Versions played: PC, Xbox Series X

I'll preface this by saying I'm not the most avid Tekken player in the world. The only games I've played in the series is the re-release of Tekken 2 on PS3, Tekken 5's PSP Port and a handful of rounds in Tekken 7, but I've always held the franchise in high regard. With the hype surrounding Tekken 8, I figured it wouldn't hurt to add another fighting game to my rotation and I can tell you it absolutely did not hurt. I haven't even touched most of the content that this game has to offer even still and I can already tell that this is one of the most content-packed AND newcomer-friendly entries in the Tekken series yet.

When it comes to single-player content, this game has you covered. Right off the bat you have two story modes you can play through, one following up on the series storied history of Father vs Son shenanigans, the other being a more newcomer-focused mode bringing you back to that era when arcades dominated the gaming space. From what I've played of both of these modes, they both do their job! As well as these two modes, there are also character specific stories you can partake in, as well as your traditional modes. But of course, because Tekken Ball has returned, clearly that's the one we'll all be playing!

In terms of graphical fidelity and animation work, the devs have knocked it out of the park. All of the 32 characters they crammed into this games initial roster of fighters all look the best they ever have and have really expressive animation work put in place to boot. The environments also look fantastic, taking full advantage of current-gen systems capabilities. Even for people who enjoy Tekken as a spectator sport, this is absolute eye candy for you.

With the advent of SSDs being a commodity now in both the console and PC space, getting into a match takes less than 5 seconds, even on console! it really feels like with these recent new entries for many fighting games, we've somewhat returned to load times that were commonplace before discs where the main medium we found our games on and that's a good thing. Gone are the days of waiting over half a minute to load into a match!

And would it really be a new Tekken entry if the Bandai Namco Sound Team didn't put their all into the soundtrack. This is definitely gonna be up there with the best when we look back on this game, and speaking of the soundtrack, you can always use the Jukebox feature to take a listen to your favourite tracks from past entries!

The only real concern I have with this game is the special control scheme being so easy to swap to even during matches, we'll see if this disrupts things on the competitive level, but it's such a minor gripe when most people won't be playing at such a high level.

So would I recommend this game? Absolutely. The package you're getting here already is jam-packed with stuff to do, and this will only expand as time goes on as the team add more content to this game.