It still works...
The first and foremost thing that needs mentioning is the game’s graphics. From a technical standpoint it may very well be the best looking game that money can buy on your Playstation 2. Each and every character on the roster boasts an incredible amount of detail and polish boiling right down to their realistic facial expressions, and they animate really, really fluidly. What’s just as amazing are the rich environments these characters animate IN. Just watching a fight is watching a technical masterpiece.
It’s fortunate that this presentation is backed up by something as well-proven and fun as the Tekken fighting engine. The game doesn’t toy with the basics and takes no effort in implementing anything groundbreaking or redefining, which is perfectly okay because what it does is recreate the game we all loved.
Fighting just comes naturally to your fingertips and it looks natural on-screen whether you’re a newbie or a veteran. One thing that can be said about Tekken is that it flows very well. The control scheme is simple, but when the four buttons are strung together into many different combinations all of a sudden things look complicated. This is the joy of fighting games. Pick a favourite fighter and learn how to use them, remember their button combinations and master them. Tekken 5 presents a good roster of fighters each one completely different from the last. No character is, in any sense of the word, a clone of the last. Tekken 5 offers an astounding amount of depth.
The addendums to the main package are good. Tekken 1, 2 and 3 are cool to come back to but the side-game ‘Devil Within’ is a stripped down action game that’s only there for people who’ve never played action-adventure games and have nothing to compare it to. But we’re not here for any of that.
Tekken 5 is a remarkable achievement and should definitely be in your collection if you consider yourself any sort of fighting game fan.