While I usually discuss all of the games that I have played within the past month, the games that I have been playing lately have been large and time-consuming. Thus, for the next few months, Backloggery Beatdown will be dedicated to these gargantuan titles.
Like all of the other games I will be writing about in the near future, Tekken and I have history, all the way back to the original Tekken on the PSX. The only Tekken I have not played was Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Despite TTT2’s popularity, I was never a fan of managing multiple characters and health bars.
The main reason I got into Tekken in the first place is because the series established a tradition of maintaining a character-based stories that actually make sense…in a fighting game. These stories are conveyed through unique CGI endings for each character. This was a tremendous change from the still image and text-based endings in the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat franchises. If I were to dig up my old Electronic Gaming Monthly Video Game Buyer’s Guides, I’m certain that Tekken 2 won awards for best CGI if not also best endings.
Tekken winning awards for best endings would have been warranted. For many years—decades you could even say—Tekken enjoyed the most developed, complex, and quality story of all fighting games, without retcons. The rise, fall, and rise again of the luchadors known as King, the rivalry between the Williams sisters, the goofy friendship between Paul Phoenix and Marshall Law, the Chang women’s Indigenous American heritage, and the Jack series of robots learning humanisms are all fascinating to experience over the years.
Yet the Mishima rivalry has overshadowed all Tekken stories. For a long time, I was fine with this because it was good! Kazuya Mishima entering the King of Iron Fist tournament to get revenge against his father, Heihachi Mishima, who threw him off the cliff of a mountain when he was a child as a test of strength was something of a bildungsroman. Yet we learn in Tekken 2 that Kazuya had made a deal with the devil to grant him the power Heihachi. Improbably, Heihachi defeats a devil-empowered Kazuya in Tekken 2 and dumps him into a volcano this time.
In Tekken 3, we learn that Kazuya somehow manages to put a baby into Jun during the events of Tekken 2—(no explanation can possibly satisfy how this took place), and this son, Jin Kazama, inherits Kazuya’s devil gene. While I an usually hyper critical of plot-based absurdities, I was grateful for Namco resurrecting Kazuya via bioengineering in Tekken 4. I hated playing Jin in Tekken 3. As hard as Namco tried with his design, he simply lacked the “bad boy” coolness factor of Kazuya; Jin comes off as counterfeit by comparison, likely because unlike his father, he tries to fight against the devil gene.
Kaz tries to kill Heihachi. Heihachi tries to kill Jin. Jin seems ambivalent about Kaz. These cycle continues for several iterations of Tekken up to Tekken 7. Here, Blamco double-downs on the devil gene concept, introducing Kazuya’s mother, Kazumi, whose family line supposedly carried the devil gene all along. Yep, Blamco says that all of this is the woman’s fault! And then the game has the nerve to present Heihachi as a hero who had to kill his own evil wife and then toss his son off a cliff for fear of the corruption spreading. THIS IS A MASSIVE RETCON OF THE ENTIRE SERIES!!! The game takes an unapologetic dump on my view as Kazuya paying the price for taking on power to overthrow his evil father; Kazuya is now the evilest of evils who throws Heihachi into a volcano (but we know that’s recoverable, right?).
Remember that I said I hated playing Jin since Tekken 3? Well, the main story in Tekken 8 revolves around playing Jin. And yes, I loathed playing him in Tekken 8 just like I loathed playing him in the Devil Within mode in Tekken 5. Ugh, as much as I looked forward to the story in Tekken 8, I hate it because as one-dimensional as Kazuya is in his conquest for power, Jin is too vapid a character to care about. The game unintentionally highlights his banality during one sequence when Jin and Ling Xiaoyu are walking through the forest, and Ling asks him his childhood dreams. HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY! His entire existence revolves around fighting the Mishima patriarchs.
Again, ugh. I was so bummed by the main story mode in Tekken 8 that I only completed Ling Xiaoyu’s story in addition to Jin’s. It does not help that everyone else’s story is basically a classic arcade mode where each character just fights a random series of characters until the last character who is loosely a story-based tie-in. No Ogre, Jinpachi, or Azazel-style boss. It is too bad that I soured on the story modes in Tekken 8 because the mysteries surrounding Reina and her knowledge of Mishima Style Fighting Karate are intriguing, and I do not want to google her for spoilers.
Ah, screw it:
Wait, so what about this then?
So wait, if Reina is Heihachi’s daughter (and Kazuya’s brother, and Jin’s aunt?!), and she carries the devil gene, then the elements of Tekken 7 make even less sense—a double retcon.
