Tekken Hybrid review (PS3) ★★★★

Tekken: Blood Vengeance, is the 3D film portion of the hybrid pack, which is set between Tekken 5 and Tekken 6. BV follows the movements of Anna Williams, the sister of Nina, as she sends Ling Xiaoyu into operate as a spy for G Corporation and Kazuya Mishima, in trying to find information about a student named Shin, while Alisa is sent on a similar mission for Jin Kazama and the Mishima Zaibatsu organisation. A whole tangled web of a plot unfolds from there, with Ling and Alisa becoming friends, and finding out the truth about Shin. Inevitably the plot expands to incorporate all of the familiar characters from the Tekken universe, and makes for a nice bridge between the Tekken games in storyline terms. Blood Vengeance is unlikely to win any awards, as it is still miles behind the visual strides of animated video game adaptations, especially when compared to the brilliance of something like Final Fantasy: The advent children. However, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes and it will certainly please the more hardcore Tekken fans, though many of the references and character back stories may be lost on the more casual gamer.

After watching the film, there is the opportunity to return to a forgotten, but much loved classic in the form of Tekken Tag tournament. TTT was one of the initial PS2 launch day releases, and was a huge hit for Namco, proving very popular with Tekken fans worldwide. The innovation of the tag system allowed for an even more frenetic and energetic fighting game than anything that had come before it, and allowed gamers to mix up the styles by having two massively differing competitors to counter the strengths of the AI or of the opposition player. My personal preference was always to play as King, but the tag format allowed for the use of someone like Ling Xiaoyu or Eddie Gordo, to come in with a sudden and contrasting style to surprise my opponent, which often proved a winning tactic. The game has aged well anyway, but it is updated here into full HD, without meddling with the look or gameplay to any significant degree, but making it look crisper than ever, making good use of the PS3’s advanced capabilities. In comparison to some newer fighting games it is perhaps a bit slower in terms of responsiveness, but this is to be expected for a game released over a decade ago.

Finally, there is the Tekken tag tournament 2 playable demo. This was the highlight of Tekken Hybrid for me, for a number of reasons. Graphically it looks fantastic, as you would expect, and the gameplay takes all of things that made the original Tekken Tag tournament such an addictive and engrossing game and ramps up the level of slickness significantly. Although the demo only gives the option to play as Ling Xiaoyu, Alisa, Devil Jin, or Kazuya, they still maintain some of their iconic movesets from the previous games, as well as some new innovations. In short, Tekken Tag tournament 2 looks like it could be as much of a classic as its predecessor, and hopefully as widely accepted by the Tekken fanbase.