Tekken 8 Could Be One of the Best Tekken Games Ever | Push Square

pushsquare.com:

We were lucky enough to spend close to an entire day with Tekken 8 at a recent Bandai Namco press event — and we walked away from the experience thoroughly impressed. We've had high hopes for the long-running series' latest instalment for quite some time — especially since we're such big fans of Tekken 7 — but going hands-on with a near-final build of Tekken 8 really solidified our belief that this bone-crunching fighter could be something very special.

All 32 characters were available in the PS5 build we played, and while a number of game modes were closed off, we could blast through the first few chapters of the dedicated story campaign, and dive into Arcade Quest — a single-player adventure that should add a lot of weight to Tekken 8's offline offerings.

For the purposes of this preview, we're going to categorise our thoughts mode by mode (and yes, we did get to enjoy the revered return of Tekken Ball).

Tekken 8's bombastic story mode takes place directly after the events of Tekken 7. Having finally put Heihachi down (read: tossed into an active volcano, again), Kazuya Mishima is on the brink of world domination thanks to his all-powerful devil gene — and there's only one man that can stop him. That's right, it's time for Kazuya's own son, Jin, to embrace his devil gene and go head-to-head with big bad dad.

Based on what we played, the opening chapters unfold almost exclusively from Jin's perspective, as he struggles to unlock the potential of his inherently evil powers. Our angsty protagonist is having a bit of an identity crisis, but characters like Lars, Alisa, and Lee are on hand to help him through the chaos.

In terms of structure, the story mode adopts your typical cutscene, fight, cutscene flow — but unlike in