Ugh, good thing competitive Tekken is still reliable since Blamco has trashed the story for good.
Competitively, Tekken 7 was more than a watershed moment for me. It was my first foray into treating a video game seriously enough to travel and compete. That did not last long. To GIT GUD at fighting games means to play a lot of people who are better. They are better because they know more about the game and can show n00bs things they have not seen before. And then those n00bs go to the lab and practice how to beat it—if they want to GIT GUD, that is.
But I did not want to GIT GUD. I just wanted to win. And the cost of wanting to win without actually getting better at the game is losing. A lot. And those losses bore their costs in ways that I regret to this day. I was going to be exceedingly transparent here, but I am afraid that might come back to bring me further harm. So I will be vague. There exists a photo circulating on the internet of my basement after I raged during a Tekken session. That same day, I also got into a car accident. The photo has been altered, replacing my IRL likeness which was my avatar on a popular gaming forum with my past Discord PFP. My…episode…got me banned from several sites and more or less killed what little internet rep I had.
I continued to grind at Tekken 7, eventually achieving as high as “Tekken King” rank as a Ling Xiaoyu main. After several years and seasons of patches, I hit that skill wall. Then I quit. After 999 hours of gameplay, I walked away for years. I have not even launched the game since May 2022.
Looking back, as attached as I was to winning, to being better than others, it is crazy to me that I was able to drop the game just like that. Overtuned DLC characters like Fakumram and Kunimitsu certainly helped expedite my exodus. I say broken because those characters are very anti-Ling with the former’s superior range and the latter’s excessive backdashing. Chasing and wiffing is not fun; in fact, running from your opponent to generate wiffs that can be punished is considered “good Tekken” gameplay. For someone like me who is constantly chasing, that defensive style is frustrating and unfun to play, let alone boring to watch. That is why I enjoyed following players like EyeMusician and Pinya because they play non-standard characters like Yoshimitsu and Master Raven. I loved when Dimeback was playing Asuka because he played “party” style, with high risk for high reward on Asuka. Yet most of the time, the same or similar character types always appeared in the top 8: Kunimitsu, Akuma, Geese, Feng, Bryan, Jin, and Paul. Toward the end of the game’s run, Arslan Ash and Knee would even run guest characters Noctis (FFXV) or Negan (The Walking Dead), respectively. Meanwhile, Ling remained power crept.
The graphical upgrade between Tekken 7 and Tekken 8 is insane!
I very much looked forward to Tekken 8. While I enjoyed watching pro matches, the same or similar character types always appeared in the top 8: Kunimitsu, Akuma, Geese, Feng, Bryan, Jin, Paul, and even Negan from The Walking Dead. At the time that I am writing this, the top 6 at EVO Japan 2024 are Dragunov, Nina, Alisa, Lili, and Law mains; with the exception of Dragunov, this kind of character diversity is a welcome change of pace.
Remember how frustrating it was to play vs Zafina or Kunimitsu in the later seasons of Tekken 7 because they would backdash through the end of time, and you wiff trying to catch them and die?
Remember watching the pros just dash blocking and backdashing for 10-15 seconds in a match, and you hear the commentators say, “These players really respect each other,” as you nod off?
Remember when watching Knee or Arslan Ash would play entire rounds just poking each other? Some players winning by time over because of how overly defensive Tekken 7 is by design?
WELL NO MORE!
By design, if you don’t press buttons in Tekken 8, you will die. Its core new feature, HEAT, incentivizes button mashing by granting characters additional plus frames to moves on block for pressure. HEAT also unlocks big damage special moves similar to Tekken 7’s rage drives, except that one can activate HEAT at any time during a round and not only when health is at critical—the HEAT smash attack. HEAT can be activated in two ways: the HEAT burst, an armored attack that can be animation canceled to protect players from wiffing; or HEAT engagers, moves often used as (wiff) punishes that transition via a cinematic dashing animation into HEAT, leaving the…engager…at plus frames.
I must add that all attacks that leave the aggressor at plus on block do chip damage. This is a huge change, rewarding aggression and punishing those redicent to press anything. Doing damage to an opponent, especially with a HEAT engager, restores health missing from chip damage. Doing damage in general, especially via combos, also restores health. Did I mention that Tekken 8 encourages players to press buttons yet?
