After the success of Tekken Tag Tournament as a PS2 launch game, every fan of the long running fighting series immediately started to look forward to Namco’s next offering. Two years later, after a successful arcade release, Tekken 4 arrived on the home console. And like their previous offerings, Namco’s arcade machines run on hardware that is very similar to the Playstation 2, allowing a nearly perfect translation to the home system. Major improvements to the graphics and arenas are featured in Tekken 4. The character models are detailed and attractive, showing a great deal of improvement over those models featured in Tekken Tag Tournament, with cleaner lines and brighter renderings. The animations of the myriad of fighting moves available are quick and fluid, and the game never stutters even during the most hectic battles. Also impressive in the game are the arenas. Instead of a generic circular arena, as seen in the previous iterations of the game, Tekken 4 features arenas of various shapes and sizes. Some of the arenas, such as the underground “Fight Club” arena are small and claustrophobic, while others are larger with more room to move. The arenas also feature of bit of interactivity, such as columns to destroy, or a hostile crowd that will push you away from the arena edge. To cope with the new arenas, Tekken 4 also adds new wall roll and position change maneuvers. When properly executed, the wall roll allows a character to “bounce” off a wall hit instead of ending up cornered, and the position change allows you to switch with your opponent, turning his corner-trap tactic into your own. However, if your opponent counters the maneuver, you are left vulnerable, which prevents too much blatant abuse of these maneuvers. Unfortunately, beyond the graphics and the slight improvements to the arenas, Tekken 4 makes little progress elsewhere. Even though competing games had multi-level arenas at the time Tekken 4 was released, it has not incorporated that feature. And the basic Tekken fighting system, requiring finger combinations on the controller that can end with your fingers tied in knots, hasn’t changed much. This leads to the biggest disappointment of the package: While Tekken 4 adds a lot to the graphical power of the series, it does little to advance the fighting system. Also added to the game is the new “Tekken Force” mode. This mode plays like the classic “Final Fight,” in which you control a character from the Tekken game through a series of enemies, ending with a boss. The full range of moves are available for each character, and the graphical engine is able to keep up with the many characters that can be present on the screen at once. While this mode sounds good, it is lacking in execution. Most of the Tekken Force mode can be defeated by using only a couple moves against enemies over and over again. And should you fail during a mission, you are required to restart from the start of the mission, forcing a repeat of the repetitive combat again. Overall, fans of the Tekken series will be interested to see how the series has evolved since Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 3. But if you’re looking for anything groundbreaking in a fighting game, there are better places to look that Tekken 4.
To many, Tekken 4 set the changing point for 3D fighting games and the genre itself. The game is distinctive from any other Tekken title in the series because it removed and added so many new gameplay features gamers bot... Read Full Review
Tekken 4 is a average fighting game that pleases fans of the series,but people that have played other fighting games might find this game to be bland,and not worth playing. But putting aside what hardcore gamers think... Read Full Review
