Tekken 5

[Hello Goaty ♥]

he only likes her because of the look, guys!

[lau]

Well, yeah.

Long time VF fan. Always been wary of Tekken. Thought I'd give this a go.

Tekken is FIFA and VF is Pro Evo Soccer. This is nasty and shit.

←

i don't know, i always thought that tekken was easy to pick up and play, but also had a lot of depth for people prepared to put in the time and effort (i could never pull off a 'chicken' ) whereas with fifa the depth isn't there. and pro evo really is more accessible than virtua fighter 4.

[Liquid Myth]

I don't like it. The moves are too complex, there's too many moves to use, and most of the time it feels like who remembers most of the moves will win.

[Kelthink]

I'm so sick of seeing this attitude. I know a lot of Virtua Fighter players who think they have the authority to rubbish the Tekken series and I just don't get it at all. They're different games. Really different games. They play COMPLETELY differently.

I'm convinced it's just a case of Virtua Fighter players picking up Tekken, saying "this is different to Virtua Fighter", getting beaten, feeling frustrated and then announcing Tekken is "nasty and shit" - or some other phrase that tells you NOTHING about why the game is bad. If I saw analyses from VF players along the lines of "the controls feel unresponsive, the system of one button per limb is contrived, high level play relies too much on set-pieces, the character design is uninspired and the arenas make it too easy to fluke a perfect" (all potentially valid criticisms) then I'd be much less angry at seeing so many VF players display disgust at Tekken. But that's not the case at all! It's always the same rubbish "Tekken is shit! VF RULES!!!!111", no analysis.

I play Tekken and Virtua Fighter and can see merit in them both. I admit, when I first played Tekken (around Tekken 2-era) I didn't like it at all. Maybe for as long as two years. But I've played it a lot since then and appreciate how it's put together to the extent that whenever I see someone rubbish it I am sure they are just ignorant.

←

I'll elaborate.

It doesn't make any sense. The whole "1 button per limb stuff" doesn't work. Characters will do moves using both limbs sometimes when you press one of the buttons (e.g. King's low dropkick) and the characters will usually keep the same stance (in VF, if your character has the left foot forward, guess what? They're most likely to use the other foot to launch a kick! Amazing). Half the moves are too similar, and the 10-hit combo rubbish is the epitome of how to play Tekken - just remember as much as you can, and you'll probably do alright.

In Tekken, a complete beginner could easily beat a competent player, or the other way around. It's very random. I'm sure an expert would probably beat anybody, but that would require a ludicrous amount of time and memory. The more effort you put in VF, the more likely the victory. A beginner has no chance (just like in Pro Evo, see), and that's the way it should be. You should get as much out of it as you put in.

[squirtle]

...most of the time it feels like who remembers most of the moves will win.

←

Oh the ironing!

[Willei]

In Tekken, a complete beginner could easily beat a competent player, or the other way around. It's very random. I'm sure an expert would probably beat anybody, but that would require a ludicrous amount of time and memory.

←

You're being especially daft there. But the rest of it reads like "It isn't VF so I don't like it".

[Kelthink]

You're being especially daft there.  But the rest of it reads like "It isn't VF so I don't like it".

←

Maybe the rest reads like 'VF is so far ahead of Tekken it's a joke', I don't know.

VF is based on skill and practice. It has an intelligent evading system. It has clearly defined rules and boundaries. Tekken is based on luck, very old mechanics, and ambiguous rules 'n' such.

It might be that I've played VF for longer, I don't know. My point is that Tekken's form of logic is far more difficult to understand than VF's, and is yet the simpler game.

[lau]

Tekken is based on luck, very old mechanics, and ambiguous rules 'n' such.

i don't think so, no one would play it if it was. (anybody for a game of capcom fighting jam?) in fact, if it was these things, it would be hard for anyone to even enjoy playing it, which very clearly many people do.

[Kelthink]

i don't think so, no one would play it if it was. (anybody for a game of capcom fighting jam?) in fact, if it was these things, it would be hard for anyone to even enjoy playing it, which very clearly many people do.

←

I thought everyone played it 'cause 'Heiheichi this' and 'Mishima that' and whatever and the characters are cool or whatever.

It doesn't rock my boat, that's about it.

[ianwuk]

To simplify the Tekken vs Virtua Fighter debate, my take on it is that Tekken is arcade and Virtua Fighter is a simulation (akin to the racing genre). Anyway, even though Jin is my favourite character I agree that Eddie can be deadly with someone who knows what they are doing.

