Tekken History: Tekken 4

Tekken History: Tekken 4

Robert Knuckles

“A Dark Tekken”

Tekken Tag Tournament was fun but it was time to get back to the main story with Tekken 4. Tekken 4 was released in arcades on July 2001 and released for the PS2 on September 23 2002.

I remember seeing this game in arcades and what's funny is that at first the arcade machine there at first was Tekken Tag Tournament. I come back a year later excited to play Tag Tournament and I see Tekken 4 and first reaction i got was this game seemed very very DARK.

You get that dark feeling when you see the intro, the menu screen, character select and even the prologue. The intro starts off with Heihachi throwing Kazuya into the mouth of a volcano. We’re basically rewatching Heihachi's ending from Tekken 2. 20 years have passed since that day.

The intro of the game sets up the story. Heihachi got Ogre's blood and tissue from the last tournament. Heihachi wanted to create a new life form to become immortal. The experiment failed because he lacked the Devil Gene. He needed Jin but couldn’t find him  after the last tournament. Heihachi learned that Kazuya’s body was picked up and used by G Corporation, a biotech form. Heihachi sends the Tekken Force to G Corporation to get Kazuya’s remain but the mission ends in failure when Heihachi finds out that Kazuya is alive and stopped the Tekken Force. Heihachi then announces the King of Iron Fist Tournament 4 to lure Kazuya and Jin out to obtain their Devil Gene. The story mainly focused on Heihachi, Kazuya and Jin. All three fight each other and in the end Jin was the last man standing. Jin was about to kill Heihachi until he sees an image of his mother and flies away.

The gameplay in Tekken 4 changed a lot mainly the environments. Fighters can interact with the walls for greater damage but players can still roll over to escape corner combos. Also some of the environments played like Dead or Alive for example some levels were uneven so certain moves wouldn’t connect and some fighters would have an advantage. I see where Namco was going trying to go doing something new but it didn’t work out for a lot of people. A lot of the stages did look cool though.

A new game mode was introduced called Story Mode, that featured every characters prologue and ending. So you basically see everyone's reason as to why they entered the tournament. You’ll also see some cutscenes before certain fights.

The roster consist of 23  characters some being clone characters. Kazuya returns after being absent from Tekken 3. Tekken 4 introduced some new characters, Steve Fox the boxer, Craig Marduk the Vale Tudo fighter and Christie Monteiro Eddy’s student and friend that share his moves. Other characters return such as Paul, King Jin, Nina and so much more. You actually see the age in characters meaning that many years have passed and we see them aging. You didn’t really see that in many fighting games. Tekken Force also returns and it's still fun.

In the end I really liked Tekken 4. Now some people might not like it but I understand why. I liked how characters look different and just the dark vibe from the game really got me going.