review

Tekken 5

Review By: Kelly Matney

Version: US

Company: Namco

Rated: PG-13 (Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence)  

System: PS-2

Players: 1-2

SHORT VIEW

In the wake of his explosive battle with Devil Jin at the end of the King of Iron Fist Tournament 4, Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima are attacked by a horde of Jack-4’s. For a moment they work together to hold them off, but soon Kazuya’s true nature shine through. He betrays his father and Honmaru, the center of power of the Mishima Zaibatsu.

Heihachi is overpowered, and the Jack-4’s self destruct in a maelstrom of fire and destruction. In the distance, a mysterious figure is watching, and he speaks the following words into his radio: “Heihachi Mishima is dead.”

Yet as it lies in ruins, a mysterious figure rises from the fire and ashes of Honmaru.

THE LONG VIEW

THE HOOK:  Fight fans, the wait is over. The drought of good fighting games has ended now that Tekken 5 is here. Sure there was the shallow but fun Dragonball Z Budokai 3, and the disappointing Mortal Kombat: Deception, but not since Soul Caliber 2 was released a year and a half ago has there been a fighting game worthy of devoting large chunks of your life to. Of course the fact that this is by and far the best Tekken ever doesn’t hurt either.

HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS: Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the latest game to claim the title “Best looking game on PS2.” This claim is not without merit either. With support for 16:9 Widescreen and Progressive scan, this game looks more like the latest game off a PC than one running on a 5 year old console.

The characters all look fantastic: they move and behave like real people, and there shadows move with them like a real person’s would. The detail in the various levels is even more impressive. In the Polar Paradise level you have dozens of penguins running around in the background, and they look and act like real penguins. You also see the character’s breath in the air, and when you knock a character down the ice under them cracks. To think this is all just in one level. From a burning temple to a space station, this game has plenty of unique, highly detailed levels form which to choose. Of course you might think all this would lead to huge load times, but you’d be dead wrong: the load times in this game are practically non existent.

The controls should feel quite natural to any who have played Tekken in the past, and for those of you new to the series you can expect a learning curve of about half an hour to an hour. Of course, this isn’t you standard button masher. There are a few characters that will play well enough if all you want to do is mash buttons, but if you really want to progress you need to master the finer points of the combat system. You have your two punch buttons, and your two kick buttons, but no guard button. In long standing Tekken tradition, the key to blocking here is to not press any buttons or direction keys, save for maybe down if you want to guard low. It takes some getting use to, but you’ll get the hang of it quick enough.

HOW IT SOUNDS: As with the other aspects of this game, the sound is top notch. Tekken 5 has some of the best music I’ve heard in a game ever. Including rock, nu-metal, techno, and other various beats, this game has some fine tracks to listen to while beating your friend to a bloody pulp. The opening song is awesome as well.

One of the real highlights of this game is the voice acting. Tekken 5 takes it a step above the rest by having each character speak there own native language. You’ll see Jin speaking Japanese, Hwoarang speaking Korean, Xiaoyu speaking Chinese, and Mokijin speaking whatever it is wooden practice dummies speak. Still, there are a few oddities, like Law and Lei speaking flawless English without any hint of accent, but these can be over looked due to the fact that all the voice acting is top notch.

EXTRAS: Seems like a lot of fighting games these days are throwing in tons of extras, and Tekken 5 isn’t about to break the trend. Taking a page out of Virtua Fighter 4’s book, Tekken 5 allows you to earn money to buy accessories to customize your characters with. Things like hats, glasses, different colors for clothing, and other things of this nature allow you to make each character unique. There’s also at least one additional outfit for all characters.

The extras don’t stop there though. Namco has also included a side game called Devil Within, starring Jin Kazama. It’s basically a simple 3d platformer/action game, where you, as Jin, run around painfully linear levels beating up wave after wave of generic bad guys. It’s not the most enjoyable game out there, but it does have its benefits. By beating it you’ll unlock Devil Jin as well as receive a large amount of cash to spend on accessories, and if you feel like playing through a second time you can find some of the more expensive accessories lying around for you to pick up.