But, he can also be deadly with those who have no idea what they are doing. Do the ten-hit combos still carry much weight in Tekken 5?

[lau]

I thought everyone played it 'cause 'Heiheichi this' and 'Mishima that' and whatever and the characters are cool or whatever.

It doesn't rock my boat, that's about it.

←

fair enough . i do agree with you that VF is deeper, i just like the arcadey nature of tekken. i'll also take ridge racer over GT.

and in my opinion, the characters, although they have a cheesy charm about them, are not cool. apart from xiaouuaoeou or whatever her name is

[womblingfree]

It's been ages since I enjoyed a beat em up.

Not since Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast in fact.

SC2 was inferior IMO, VF4 was too demanding for my limited schedule and I always found Tekken and DOA pretty vacuous.

For lack of a Soul Calibur maybe I'll give this a go.

[kamrantaz]

We can all end this VF Vs tekken arguement because SC pisses on both. Then Streetfighter comes and dances on their corpses.

[robdood]

Just to say, tho I prefer VF to Tekken the order in which I learned/played my 3D fighting games goes:

Tekken 3 (i never got into 1 or 2)

Soul Calibur

Tekken 4

Virtua Fighter 4

Tekken 5

Now, I always used to say Tekken was great, and VF rubbish (in tekken 3 days). Then soul cal came along and I learnt that it was far superior to it. Then, a mate of mine got VF4 Evo (only very recently, too) and we decided to 'learn' it, to see if it was any good. I was blown away. It is easily the most deep and tactical fighting game. I'm still a complete noob and can only really play one character confidently, but the potential i can see within it is vast.

I still have a warm place in my heart for Tekken, and Soul Cal, but VF rocks my socks baby! Soul Calibur 2 comes very close, though.

When I played Tekken 5 recently on Jap release, I was hoping for so much. The fighting system is great, I just HATE those floating juggle combos. They take way too much damage, and they are too eaasy to pull off. Plus there is no way of 'saving' yourself (like in Soul Calibur 2).

Tekken does win in one department (especially over VF): Characters. The characters in Tekken really seem to have personality to them. VF characters seem a bit like simple marionettes in comparison.

Kazyua Mishima is one of the best game characters, EVER

[stellar12]

I'm sure an expert would probably beat anybody, but that would require a ludicrous amount of time and memory. The more effort you put in VF, the more likely the victory.

So you're saying that an expert who puts the requisite time into Tekken can ensure victory and an expert that puts the requisite time into Virtua Figher can... ensure victory...

Thats profound man. Good elaboration.

[Kelthink]

So you're saying that an expert who puts the requisite time into Tekken can ensure victory and an expert that puts the requisite time into Virtua Figher can... ensure victory...

Thats profound man. Good elaboration.

←

Wait, no. Shit. Shut up! That avatar is putting me off. Mesmerising. I know what I meant. Yeah.

[womblingfree]

We can all end this VF Vs tekken arguement because SC pisses on both. Then Streetfighter comes and dances on their corpses.

←

o/\o

Soul Calibur is the perfect balance between pick up and play and serious depth.

Streetfighter is not of this earth.

[Retroid]

Despite being more of a VF fan I did pick Tekken 5 up today.

It's ok, just a bit of fun I suppose - the AI is annoying sometimes especially when they repeat the same move over and over again. And why are there so many rounds in Arcade mode?

[Salsa Party Animal]

I enjoy

VF4 evo, Street Fighter collection (XBOX), Tekken 5, SC 1 & 2 and recently got Gulity Geat X 2 Reloaded for XBOX (Hadn't play it yet) and Fight Night Round 2 for XBOX

I also have Garou: Mark of the Wolves / Soul Calibur III (Jap PS2), and King of Fighters 2002/3 for US XBOX on order.

There is a great mixture.

[Dave White]

I enjoy

VF4 evo, Street Fighter collection (XBOX), Tekken 5, SC 1 & 2 and recently got Gulity Geat X 2 Reloaded for XBOX (Hadn't play it yet) and Fight Night Round 2 for XBOX

I also have Garou: Mark of the Wolves / Soul Calibur III  (Jap PS2), and King of Fighters 2002/3 for US XBOX on order.

There is a great mixture.

←

Garou!

Online fuck me I can't wait!

The best fighter ever crafted!!

[ianwuk]

Is Street Fighter Collection on Xbox any good? I have been tempted to get this as I liked Capcom Vs SNK 2: EO, all, except online play.

[Eoin]

the characters will usually keep the same stance (in VF, if your character has the left foot forward, guess what? They're most likely to use the other foot to launch a kick! Amazing).

