454th played so far
Genre: Fighting
Platform: Playstation
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Tekken is, I believe, one of Peter’s favourite fighting game series – he certainly always managed to tell me a lot about it. We played the first game some time ago, that time, too, playing from the Tekken 5 disc.
From that I already found out that this game mostly has a new cast of fighters, because of story line reasons. It won’t matter to me, but I can see how it would have an influence on most players who’d play it.
Our Thoughts
Reading back our Tekken review, that game didn’t feel quite there yet. Graphics were off, it felt slow, it didn’t sit right with us.
Many of these issues are fixed in this game. I’ll have to admit – that gives us less to talk about, but it made the game more playable, competently so.
As a new player, the game actually plays pretty well. While the combos are there, they don’t feel like ones I needed to rely on too much, with some good ‘overwhelming’ fighters. I’m sure that wouldn’t work against other players, but they meant I could get decently far into story mode.
The nice feature there, as well, is that you’re not married to one character. On loss, you can switch to another character to try again, allowing for different strategies if a character isn’t working. They also feel distinct – some faster, some heavier, with a few gimmicks. Those aren’t as big as some games get – mostly they play pretty straight forwardly.
The version we played seems to have removed some of the more ‘exploitative’ elements, such as a volleyball mode. All I can say is that really, it is what it is – fighting games seem to have had that expectation. I’ll happily stick with the fighting.
Final Thoughts
A noticeable improvement, Tekken 3 is good and very enjoyable fighting game. That may make it less noticeable, but it works better as a good game. Without further comparison (something I more and more feel the need to rectify), I could see how this would be the superior Tekken entry of its era, and based on its lack of future entries, possibly the series.
I’m looking forward to what comes next as well.