In a completely awesome and totally unnecessary but greatly appreciated move, the guys at Namco decided to put the original arcade versions of Tekken’s 1-3 on the disc. They can be found in the Arcade History section of the main menu. Namco also threw in an old arcade space shooter of those called Starblade. You get a chance to play when the game boots up, before the opening cinema, but you can also unlock it in Arcade History mode.

CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE: Tekken 5 easily boasts some of the best cinema’s in any game, especially a fighting game. The opening cinema is great, and all the characters have a CG ending in story mode, some of which are quite funny.

BEST PLAYER: There’s many ways to think about choosing a best character for this game. If you’re new to the game and want a character that’s easy to pick up and win with try Christie or Law. For those looking to master a top tier character go for to Nina, Bryan, and Steve. As for me personally, I use Jin as my main character, and Asuka as my second, and there both good mid level fighters.

CHEAT CODE YOU NEED: Unlock 'Starblade' in 'Arcade History' mode

Beat Story Mode with every character (including Eddy Gordo, Christie Monteiro's extra costume) to unlock 'Starblade' as a selectable game in Tekken 5's 'Arcade History' mode. It appears farthest right (after Tekken 3).

CHEAT CODE YOU WANT: A code for infinite money would be nice, cause most of those accessories are damn expensive.

OH MAN! MOMENT: The moment you realize just how badly you were beaten by Jinpachi your first time fighting him.

GLITCH ITCH: I’ve yet to notice any glitches in the game, though I’ve heard of people talking about random freezing of the game, but nothing consistent.

FAN SERVICE: Tekken 5 doesn’t disappoint in this department. There are plenty of bouncy girls in revealing clothing, and buff guys with and without shirts.

There are plenty of references to past Tekken games. Heck, the first 3 are even included on the disc.  

THE 2 VIEW

I must confess, I’ve had some difficulty in writing this review. I can’t seem to break away from Tekken 5 long enough to write anything. It’s just that great of a game. Come to think of it I haven’t had this much fun with a fighting game since Super Smash Brothers Melee, and that was like 4 years ago.

When you load this game up the first thing that pops up is Starblade, the old arcade space shooter from Namco. It’s pretty much a straight forward rail shooter, and you only get about 30 seconds to play it, or you can skip straight to the opening cinema. The opening cinema is an expanded version of the original E3 trailer for Tekken 5, and it looks a lot better than it did then. The song that plays during the second part of it is just great, and fits the theme nicely.

When you come to the main menu you’ll find several choices to choose from right from the get go. At the top is Story Battle. This is where you go to unlock more characters and those great CG endings I mention before. You choose your character of choice and battle through 8 opponents, one or two of which are deemed Story Battles, on your way to the boss. The boss for Tekken 5 is Jinpachi Mishima, the father of long time Tekken bad guy, Heihachi Mishima, and he’s one cheap old fart. Prepare to get your ass handed to you a few times when you first fight him, but once you get the hang of his fighting style he’ll be easier to beat.

Next up is Arcade Battle mode. In this mode you’re able to take your character of choice and level them up by beating AI opponents of various ranks. The higher the rank of an opponent the tougher they’ll be to beat. While on the topic of characters, Tekken 5 introduces 3 new characters to the Tekkenverse. First up is the lovely young Asuka Kazama. If you remember Jun Kazama from Tekken 2 and Tekken Tag then you’ll have an idea of how Asuka plays. There fighting styles are basically the same, though there are a few differences. Then there’s the Blade wannabe, the kick ass ninja known only as Raven. You see him in the opening cinema watching Heihachi’s death and then slicing up a Jack-4 with relative ease. The last of the new characters is Chinese martial arts master Feng Wei. His goal in entering the King of Iron Fist Tournament 5 is to become the strongest martial artist in the world, and he has the skill to accomplish this goal.