Sorry, but that's one of the most obtuse criticisms of anything that I've ever seen anywhere.

Anyway, if I do a right kick, and my opponent sidesteps right, I expect the kick to miss. If he sidesteps left, I expect him to get his face kicked in and for me to get some nice counterhit damage. What I'm certainly not expecting is for me to do a left kick instead.

Half the moves are too similar, and the 10-hit combo rubbish is the epitome of how to play Tekken - just remember as much as you can, and you'll probably do alright.

I'm caught between thinking that tenstrings should be removed from Tekken because they're completely useless in any kind of skilled play and only encourage Tekken newbies (like yourself) to think the game involves rote learning and nothing else, and thinking that they should be kept because they make it so easy to identify how much someone really knows about the game.

Put simply: tenstrings = rubbish. A decent player will generally harshly punish anyone who uses them.

In Tekken, a complete beginner could easily beat a competent player, or the other way around.

Nope. Anyone getting beaten by beginners with any kind of significant regularity is a newbie.

Just FYI: to the Tekken players here, your posts read like you think you know about Tekken, but you're actually badly wrong, and it's very obvious to anyone who's played the game for a while. You're welcome to your own opinion, but a lot of it does seem to be based on impressions that you definitely haven't spend any real amount of time forming.

But, he can also be deadly with those who have no idea what they are doing.  Do the ten-hit combos still carry much weight in Tekken 5?

The tenstrings (they're not combos) are as important in Tekken 5 as ever - so, not very important at all.

And why are there so many rounds in Arcade mode?

Arcade mode lasts forever. It's you, against AI ghosts, basically simulating an arcade. Think Kumite mode. It's like that. The actual traditional arcade mode (as in, the same as walking up to an arcade machine and putting money in) is Time Attack mode.

[Solemkin]

Garou!

Online fuck me I can't wait!

The best fighter ever crafted!!

←

If Guilty Gear XX Reload didn't exist, it would.

[Dave White]

If Guilty Gear XX Reload didn't exist, it would.

←

To be honest I haven't got that.

Worth it then?

Sell it too me.

After the stupid version with the button to turn I picked up in Tokyo I gave up on that series.

[robdood]

Anyway, if I do a right kick, and my opponent sidesteps right, I expect the kick to miss. If he sidesteps left, I expect him to get his face kicked in and for me to get some nice counterhit damage. What I'm certainly not expecting is for me to do a left kick instead.

←

I understand you must be a Tekken fanboy (not to offend, or anything, I'm a bit drunk atm).

Virtua Fighter has a great open-stance/closed-stance/'full-spinning move' set of tactics which are far more enjoyable to learn than what you mention here. I have played tekken 5 and VF4 a great deal, and I still think VF4 'wins'. Tekken is fun mind, and has the best Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan characters in a fighting game ever.

A friend of mine explained it in a great metaphor once: (bear in mind I'm drunk now and we were stoned at the time )

In Tekken, you have control of a character, and it like you have a set of levers and gears that you set in motion when you want to perform moves. Everything is very set; the small chains, the juggles, etc. In VF, it feels a lot more like your character is a puppet, dancing and moving at your will. VF is all about konwing what your opponent will do, and forcing them to block/duck/do what you want them to.

I understand this last point applies to all fighting games, but I find it works best in VF. Plus VF is the only game to have a tutorial mode that show you these great ideas for tactics/etc.

[/drunken post]

[Willei]

Is Street Fighter Collection on Xbox any good?  I have been tempted to get this as I liked Capcom Vs SNK 2: EO, all, except online play.

←

In a word, yes. They probably shouldn't have released Third Strike, since it's simply not fair on the other games!

The online play is very much improved from CVS2, although it's not perfect. It seems to have improved since it first came out, and you can get some very decent matches now.

I agree with Eoin on the ten hit combos as well. There's a very finite number of them, usually only a couple for each character, and if you spot them coming (and you will) you can counter them at certain times very easilly indeed. Saying that they dominate the game is like saying you only need PPK in VF.

[robdood]

Ten hit combos are used amongst my mates and I as a joke in matches. Though they can have their uses: they can tempt people into going for reversals, so stopping them mid combo can be great, especially when you know your opponents very well.

But then again, I guess thats what makes every fighting game great, getting to the stage where ou can beat your mate, then they suss you tactics, then you suss their tactics, then they get urs again, etc etc.. a never ending learning curve.

