Tekken 4 PlayStation 2

Tekken 4 PlayStation 2

By corleone_0110  Oct 19, 2006 | 2 out of 2 found this Tekken 4 review helpful

Pros: Gameplay, control

Cons: Not support online

Tekken 4 offers a standard assortment of gameplay modes, all of which revolve around pitting two skilled martial artists against each other in elimination matches. You've got arcade, time attack, and survival mode where you'll fight progressi...vely tougher computer opponents; versus mode for taking on a friend; training and practice mode for trying out all of your fighter's moves; and team battle mode where you can choose multiple fighters and you have to defeat opposing team members one at a time. However, the main attraction is the "story battle," which is basically a prettied-up arcade mode that gives each character a storyboard-style intro and epilogue, as well as a prerendered ending cutscene. It's nice that Namco put some effort into fleshing out each character's story, though none of the stories really figure into the gameplay--you'll still just take on one opponent after another, regardless of which character you chose. At any rate, that same effort would have probably been better spent on granting gamers the option to play Tekken 4 online, a feature that would have made Tekken 4 for the PS2 truly amazing. Some previous home versions of Tekken games have included additional unlockable hidden modes, but not Tekken 4. The only extra worth noting is available right off the bat: Tekken Force, basically a side-scrolling beat-'em-up like Final Fight. The PlayStation version of Tekken 3 actually had a similar mode, though it's handled better here and makes for a good diversion as you take on droves of enemy grunts at a time. You'll be impressed at how the game manages to dump so many characters onscreen without compromising the silky-smooth frame rate. Tekken 4 has fewer selectable characters overall than Tekken Tag Tournament, but Namco merely sought to remove the ones that had many identical fighting moves. The resulting game has nearly 20 distinctly different fighters, each with around 100 different moves. The majority of these will be familiar to series fans: guys like the burly American martial artist Paul Phoenix, the leopard-masked pro wrestler King, and the Bruce Lee look-alike Marshall Law; gals like the sprightly Ling Xiaoyu and the coldhearted assassin Nina Williams; and weirdos like the alien ninja Yoshimitsu and the kung fu-fighting bear Kuma. Of course, the most dysfunctional family in fighting games, old man Heihachi and his bitter son Kazuya Mishima, returns, as well as Kazuya's troubled son Jin, who boasts an almost entirely new set of moves. Most of the other returning fighters all look different than before yet have many of their old moves, though a number of useful new ones too. Read more Less