The other thing about Arcade mode worth noting is this is the primary means of earning money. You’ll get a small amount, usually around $1000, but sometimes much higher, depending on the rank of the character you defeated. Occasionally after winning a bout you’ll be lucky enough to have a Roulette pop up giving you the opportunity to multiply your winnings by anywhere from 2x to 10x. You also get some money in story mode; each character you complete story mode for will net you $100,000. Beating Devil Within will get you $1,000,000, but no matter how much you get it’ll probably go quickly because the accessories are very expensive.

There’s a Time Attack mode that plays out like story mode, only there’s no story battles, and you get a pittance of $25 gold for each opponent defeated. The standard fighting game Survival mode is also included. You start at $100 gold for the first win, and go up by $100 for each win up to $500 in this mode.

There’s your standard VS mode, where you and an opponent duke it out. You can both use customized characters here, but they must be loaded from separate memory cards. There’s also a Team Battle mode. Here you choose a team of up to 8 characters and battle till the death against either the computer or your friends own team of characters. After each battle the winner regains a small amount of health, while the loser moves on to there next character. Battle continues until one team is completely defeated.

A Practice mode is also included. Here you can perfect your fighting style against an AI dummy that can be set to react various ways. You can also look at your characters move list and see any move you want demonstrated by the computer.

Tekken 5 includes the bonus 3d action/platformer Devil Within. I’ve talked about it before, but to recap it’s a linear beat-em-up staring Jin Kazama as he fights wave after wave of generic bad guys, with a boss at the end of a level. The bad guys will get tougher as time goes on, but nothing to hard ever comes up. Jin can transform into Devil Jin when he fills up an energy bar. In this form his attacks are a bit stronger, and he can shoot a beam attack. The catch is this mode slowly drains his health, and aside from maybe the first boss, there’s never really a challenge that requires the use of this power up. Complete Devil Within mode to get $1,000,000 gold and to unlock Devil Jin as a playable character once all other characters are unlocked. All in all though this mode is nothing more than a boring diversion from the main game.

For those of you looking for some old school, PS1 Tekken action, look no further than Arcade History mode. Available from the first time you load the game, in here you’ll find direct Arcade ports of Tekken’s 1-3. This means no pausing during the matches, and none of the characters from the console versions of these games are present. You can access a menu to adjust the game settings by holding down the select button. Still, the inclusion of these games is more than anyone could have asked from Namco, and it’s greatly appreciated. You’ll also find Starblade in Arcade History mode after you’ve unlocked it.

There’s a Theater mode that becomes available after you beat story mode for the first time with any character. Here you can view the Prologue and Epilogue including CG ending for each character that you’ve beaten story mode with. Also included are the opening movies for the console and arcade versions of Tekken 5, as well as the original E3 2004 trailer for the game, and some promotional films for the game in both Japanese and English. You can also listen to the games sound track in theater mode.

One of the most amusing parts of this game is the Customization system. With the money you’ve earned in the other mode you can come to the Customize menu and purchase accessories for your characters. These include things like hats, necklaces, backpacks, new hairstyles, and other things. It also includes changing the colors of your characters costumes. You can also buy each character at least one new costume, for the hefty price of $500,000. In fact, most of the accessories will set you back a good amount of cash, so be prepared to spend a lot of time in Arcade mode earning the cash for that one accessory you want real bad.

After that there’s an option menu where you can adjust the games settings. You can adjust the round time, number of rounds, level of the AI, as well as change the video settings, the audio settings, and the controller configuration. The records for the various game modes can also be viewed in here.

The one thing this game lacks is online play. While the idea of getting beaten by people the world over is appealing, this game doesn’t suffer by not having it. It’s still far and away an excellent game, and if including online play would have meant sacrifices would have to have been made elsewhere in the game then I’m glad it’s not in there. Truth be told, online play on consoles is still in its infancy. It’s more of a novelty then an expected feature, especially on the PS2.

The Tekken series has always stood at the top of the fighting game world; there some of the most balanced, unique, fighting games with a great cast of memorable characters. Tekken 5 brings the series to the next level by going above and beyond the expectations of its fans. The only reason you shouldn’t buy this game is if you just don’t like fighting games. Otherwise it’s more than worth the price.  

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