Tekken 8 Hands-on - Maybe Craziest and Most Aggressive Brawler Ever!

Okay, so what's Tekken 8 actually like? So listen up, Tekken 8 at the moment seems incredibly stupid and crazy, but in an absurdly funny and cool way. Everything here turns out to be totally exaggerated, and the whole thing doesn't so much promote an aggressive style of play, as it simply forces a wild, primal aggression against the rival. Is that good? I don't know, but it brings a lot of joy, laughter and doesn't even let catch a breath for a second.

Balance? What balance, dude, everything here is OVERPOWER. The well-known power crushes from Tekken 7 are from now on intensified by the damage taken "on your chin." Kazuya, with a simple command "F+2" (forward and right fist), can deplete over 50% of enemy’s HP with a single hit, as long as he receives a lot of damage in a prior attack. Walking on the arenas? Forget it, or stick to side steps. Backdashes have been significantly nerfed, and their role is now secondary. The fighters are magnetically attached to each other. See a guy in front of you? You're going at him full tilt and hitting him with literally everything you’ve got. You plough through the enemy like a wild boar through mud, searching for acorns. You explode like a bomb and deal nuclear damage, because almost everything can kill you before you even have a chance to blink and react. This is a game where you don't know who wins till the last second – one stupid action out of the blue and the scales of the battle are tipped upside down.

Don't think, just keep pushing

The pace is insane, and subsequent rounds pass by in a blink of an eye. Damage and combo length? Absurd, even by the series' standards. All it takes is to open the opponent up once and you can engage the “elbow-knee-dude’s asleep” protocol. Don't feel like looking for an opening? Just activate the new Heat system. In this mode, you deal damage even through the guard, which can expressly deplete the life bar of the opponent. For example, Jun in Heat has a safe attack with a Wall Splat effect, which even when blocked deals about 15% HP damage with one blow! Tekken 8 is not a fighting game, it is a terrifying horror. Especially when they toss your character across the entire arena. It’s horror in purest form.

But let's talk about them mechanics. The biggest novelty is the Heat system, which you activate manually or by using a specific attack. What exactly does it change besides introducing chip damage to the defending opponent? It sets off fireworks that sometimes make it difficult to read the condition of the character (this will be toned down in the full version). However, it's giving you new options as well. The characters receive additional mixups, some of the blows gain modified properties or can transition to another attack. Long story short – your fighter temporarily becomes more dangerous and more unpredictable. This is one of the main mechanics, and using it's not only incredibly fun, but also tremendously flashy.

In the Heat mode, we’re burning through a special bar that symbolizes the enhanced state of our hero. We gradually use up the new resource by using stronger attacks. You can also waste everything on a single powerful blow, and this actually works perfectly in a form of mechanism turning a juggle into a longer combo. Hitting a guy who knows how to optimally use this is like a head-on collision with a speeding road train. Of course, Heat works the other way around, and exploiting the system to take off 60% HP in a single juggle gave me addictive satisfaction during the beta.

Balance? What balance? POWERR!

All this looks great on paper. It's really exciting and interesting from a mechanical point of view, because it causes the intensity of the fights and adrenaline reach its apex – and after all, we're talking, about Tekken, which has never complained about a lack of intensity (except perhaps for the controversial Tekken 4). But in terms of balance, this system is simply overdone and almost comically exaggerated.

Heat is available from the start of each round. So every time, you can immediately fire up and punch your opponent with a powerful blow in the face to start the day off nicely. The damage received on the block is far too high. Combining all of this with the current Rage system and walls on the levels gives crazy effects at times. Something resembling the deepest corners of nightmares created by the mind of H.P. Lovecraft. Because you should know that the game has been made so easy that you can perform a combination that lasts up to a dozen (!) seconds without much effort – yes, it's as silly as it sounds. Here, scenarios that in the previous installments would've been totally situational or impossible to implement in a regular online game, are quite common.

How to say goodbye to Tekken 7 properly!

