Growing up as a child of 90s and early 2000s arcades, I’ve been a casual enjoyer of the Tekken series pretty much all throughout its lifespan, with its cabinets being a regular spot where I would dump a few quarters, mash some buttons, and walk away with a smile on my face. I’ve put some time into just about all of them, but I’ve never really attempted to learn the deeper complexities of its mechanics or really sat down to try and become good with a character. That’s going to change with Tekken 8, because after spending about four hours with it, I’m all in.
While I am a self-admitted casual fan of the Tekken series, I have at least dabbled enough into Tekken 7 to be able to talk about the most defining differences between it and Tekken 8. Chief among those changes is the new Heat System, which is all about enforcing one of Tekken 8’s biggest design goals: Rewarding aggression.
With the press of a button, a character can use a Heat Burst to enter Heat Mode. The effects of it differ from character-to-character, but in general you can view it as a limited time state where you’re basically better at everything. Certain moves have new properties; others recover faster, making them more advantageous on block; and you gain access to new moves that aren’t available outside of Heat Mode.
One of the key elements of Heat Mode is that while it is time-limited, with a meter that slowly depletes once activated, you can actually stop that meter from going down by landing attacks. This is just one of the ways that Tekken 8 looks to encourage its players to be more aggressive, because if you’re able to push the pace and land hits while in Heat Mode, you can keep the state going throughout most, if not all of the round.
And if you decide that you instead want to cash out on damage rather than remain in Heat Mode, you can use a Heat Smash, which is like a mini-Rage Art super move that does a large amount of damage, but spends the rest of your Heat Meter.
The Heat System goes deeper than that too. In addition to there being a heat meter, there are also these little icons that govern your usage of certain actions while in Heat Mode. This is called Heat Energy, and if you enter Heat Mode with a Heat Burst, you’ll only get one stock of it. However, if you use what’s known as a “Heat Engager,” you’ll enter Heat Mode with two stocks. These are special moves that when landed, will instantly put your character into the Heat State. Every character has five of them, and they’re usually some of the most defining moves of each character. After you land a Heat Engager, you can spend a stock of Heat Energy to use a Heat Dash, which lets you quickly dash in to either connect combos that otherwise could not normally be connected, or if the Heat Engager is blocked, you can just get right back up in their face to continue your offense.
My favorite element of the Heat System, though, is how it's used to further define the unique aspects of every character. Every character has at least one completely unique advantage in Heat Mode. For example, when in Heat Mode, King gets armor on his Jaguar Run, making him a grappler with an armored command run to get in on opponents. Kazuya meanwhile, can execute his iconic Electric Wind God Fist technique without having to be frame perfect on the input.
What I also love about the Heat system is that it’s available right at the start of every round. It’s not a comeback mechanic and you don’t need to build up a meter in order to gain access to it – you’re free to use it whenever and however you please. The already existing comeback mechanic from Tekken 7, Rage, does make a return, with it once again causing a character to go into a Rage State once they reach a critical level of health. While in the Rage State, your damage increases, and you gain access to your ultra powerful rage art technique. That said, Rage Drives are a thing of the past, largely because it's a mechanic that felt redundant due to the addition of the Heat State and the advantages it provides.
Another brand new element of Tekken 8 is the addition of a “Special” control type, which is Tekken 8’s new attempt at making its complex fighting system a little more approachable for newcomers. When in Special control mode, each button has a recommended move and combo for each character. There’s a button for juggle combos, a button for grounded combos, and a button for quick low attacks. The selected moves even change depending on what state you’re in. While this allows new players to compete with more intermediate players in terms of the damage they’re able to output, the key thing to keep in mind is that players using the special control scheme only have access to a very small selection of moves.
The most interesting part of the Special control scheme though, and the thing that really sets it apart from Street Fighter 6’s new Modern Control scheme, is that you can switch between the classic and special control styles mid-match with the press of a button. This makes it actually a fairly viable option for more experienced players as well, as you could be playing the match out in the classic control scheme, suddenly have an opportunity for a big punish, quickly swap to the Special control style, and start mashing out a combo. It also seems like a great learning tool to be able to quickly jump in with a new character and get a feel for what their moves and combos are going to look like without having to memorize a whole bunch of techniques just to be competitive.
Those are all pretty substantial changes, so it's comforting to know that everything still feels like some “Good-Ass Tekken”. In my playtime, I mostly experimented with King, who’s just as much of a powerhouse as he’s always been. One of my favorite changes to him is that his Reverse Arm Slam combo has been simplified, allowing him to go into the next throw in the chain with a single button press as opposed to a series of inputs that need to be memorized. He does still have the latter, and those are probably more damaging and harder to break, but as someone who’s always loved King, but was always intimidated by all the commands needed to do a full chain grab combo, I appreciated having at least one that I could easily commit to memory and rely on pretty much right from the get-go of learning the character.
I want to give a shoutout to Tekken 8’s command list too, which does a great job of giving some extra context to the recommended moves for every character. It told me recommended combos, moves to use that are advantageous on block, what moves will launch an opponent, what to do after launching them, what to do after activating heat mode, and much more. These movelists are extremely intimidating, with them each containing hundreds of techniques, and Bandai Namco is really putting in the effort by making them much more user friendly.
After my playtime was over, I left with a renewed enthusiasm to get into Tekken on a more serious level. Tekken 8 looks phenomenal, its hits feel as impactful as ever, and its iconic cast of characters are even more uniquely defined thanks to the new Heat system. There’s still a lot we have yet to see, but as far first impressions go, Tekken 8 is a knockout.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit