Review: Tekken Hybrid

Posted by Ben on December 3rd, 2011 | 0 Comments | Tags: Tekken Hybrid

I’m going to preface this review with one question, and one question alone. Do you love Tekken? Because if you’re not a massive fan of Namco’s fighting game franchise, then Tekken Hybrid is going to do precisely nothing for you. It’s a package designed to appease those fans who know exactly how many people have been thrown in to volcanoes throughout the series, and if you can’t comprehend how a Panda could possibly fight a Kangaroo in Boxing Gloves, then you have no business playing this game.

Tekken Hybrid is a package containing three main ingredients. Firstly, there’s the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 demo. There are 4 characters to mess around with, and not much else. If you’re really desperate to check out the sequel to the PS2 launch game, then this is your only option apart from searching through every arcade you can find. There’s not much chance of me being able to analyse the character balance, but the game is certainly fast and fun. Characters animate well and are lovingly detailed, and the backgrounds are standard Tekken fare. It’s a good taste of the game, but be warned that there’s no online play. Hybrid as a whole is a strictly local experience.

Next up is Tekken Tag Tournament HD. Those two letters on the end of the game’s name signify the only thing that has changed in this version of the PS2 launch title. It’s clean, runs without a hint of slowdown, and it’s still a load of fun to play. It might not look particularly great owing to the fact that it’s 10 years old, but the gameplay is intact. Me and my flatmates had a quite frankly ludicrous amount of fun trading blows with the game’s expansive roster of bizarre characters. Everything you remember from the PS2 game is here, including Tekken Bowling, and it all works exactly how you probably remember it working all those years ago. Just try not to laugh at the opening CG cutscene. My, how things have evolved.

Speaking of CG cutscenes, the thing that ties this package together is Tekken Blood Vengence. A feature length CG movie, it’s definitely one of the worst films I’ve had to sit through. The plot doesn’t make one iota of sense, the characters are all so paper thin that they might as well be cardboard cut outs, and the fight scenes, however flashy they might be, carry very little impact at all. Basically, it’s a Japanese Schoolgirl’s quest to find a guy who may or may not be important, while trying to keep tabs on her new found pink haired friend who is also a robot. She doesn’t find this out for a while though, but doesn’t seem too fussed by the fact that in a city filled with modestly dressed people, her new found friend has chosen to dress as if bears stole half of every item of clothing on her body. The voice acting borders on the hilarious, and the lips often don’t match up with the words coming out of them. Most of the characters from the games don’t appear in the film, so you can’t really accuse it of pandering to the fans too much, but what is there doesn’t entertain in the slightest. Even the token shower scene felt shoehorned in and unnecessary.

Like I said at the start of this review, you really need to like Tekken to enjoy Tekken Hybrid. It’s a neat way of packaging stuff from the series together in a way that offers at least some value for money, but ultimately the amount you’re going to get out of it depends entirely on how much you love this series.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.