Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Sony 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
- Widescreen: No
- 60Hz: No
- DTS sound: No
As you start Tekken 5, a cool CGI intro concludes “Heihachi Mishima is dead”
Hmm… would they kill off the Tekken franchise’s favourite old-timer? I somehow doubt that.
Take your pick from the athletic Julie and Nina, the muscle-bound Jin, the lion-faced King,schoolgirl Xiaoyu, wedgehead Paul and Christie who looks a bit like J-Lo, except more attractive and a lotless self-obsessed, as well as a number of others including some to be unlocked later.
In addition to the standard arcade mode, comes the Story Battle where you get to play through the gameand follow a character’s story, with their movie appearing after the last baddie has been defeated.’Vs Battle’ is the two-player arcade game while Time Attack is the straight-forward option of clearingthe game in the fastest time.
Practice, Survival and Team Battle are typical options that also return here. Something new comes with’Arcade History’ as it allows you to play the arcade version of the first three games in the Tekken series,but the graphics don’t date particularly well.
For the graphics, the movement of the characters is fluid and the gameplay is just as you’d expect,with this user occasionally opting for random button mashing to get me through, but the environments arenot much to shout about in that while they can look quite nice at times – I was quite impressed with the’Final Frontier’ one with the Pacman message running down the side – there’s nothing interactive about them.
Various items occasionally might appear to fly off them as if dislodged when hit but these are just extraneousgraphics and there’s nothing that can be picked up and used. Also, on some levels the ground appearsto break up when either you or the enemy thud into it, but the effect is immediately lost the nexttime someone hits the ground as the first part instantly heals up(!)
The sound packs a punch, as you’d expect for a fighting game, but there’s nothing to differentiate thathere from any other such game and there’s also no DTS sound so it’s ProLogic-only.
There’s a different extra that we’ve not seen before in this series, Devil Within, which places you as Jingoing into the Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation headquarters, running down corridors in third-personview from behind, kicking robots to pieces along the way, but this kind of thing has been done many timesbefore and far better, particularly since the fighting has been reduced to basic kicking and punching moves,so it’s nothing to get excited about here.
Overall, this game may have received a reasonablish final score, but the graphics and sound boosted that.If you’re wondering whether it’s worth shelling out another forty notes on this fighting game then it isn’t -it doesn’t do anything more than any fighting game I’ve played before.
In fact, I preferredVirtua Fighter 4to this, PS2-wise, but if you have an Xbox thenDead or Alive Ultimateprovides better graphics all round. DOAU also had DD5.1 sound whereas this game eschews the chanceto offer top-notch sound, widescreen format, a 60Hz picture and online action.
If in doubt, and if you’re a Tekken-only fan, rent this and then make a decision but if you’ve playedall the previous entries in the series you’ll be hard-pushed to make this a must-have.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.