rank

 

Lots of rage quitters

 

https://www.twitch.tv/jimmashima

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/LuckyBlazingBatteryAllenHuhu-IbCu4ytNss99s4Rz?tt_content=url&tt_medium=clips_api

[one-armed dwarf]

This is the next DLC character

 

 

As much as I liked this game I wanna hold off on getting back into it and see if they do something to make heat more interesting to interact with. I'm not a good Tekken player but reading the reddit there's a lot of fatigue with how aggressive the game is. My own scrubby take on heat is it makes matches feel a bit linear as you can't really do anything but block the smash move. 

[OCH]

@Nag