Tekken 5
Ten years later, we're all still buying the same game.
Published: March 15, 2005
The two added gameplay bits are hardly revolutionary and feel quite a bit more tacked on than I would have liked. Like previous home translations of the arcade brawlers, Tekken 5 offers a stand-alone mode called "Devil Within" that is supposed to help explain a bit of Jin's past and the devil gene that now lives inside him and is stuggling to get out. It's a woefully bland beat-em-up with look-alike corridors and endless switch-hitting and backtracking. Tekken Force Mode is it not.
In a nod to Virtua Fighter 4, Namco also opted to include a Kumite-like endless battle mode where you can pick a normal game character, name 'em, and then send them into the ring with increasingly powerful randomly-generated fighters in order to earn cash for new accessories. It's fun for a while, and perhaps even a little addictive, but so was Kumite, and VF4 hit almost three years ago.
All of the little extras could have been tossed aside, though, if only Namco had managed to get a working online mode into the game. Vapid mini-games and Barbie dress-up modes are nice as a distraction, but they can't take away from the fact that all the tweaking and advancements to the familiar gameplay could have been bolstered to a great degree by just letting really good players duke it out without having to hit the circuit, and would have been even more of a boon for those of us who love to wallow in our own nostalgia, thinking we could actually hold a candle to the pros.
Even with the general lack of changes and the missing online mode, it's still impossible to deny that Namco is uniquely in touch with what the PS2 can do. In the same way that Konami pushed the limits of the half-decade old hardware to accomplish near pre-rendered-looking visuals and real-time Dolby Digital, Namco seems hell-bent on making that tech demo of Jin fighting in neon-lit streets from the pre-launch hype machine look like a visual turd.
This game is gorgeous, and supports 480p progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen, but more importantly looks better than just about any PS2 game in your library. Period. The texture resolution isn't just fine, it's varied and used with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, painting far-off backgrounds with a lush, verdant display of detail while keeping the close-up objects rife with effects-heavy panache. The articulation in characters means facial expressions are possible, individual fingers are clearly visible and tuck, curl, flatten and stiffen with moves and cloth and hair physics flow quite nicely in ideal situations (in poor examples, things can seem stuttered and odd, but still somehow impressive).
And then there's the CG. Sweet. Effing. HEYALL does this game have amazing CG, and I think it's not a stretch to say that Namco has managed to single-handedly claim the crown for the most impressive pre-rendered cinemas in the history of games. Not that I'm taking away anything from Square's work in the past, but the detail, the direction and the humor in the ending cutscenes is amazing, and it's unparalleled. It's obvious that the programming prowess and talent in place at Namco are among the best in the industry.
The audio doesn't skip a beat. I still have qualms with calling the in-game fighting effects "good" because they've always sounded milky and soft (when you get a running start and deliver a soupy cloud of swirling punchy rage, it shouldn't sound like you just smacked your thigh with a wet dishwashing gloved hand), but if you've played any of the games in the past, you'll know what you're getting here.
The music in the Tekken games has always been a mix of high energy, uptempo electronica, and there's nothing here that's any different, it's just that most of it is really good versions of that same formula, and in most cases eclipses the stuff heard in Tekken 3. The game actually offers a jukebox mode where you can listen to the songs and it's a worthwhile feature; most of the tracks love to mix orchestral arrangements with percussion-heavy overlays. The combo works, and this is probably the best-sounding game -- especially when mixed with voice-overs in multiple languages -- that the series has ever seen. I'm honestly tempted to pick up the soundtrack just to hear some of this stuff more often.
And there you have it: this game looks incredible, sounds as good as it ever has, and plays... well, more or less like every game before it. The formula hasn't changed a lick from the core that it was birthed from, and after 10 years, that either says the system was perfected more or less from the start or that it has a lot of room to grow. Either way, a nice, half-step like five had better end where the tired old system left off and a new one was introduced or the series is just going to end up pooed on by everyone who's seen true evolution in fighting games.
Give this a rental and if you were burned by (but still bought) Tekken 4, this is probably enough to redeem the series for you. For most other casual fighting game fans, there are games with more depth (Virtua Fighter 4, Namco's own Soul Calibur II) and more variety (the Dead or Alive series) that will probably end up making Tekken 5 seem like a slightly upgraded PlayStation fighter that never grew into the 128-bit era. Sadly, they're not entirely wrong.
