tekken 5

this ones for the fighter fans out there. another year, another tekken yo…and tekken 5 is right around the corner. a preview of tekken 5 was showcased at the e3 show last week in los angeles, and its development is looking pretty coo. in a bit of a backtrack, tekkens doing away with variable-surface arenas, flattening out everything in the veins of virtua fighter. i kind of liked the variable terrain, but whatev. other new implementations are interactive environments, a new graphics engine, and move buffering. while the ign article states that this is a new thing for the tekken series, i dont know how accurate that is. you could argue that kazuyas mist steps were buffers, as were steves feints and stance chains. and a kid i used to play with at the arcades said that you could buffer mist steps with lee. maybe their version of “bufferings” different from what im assuming it is…*shrug*

there are also new characters as well, and the tekken 5 trailer featured the characters raven, asuka kazama, and feng wei in action. raven, as ign points out, eerily resembles wesley snipes from the blade movie trilogy. raven seems to use a combination of leg sweeps and aerial kicks, which makes him a good evolution of bryan fury (who is notably absent from the trailer). maybe raven is bryan…via a brain transplant (heehee), or maybe he’s bruce whos come back from the grave to get some bloody video game-sequel revenge. whoever he is, he still looks badass.

next up is asuka kazama, who as the name implies, has some relationship to jin kazama and his mother jun. her set of moves definitely suggests a tie with jun, since shes clearly seen in the trailer using juns (and old-school jins) distinctive white heron combo. maybe shes jins long lost sis…or aunt…or juns resuscitated clone thats come looking for revenge blah blah blah. righty-o. but like the rest of the kazama and mishima clan, she’ll probably be a master juggler. word.

and the third new character shown in the trailer is feng wei, a chinese martial artist with eyebrows to rival those of kazuya. hes a distinct departure from laws kung-fu, and actually fights vaguely similar to the old-school wang jin-rey (sans the drunkeness). and if not for the fact that wang is bald, i wouldve ventured to guess that the old man he’s looking over in the trailer was in fact wang. just a guess. anyhoo, he’ll probably be set as the middle-ground between law and ling, getting a little more power at the cost of speed and combos.
while the new characters are all fine and shit…and ill def try them out, im personally just hoping they open up jin and kazuyas repertoire. give kazuya more variety in chains to link into his mist step…jin some quicker counter-attacks and more varied options with his follow-thrus. and heihachis not dead, he was just nerfed stupid in tekken 4. revert him back to his tekken 3 ass-pummeler you motherfuckers. i dont want another diaper-wearing senior citizen going around using 5 versions of his godfist, 3 versions of a useless wind godfist, and being incapable of even pulling out a demon massacre.

> tekken 5 (via ign)
> tekken 5 trailer from e3 (via ign)
> tekken 5 website