This would be acceptable if Tekken 7 didn’t squander its most promising concession to modern fighting games: the tragically inconsistent story mode. That the moves-list simply dumps the whole lot-around 80 per character, many of which are indistinguishable in purpose on first, uneducated glance-without any indication of power or functionality, suggesting a lack of overall care. Those wishing to learn the ins and outs of the game’s internal logic and flow are on their own. Comprising only the basics of a character-specific moves list and a training dummy that can be programmed with desired behaviours, Tekken 7’s training only really caters to players looking to hone the execution of known strategies. While there is a training mode, it makes less effort to educate than a disinterested high school teacher who sticks on a video and catches up on marking until the bell rings. It's an instinct-driven ‘feel-fighter’ where learning the basics of a character is about exploration over academia. If Street Fighter is like fisticuffs chess, then Tekken’s faster, more explosive, more intimate and improvisational, laterally-focused game is like Geometry Wars with roundhouse kicks. If you're willing to put everything on the line, maybe it will. It’s logical, fair and makes total sense, but it also wants you to know that a ludicrous, woop-inducing turnaround can happen at any given moment. It’s an entirely more organic, sandbox-y fighter than the competition-a fluid, unpredictable and constantly exciting game of incredibly accurate hitboxes and anything-can-happen cause and effect. It wants you to experiment wildly with its vast array of subtly different, malleable attacks, parries, evades and counters. It wants you to try things, just for the hell of it. Where other fighting games are dominated by tightly defined rules of risk-and-reward, Tekken-while consummately, thoughtfully precise and balanced-prefers to give you a range of looser options in a more emergent, intricately reactive fighting system. For the uninitiated, Tekken’s combat focuses on freedom, openness, and breadth of possibility over strict, prescriptive hierarchies of attack and defence.

Narrator of tekken 7