Tekken 4

by Mike Shea on 7 October 2002

shows the wonderful graphical potential of the Playstation 2. With excellent graphics, gameplay, and a solid fighting engine, takes the lead as the best fighting game at home. What makes it so successful?

First progressive scan game for the PS2, supports newer HDTV sets to remove extra jaggies and shimmers from the characters and backgrounds.
Solid 60 frames per second gives the whole game a much more solid feel than lower framerate games.
Building off of a very solid series with a very robust and well known combat engine.
The most detailed interactive backgrounds of the series. While is a great fighter, it does have a couple of problems. These include the following:
Lack of any real good sound or music effects. Its not BAD but not great either.
Doesn't offer a widescreen mode. If it had both a widescreen and progressive mode, it would be an amazing game on a widescreen HDTV set.
Evolutionary sequal rather than revolutionary. It's the best Tekken ever, but it's still Tekken. No major change in the combat system. Tekken has always been a benchmark for systems. The original Tekken demo on Playstation really showed off what a 3d fighter at 60fps looked like. When Tekken 2 came out we saw what a second generation Playstation game could do. Tekken Tag Team was an initial game on PS2 and now shows us how far the system can go.

follows perfectly in the evolution of the story. Characters return like old friends, some bigger, stronger, and wiser like T. King. Others like Paul Phoenix are a bit down-and-out with his long wild hair perfectly rendered as it falls around his shoulders, a far cry from the Vanilla Ice giant flattop. Each new character you unlock reminds you of a character of old. Nina, Heiachi, Lei, Lee, and even those dumb bears all bring a smile to your face. The details in the outfits for the characters are perfectly rendered and smooth from Pauls new wild hairstyle to Jin's hooded windbreaker. New characters, like the enormous vale-tudo fighter who dwarfs even the mighty T. King, are a great addition. Each of the introductions and endings use a mix of hand drawn images and real-time rendered 3d sequences fill in all the details of each of the intertwined stories. You wouldn't think there is much of a plot to a fighting game but Tekken always did a great job. My only complaint was a more intertwined story mode, one long story with hundreds of unique matches that you play through, such as the story mode in Soul Calibur for Dreamcast.

Tekken has always been a staple fighter on any good system. came in blasting away any technical limitations we thought the Playstation 2 had with some of the most seamless and fast graphics ever seen at home. Add in a solid fighting system refined for eight years and you have the best fighter ever played at home. If you're a technojunky with an HDTV or a veteran fighting game fan, this is a must-buy.