I love Tekken 7, but it's a tough love, full of ups and downs. Indeed, I’ve spent a total of 1400 hours with it – I never achieved such a result in any other game. Systemically, it's a great, although low-budget brawler that suffered through the "spaghetti code" syndrome that still remembers the architecture of arcade machines. This means that there were several things that simply couldn't be bypassed from a technical perspective, even despite the ultimate service nature and numerous changes introduced in subsequent seasons and through updates. This game was full of problems that I have been fed up with for years.

Tekken 7 immediately became graphically outdated (as it had been stuck on arcades for years), suffered from incredibly long loading screens, on which I probably spent a total of several hours, and relied on poor network infrastructure. Luckily, all of that is now gone. For comparison: Tekken 8 finally looks expensive and in terms of presentation it cannot be accused of being an ostensibly low-budget game. The graphics are simply stunning, and the character models impressed me with great attention to the smallest details. And visually, it's just a firecracker! Even such little things as unique intros and interactions between certain characters show the bigger budget – you may laugh, but in T7 they skimped even on that.

The hated loading screens have practically disappeared, network code momentarily synchronizes us with the opponent, and we smoothly move to the fight. Choosing the rematch option happens in the blink of an eye, and we can fully focus on the fun and fight all the time – without the annoying waiting for the game to load anything in the background. For a person who spends so much time with this series, it's an incredible game-changer and an unbelievable improvement in the quality of life here. It's hard for me to illustrate how happy I feel about harnessing the potential of SSDs by this game.

Harada, make up your mind about the internet

It's time to talk about the most important issue. CNT's beta-testing was meant to try out Tekken 8’s network infrastructure in a closed and controlled environment – everything else is just a temporary scaffolding and mere gameplay concepts. So most of what I've described above will probably be untrue to some extent on release day (or even at the next beta).

As for online gameplay, on the other hand, we live in times where brawler developers can't afford to screw up – a potential failure in this aspect is basically death sentence for their product. The situation of Tekken 8 seems somewhat complicated.

In the settings, I found two options regarding the implementation of rollback – I stuck to the one where the priority was responsiveness and lower input lag. However, those interested in the topic need to know that Katsuhiro Harada (the game's director) is not entirely transparent about the use of rollbacks in Tekken. As a point of clarification (and a giant simplification), I'll just add that rollback is a technology that relies on predicting and simulating player data when it hasn't yet reached the network code. In brawlers, this provides a smoother experience, because unlike standard delay-based netcode methods, the game doesn't have to stop and jitter to sync between players.

And indeed, playing through a cable didn't cause any problems, and the experience was really good. The comfort of network competition seemed noticeably better than what Tekken 7 got me used to. In such a configuration, I didn't encounter any fight that would suffer from lags. Dissonance appears, however, when we fight against someone using a Wi-Fi connection. At that time, madness can occur. During a whole day of testing, I met two players for whom Tekken 8 turned into a stop-motion animation. To the point where it shouldn't happen at all with the alleged use of rollbacks. So it's possible that the developers have created some kind of hybrid solution. Bottom line: as things stand now, don’t play this game through Wi-Fi; cable’s the only option.

King of fist, but is it made of iron?

A good beat 'em up game that brings joy doesn't necessarily have to be balanced and Tekken 8 currently has the potential to become the coolest installment of the series in terms of couch fun with friends who aren't necessarily good at playing games of this genre, and maybe even don’t generally play them. Especially since you can change the control scheme and perform simple juggles with a single button.

For the time being, Tekken 8 is the riskiest and most experimental part of the series since 2001 and the release of the infamous Tekken 4. I like that the feelings from the gameplay are distinctly different and I can't wait for the next opportunity to compete with people. In terms of balance, a lot will definitely change. In fact, Katsuhiro Harada has already confirmed this, noting that the team is aware of too much damage while on the block and that some combinations are too long.

What Tekken 8 will eventually be like, the developers themselves don't know, yet already, despite all the nitty-gritty, it's just great fun to play it. I was having a hard time breaking away from the controller. While playing the beta I was able to spend an entire day with it, almost immediately becoming addicted to "one more fight.” I'm almost certain that this will be another great success for the entire fighting genre, although at the moment the game still requires a lot of work and, above all, further testing.