Now whether it be Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or Tekken, the plot just is not important. No, seriously, while it may be a nice extra for those who are interested, not knowing the plot will have absolutely no impact on how well you play the game, as when it comes down to it the actual fight sequences are purely that, a couple of minutes of fighting each other. Knowing why you’re fighting isn’t going to give you an edge.
With that in mind, the introductory movie for this which explains the plot very basically (showing the initial fight and the apparent death of Heihachi Mishimi) is superbly rendered, showing that despite it’s age in computer terms the Playstation 2, like many PCs which are a few years old but supposedly being outdated, can in fact churn out some amazing technological and graphical feats. Unlike the top of the range modern machines you won’t mistake these guys for reality, but at the same time we have come a long way from the Playstation 1 era of Counter-Strike style polygon formed characters. This introductory movie then segues into a second movie which quite frankly scared the pants off me, and quickly reminded me that this game comes from a Japanese company. The movie is played out as some sort of music video, with a pop band in the background spouting out some energetic Busted style tune about the wonders of life, opening with one of the females of the game biking in the sunlight, and then moving to her in full combat gear, before playing out each and every other character’s real-life vs. combat gear video…all with the same song in the background. Which was frankly bizarre when the muscle bound warrior types appeared on-screen, training with army and ninja warriors, all to the beat of ‘What I Go To School For’ (ok, maybe not that song, but you get the picture now). However this movie incorporates the same excellence in graphics as the introductory movie did and again it was good to see character who weren’t a set of triangles and squares.
The graphics in-game also don’t disappoint, being a great improvement on the first two Tekkens, and something of an improvement on Tekken 3 (I’ve never played 4 so couldn’t tell you how it fares there) but as with most games, it’s not the graphics you want to be judging when you review a game. Unless it’s a real stinker of a game then anything that’s been made since the start of the nineties (and possibly even earlier) will have the kind of graphics that you don’t even think to look twice at (Take the Ultima collection, or any of the early Monkey Island games for an example of this). Suffice it to say, this isn’t a stinker of a game, the characters are smoothly rendered, the backdrops and suitably ‘busy’, and in one scene flames in the background even went as far as providing a heat shimmer to the scene.
The gameplay is what you’re here for and that’s as fun as ever. The moves are far from simplistic and unlike some games of this genre they are also not difficult to actually execute, something which can be a real curse as you’re desperately trying to pull off ‘forward-forward-back-sidestep-jiggle-circle button-triangle button-circle-jiggety jig’ while the computer opponent has successfully pulled off it’s million and one trigger moves in a nanosecond. I’ve seen this happen before and usually involves you falling back on going back and forth using punch and kick and trying desperately to whittle down the opponents health while it’s special moves are taking off 30% of your health each blow, something which ruins a game such as this. So like Tekken 3, 5 uses exactly the same style of movements and involves the same frenetic thumb-breaking speed on the control pad, which thankfully pay off 95% of the time with some kind of impressive move. After a while of desperately jamming the control pad, you suddenly start to spot the patterns and eventually learn how to instinctively pull off certain moves, a method which I simply love as there are something like 20 or more different characters available to fight with in this game and going through a special moves list and trying to memorise each one would be painful. That said this style also isn’t condusive to long gaming sessions, as the amount of speed and effort you have to put in against the computer even on an easy level involves some serious strain on your thumbs, and possible surgery afterwards.
All in all, a superb game. As Maddy put it “mindless violence for the squeemish!”
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