I love this Tekken because as defensive as Tekken 7 was, Tekken 8 leans hard into offense. Side steps were buffed for better positioning, but backdashing was nerfed; you can’t side-step throws; you can even land “CH throws” that are hard to break or PUNISH with throws! In high-level Tekken 7, throws were rarely used because everyone would just break them. Now, even pros are eating basic 1-break throws because of the motherload of offensive options aggressors have. Mental stack overload!
Reiterating the fact that I am a Ling Xiaoyu main, I love the design of Tekken 8. As I have stated, Tekken 7 was frustrating, because Ling is traditionally an evasive and therefore defensive-oriented character; opponents could backdash to the future and “just block bro,” eating her low-damage pokes and baiting for a wiff, a low parry, a high to duck, or a desperately heaved unsafe move to block for a punish. Ling’s notoriously short range rendered her susceptible to wiffing, and her low damage made her unsuitable for trading toe-to-toe.
Fortunately, Ling is an absolute BEAST in Tekken 8. Word on the internet streets is that she’s considered a top-10 character (before nerfs, which I believe were minimal). Key to her strength how much Ling benefits from HEAT, which powers up her hypnotist (HYP) stance. Ling “charges” HYP+1 (safe mid heat engager) and HYP+3 (low) with every stem she takes. HYP+3 is particularly nasty; with two steps, it’s a knockdown (KND) and can be followed up with 3+4 or u/b+4 okizeme (oki); with three steps, HYP+3 is a launcher. When powered by HEAT, HYP+3 automatically gets the properties of two-step HYP; with step, HEAT HYP+3 launches! With HYP being that strong during HEAT, all of Ling’s HYP transitions (AOP 1, b; 1, d+2 b, ff+4, f+2, 1 b, for examples) benefit prodigiously. Because nobody wants to get hit from any version of HYP+3, especially during HEAT, HYP+1 becomes that much better of 50/50 mixup option.
HEAT also unlocks f+2+1+2, which she can do instead of f+2+1,+3,, which is a high. The 2 at the end of the HEAT version of this string is basically u/f+1+2 with plus frames and tracking. She also has the option of ending this string in neutral or RDS; if in neutral, the plus frames allows her to chain the string for chip damage; if in RDS, she can atttempt a HEAT smash that leaves her at around +9 and in HYP, but without HEAT. Still, the previous paragraph outlines how strong Ling’s HYP is.
u/b+3 is Ling’s new long-range giga launcher for wiff punishing. Her standing 3 is one of her best moves, a i14 high launcher that is only -10 on block, used as a wiff punish. But the damage from its combo route was always unsatisfying. u/b+3 corrects the “problem” of a small reward for wiff punishing.
CH AOP+1+2 now launches again. She had this during Tekken 7 S1, and it was changed from a CH launcher to a wonky wall bounce on hit. No Ling player liked this change, and we are all happy to benefit greatly from people who try to challenge us in AOP. AOP+1+2 is fundamental to Ling who struggles getting close. It is -1 on block, so Ling can try for m4 for 3+4 or u/b+4 oki (magic 4 is nerfed from Tekken 7…used to be a CH launcher. Sadage.), or ssr AOP in case her opponent tries to steal their turn back.
f+4 no longer launches on hit, but Ling gets her b+4, 1 heat engager as a follow-up on hit, so it is somewhat of a fair exchange.
RDS d+4, while seeable, was still one of my favorite moves in T7, because most people are trying to backdash, and this is a long-range low. It now launches on clean hit, not just C, so it has been improved! RDS+1+2, 1+2 or RDS 1+2, 4 heat engager are hit-confirmable and great mix-ups for RDS d+4 to keep ’em honest.
Lastly, my favorite change is Ling’s f+3+4 throw. Her classic “So Shoe Me,” which could be both broken and teched to prevent the RDS 4 is now a parry from RDS where the enemy is always grounded f+3+4 is now Wang’s old Waning Moon, which is a full launching throw. Ling’s throw game is now complete! From RDS, any RDS f+throw combination is a guess. Of course I’m gonna f+3+4 for the combo, lol!!!
As I was composing this, Blamco released a stealth patch that changed how ranked works. Players are paired based upon their Tekken Prowess, which was not well-received, because players who are running multiple characters will have higher prowess than those who are still running singles, like me. Playing vs someone who is multiple ranked tiers higher is not fun. I remain unaffected, though, and enjoy ranked for the most part. People tend to one-and-done me as a Ling player, but that’s fine, because I one-and-done DJin, Reina, and gimmicky Victors, lol.
See ya online!
Blerd Beats 