I’ve greatly enjoyed the fighting game renaissance over the last few years. Between the success of Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6, and the general improvements to netcode across the board, the genre seems to be at its strongest since the arcade days. And after my time with the first weekend of Tekken 8’s Closed Network Test, it seems primed to bring the Heat to a new generation, despite a few hiccups that can hopefully be attributed to normal pre-release obstacles.
In our earlier preview, IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman covered the new mechanics introduced with the Heat system, noting that it doubled down on the uniqueness of each character. I’m happy to report that this holds true with the characters that have been added since the build he played, although they’ve simplified the Heat system just a bit. Instead of certain moves using stocks of your Gauge, both Heat Drives and Heat Smashes now just use the rest of your bar. It’s still a lot to wrap your head around, but thankfully the closed test included a quick tutorial to run down these changes.
Given the limited time available for the Closed Network Test, I’ve tried to focus on some of the newly added characters: specifically Lili and Jun. Sorry Hwoarang. No one’s got time for your nonsense.
Lili, my main from Tekken 7 – other than Armor King – is well known to be one of the most evasive characters in the series, with a fantastic side-step, tricky launchers, and even a command hop that can be followed up with either a low or mid attack, forcing you to guess if you need to block standing or crouching. Going into Heat mode in Tekken 8 boosts her evasiveness, letting you use your command hop twice in a row by holding the button down, and using these hops actually increases your heat meter, meaning you can keep your offense going for longer. She can also use her Heat Smash (the high damage ender you can use to end Heat mode) from her back-turned stance as a low attack, giving her multiple ways to land big damage.
Another character that stood out to me was Jun Kazama, returning in her first canon appearance since Tekken 2. She can use powerful attacks and strings at the cost of her own life bar. But if you activate Heat mode, you can use those moves freely without damaging yourself, and even do extra healing, giving her an extremely powerful toolset with no drawbacks for a limited time. I felt like I was barely getting a handle on what Jun could do in this first weekend, but I’m excited to explore more of her kit during the next test period.
Both characters gave me a lot of confidence that the Heat system is ultimately going to end up being a great change for Tekken 8. Finding new ways to activate my Heat, using the buffs it provides before it runs out, and then finishing it up with a Heat Smash, all made me excited to jump back into training mode as soon as I was able.
Unfortunately, what had me less excited across the board was the online performance. While about half of my matches were great, and this is very specifically a network test, some of the connections were downright rough, especially against WiFi warriors, with rollback artifacts and hitching both present. It’s hard enough to judge spacing when someone has a handle on Tekken’s complex movement, but when they suddenly appear to teleport, it made me feel like I was taking a counter hit to the face in real life. You can change the rollback settings to Prioritize Graphics or Prioritize Response (I chose Response), but it’s really just a pick-your-poison selection as you’ll be dealing with more delay as a tradeoff for less hitching. There was also an issue with stage transitions where they would hitch almost without fail. I’m not sure if this was a network issue or a performance issue, but it was very distracting nonetheless.
Thankfully, the connection screen gives a WiFi indicator, so you can avoid those players altogether if you wish, and I would strongly recommend plugging in an ethernet cable. But that won’t stop all the online issues, as matchmaking was also a bit spotty.
Long stretches of time would go by where matches would fail to connect repeatedly, or not match me with anyone at all. Game Director Katsuhiro Harada tweeted over the weekend that this was a known bug, and again, I must stress that this is a Network Test, and is designed to work out kinks they find with online play, so hopefully this will be remedied in the final release. But I can only relay my experience, which was not always optimal.
After a few days of learning a few things, getting the ever-loving tar beat out of me, and then managing to squeak out some wins, I’m even more excited for Tekken 8’s final release. Hopefully they can iron out the network issues, and if they do, I’m confident we’ll have a great new combatant for the King of Iron Fist Tournament.
Ronny Barrier is a gameplay producer for IGN. When he’s not playing fighting games or RPGs, he’s trying to get his rescue dog to stop eating dirt in the backyard. You can follow him on Twitter @Ronny_Barrier.
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