Preview: Tekken 8: the best defense is attack

If you are even remotely familiar with the time-honoured formula, tekken 8 won’t surprise you. In a 3D arena, our four main buttons control fists and feet, and the pause menu scrolls through lists of long commands like the penal code to print out or memorize by heart. Suffice to say that, if the grip at the most basic level is simple as pie, playing in the big leagues is a delicate exercise that requires training, patience and composure. This closed beta was clearly aimed at the old-timers. If a meager tutorial offers to teach us the basics, it remains very insufficient: any beginner who thought he would discover the franchise over the CNT has been misguided, everything here is thought out for typing enthusiasts who wear their knuckles out of the Electric Wind God Fist the chain.

Forged in the flames of online

And since this Closed Network Test is dedicated to evaluating the netcode, you can only play in a ranked match, although you can train between each fight. So I who was used to tekken late night, the one who rounds up friends in a happy brothel, I quickly ate my teeth. I was far from realizing that I would rub shoulders mainly with fierce people who were there to grind classification. Beta or no beta, they don’t want to know. The important thing is to climb. To make matters worse, my hand Steve is currently absent from the cast, and I had to learn Bryan and Lars on the job. My naïve enthusiasm therefore quickly turned into cautious excitement… the logical consequence of my solid string of defeats (I refuse to give the exact figure, I have a dignity).

tekken 8 nevertheless remains a game of very fine craftsmanship, with stunning arenas and particularly well-modeled characters, even when they are buried under a rain of particles (a knob to lower for the final version). The texture of the skin and the curvature of the muscles, in particular, mark the distance with Tekken 7 (already far from ugly). Same care on the audio side with a selection of brutal electronic pieces that make you want to tear off your t-shirt to play it fight club. In terms of pure gameplay, the controls are responsive, and the few updates to veteran movement are welcome. Bryan, for example, can trigger a buff named Snake Eyes after certain attacks to temporarily boost his punches. A cloud of gunpowder temporarily coats his forearms to mark this state of strength.

But, it must be underlined a second time, the visual effect of this buff got lost in the anthology of light effects that seems to justify the presence of tekken 8 on next-gen consoles. The fault, in part, to the new Heat mode, which we can activate whenever we want. Heat mode makes us stronger overall: boosted dash, damage in guard (chip damage for friends), improved moves, but also access to Heat Smash, a unique special move replacing the Rage Drive of the previous game. It is, concretely, a powerful tool to finish combos without spraining, triggering a big animation which inflicts a package of damage. Not to be confused with Rage Arts, special moves that can only be used when our life bar is close to death, and whose staging is always more spectacular.