It is the same reason I used to enjoy Counterstrike so much; outwitting another human being is immensely fun

[Eoin]

I understand you  must be a Tekken fanboy (not to offend, or anything, I'm a bit drunk atm).]

No. I'm a fan of pretty much every fighting game. Nothing I've said here is in any way meant to be an attack on Virtua Fighter - just a defense of Tekken against what I consider to be some very dubious arguments. Someone complaining about a character not using the foot furthest from their opponent when a kick button is hit seems to me to be pretty irrelevant.

In Tekken, you have control of a character, and it like you have a set of levers and gears that you set in motion when you want to perform moves. Everything is very set; the small chains, the juggles, etc. In VF, it feels a lot more like your character is a puppet, dancing and moving at your will.

I am almost 100% certain that this is how nearly any (good) fighting game plays when you're used to it, and that the mechanical control style you also describe is how any fighting game plays when it's perhaps not one of your favourites. I've also played a large amount of various Tekken and Virtua Fighter games. When I'm playing Tekken (and some other games I've put stupidly huge amounts of time into like SF), the characters I know well do move to my will, and because I haven't put as much time into VF, to me that's the game that feels more mechanical. I've no doubt that I'd think the reverse if I'd played VF as much as I'd played Tekken, and vice versa.

Ten hit combos are used amongst my mates and I as a joke in matches. Though they can have their uses: they can tempt people into going for reversals, so stopping them mid combo can be great, especially when you know your opponents very well.

Sure, but this applies to pretty much any set string in any fighting game. I think extending some strings to ten attacks is probably a mistake on Namco's part - there's very few of them where you need more than 5 or 6 to get the effect you've described.

[Kelthink]

Sorry, but that's one of the most obtuse criticisms of anything that I've ever seen anywhere.

Anyway, if I do a right kick, and my opponent sidesteps right, I expect the kick to miss. If he sidesteps left, I expect him to get his face kicked in and for me to get some nice counterhit damage. What I'm certainly not expecting is for me to do a left kick instead.

←

That would probably make sense if characters had natural stances where they are standing straight, with both legs being parallel. However, doing a left foot kick with your left foot forward would look ridiculous and would be far less effective than doing a right kick, so someone fighting wouldn't realistically do that at all.

I know I'm speaking too much (or probably bollocks), but I'll try and say something:

When Tekken came out, I heard of its 1 button per limb thing, it made more sense than VF, since Tekken also has a blocking system like Street Fighter (sort of) in holding 'back' to block. VF's simple system seemed too simple.

But, after playing Shenmue, it made loads of sense. When you're learning new moves from people, they'll say shit like 'thrust the power of your arms and legs forward', and the move ends up being f+P+K. It's probably more related to the whole stance thing.

If a character stands still and I press 'kick', I expect the character to do a basic kick with the most effective leg given the position. Which is what happens in VF. I just can't make sense of the Tekken system, really.

[Eoin]

That would probably make sense if characters had natural stances where they are standing straight, with both legs being parallel. However, doing a left foot kick with your left foot forward would look ridiculous and would be far less effective than doing a right kick, so someone fighting wouldn't realistically do that at all.

Putting aside for the moment that we're talking about fighting games, so realism isn't any kind of absolute necessity - if I press the right kick button, this is the same as my character deciding, in their strange, fighting-based real life, to right kick. That's why they right kick. The reason it's still as effective in the game is so that the players don't have to care about the properties of basic moves suddenly changing based on arbitrary factors.

But, after playing Shenmue, it made loads of sense. When you're learning new moves from people, they'll say shit like 'thrust the power of your arms and legs forward', and the move ends up being f+P+K. It's probably more related to the whole stance thing.

That's just as contrived a system as anything else. It's brilliant and it works well in game (because Shenmue has more time to teach you single moves than any fighting game does), but that's because a lot of the time they've more or less translated the button presses to normal language, rather than because the move actually involves moving the power of your limbs forwards or whatever.

Pretty much any button system is going to have logical flaws. Even taking the most basic look at VF and picking one example - there's no logical, real-world justification for P+G being a throw. That doesn't matter though, because it works, just like Tekken's system.

If a character stands still and I press 'kick', I expect the character to do a basic kick with the most effective leg given the position.

In Tekken, you're not pressing "kick". You're pressing right kick, so the character does a right kick. You're saying the left/right punch/kick system doesn't make any sense - do you think it would make more sense if you asked a character to right kick and they left kicked?

This is not better or worse than VF's system. It is different. Your criticism is exactly what Jim Miles said - disliking the game for arbitrary reasons purely because things don't work in Tekken like they do in VF.