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Tekken 7 Might Have Street Fighter 5 Beat
Self-proclaimed Aussie Tekken overlord Youssef "FaYd" Faddoul tells us why Tekken 7 might be the best Fighting Game of all time.
When your opponent makes a mistake, the key to victory is to seize that moment and capitalise on it. Street Fighter V's underwhelming launch was a small mistake in a series which has rarely put a foot out of place. Finally releasing in a month, Tekken 7 is seizing its moment.
The opportunity is obvious — Street Fighter V released in a sorry state. Since launch it's made huge strides towards being the game people expected, but it's been a rough road. Tekken, on the other hand, has languished in the wings, delayed for a number of reasons. When it launches this coming June though, it will be the best it can be — having already run the high pressure gauntlet that are Japanese and Koreanarcades.
Even still, Tekken 7 came out swinging from the get-go. The focus for Tekken 7 has been lowering the skill floor and raising the skill ceiling — pillars of brilliant design philosophy at the core of most highly competitive games.
Well ain't that a kick in the head.
© Bandai Namco
Aussie Tekken Overlord and OzHadou Nationals Tournament organizer Youssef "FaYd" Faddoul sat down with us to explain why he thinks Tekken 7 is better than Street Fighter V.
"Look at Street Fighter V, and I'm not hating here, just stating facts," he told us. "It had a very shaky launch with a bare-bones product and there was a lot of backlash towards it. The game rewards almost nothing. It has a very lackluster neutral game. It doesn't have any hard execution combos. It has a high amount of [input] lag. It doesn't have anything that sets it apart. The comeback mechanics are too overpowered. The community… they play it because that's the game they play, but most people aren't very fond of it."
"The flip-side, you take Tekken 7," he continued, animated. "It's been delayed for a while now, but that's probably the only negative thing you can say about it. As someone who has been playing it since it first came out in the arcades in Japan in 2015, the game is super rewarding. It has a very potent neutral game, it has heavy execution for seasoned players, if you want to get the highest level movement or if you want to do fancy combos with execution heavy characters. It has no lag. I can't believe that's even a point in this day and age. It has no lag, the game is super responsive, it looks beautiful, and like I said before they really marketed the game to both casual and competitive players. Whereas in Capcom's case they really wanted to bring in new casual players. The competitive scene who had been loyal for all those years, they just got left behind."
Input lag in particular is a tough measure — it's always worse in 2D games compared to 3D ones because movement is noticeably more immediate (or at least it should be). Tekken 7 might yet have input delay, but thanks to clever design it is nigh unnoticeable (and specifically cued to make online play work that much smoother). We instead asked FaYd about how Tekken 7 is targeting both new and old-school players — how it is lowering the skill floor while raising the skill ceiling.
"In Tekken 7 they've found a really good balance in appealing to both competitive and casual players," he explained. "There's everything for the serious player who wants to have their tough competition via movement and execution, but at the same time there's stuff like your Super [Rage Arts], where you press two buttons and — BAM — you do a super move, or there's the new system for getting you up off the floor so you don't get pummeled all the time."
"The damage [on a successful Rage Art] is pretty high, but it's a comeback mechanic," FaYd continued. "Some people like comeback mechanics, some don't — I like them though. They look cool, they're hype and they get the crowd going so they get a tick in my book."
"They're not as powerful as you might think," he said when we asked whether Rage Arts had changed the way the pros approached Tekken. "Every super except for four of them is very unsafe because you can block them. And if I block your super, I'm punishing you. Three of the four left are safe because they are high [attacks]. So if you see them coming you can [duck them and] punish them. That last one which is safe and still a mid attack so you can't duck it, the only one that is completely safe is Hwoarang and he has to do his super from stance. He can't just do it, he has to get into his stance and then do it. So it's slow and really telegraphed."
5 min
We talk to Katsuhiro Harada about Tekken 7
Harada-san sits down with us to talk about Rage Arts, Tech throws and creating a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling to make pro-players and newcomers alike happy.
"So the way throws worked in Tekken — prior to Tekken 7 — with a generic throw you have to react to the arms and break accordingly," he said. "So if I do a 1 throw — 1 being 1+3 or Square+X — you have to break with the square button. That's a 1 break. If I do a generic 2 throw — that's 2+4 or triangle+circle — you have to react to my right arm going forward and press the 2 button. