I was at Bandai Namco’s office in Irvine, California for two days last week, and much of that time was spent playing Tekken 8, talking to Michael Murray about Tekken 8, and playing Tekken 8 while talking to Michael Murray about Tekken 8. We were throwing down in an early version of the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test that folks can get their hands on from October 20th to 23rd. That dialogue exchange between Lili and Azucena is just one of many examples of the defining quality that seems to run through Tekken 8: attention to detail.There are a lot of beautiful fighting games these days, but the Unreal Engine 5-powered Tekken 8 might be the prettiest of them all.The first place you’ll notice this is the graphics. There are a lot of beautiful fighting games these days, but the Unreal Engine 5-powered Tekken 8 might be the prettiest of them all. You’ll notice the attention to detail in everything, from the way the environments break when characters smash into them, to how some stages move from day to night between rounds. The Urban Square stage looks like you could stumble across it while wandering around Midtown Manhattan.And then, of course, there’s the way the characters get dirty and beat up as they get hit and knocked down. After one match, Nina’s wedding dress, one of the four costumes that she (and every other character) brings to the CBT, had gotten wet and dirty as we played.Speaking of characters, there are 19 of them in the CBT. Sixteen - Jin, Kazuya, Jun, Paul, Law, King, Lars, Xiaoyu, Jack-8, Nina, Asuka, Leeroy, Hwoarang, Lili, Bryan, and Claudio - return from the Closed Network Test. They’re joined by three new faces: Feng Wei and Raven, who return from Tekken 7 and Tekken 6, respectively, and Acuzena Milagros Ortiz Castillo, who is new for Tekken 8.Every character in Tekken 8 feels great, and things have changed a little bit since the CNT. I played every character, but I naturally gravitated back to Leeroy, who was my main the first time around, but I also got more comfortable with Jun and Jin, played around with Asuka, and even made some strides with King.What really makes Special Style, well… special is that you can switch it on and off at will.
“Part of my improvement was familiarity, but part of it was also Special Style, which assigns most of a character’s moveset to one of the four face buttons. Special Style was in the CNT, but the version here feels much better. Multiple moves are now assigned to square (which performs a character’s signature moves) and circle (which is used for lows and throws) courtesy of pressing the button you want and either down, right, or left. That means a lot more moves for each character; since cross gives you access to your Power Crush and triangle gets you a launcher and a follow-up combo if you continue to press that button, you can essentially play entire matches in Special Style if you want to.
What really makes Special Style, well… special is that you can switch it on and off at will. That means veteran players can get something out of it, too. I often found myself playing normally in neutral situations, and then switching to Special Style to do combos or punish when I needed a big hit. And it worked.
After you launch your opponent with triangle, you can do three different combos: your standard combo, which is done by repeatedly pressing triangle; a combo with more wall carry, where you’ll press square, or a combo with circle, which gives you a more advantageous knockdown. And you can also add delays to the combo to make custom routes. Kazuya, for instance, can delay his triangle combo to add more Electric Wind God Fists… a combo you can do normally, too.
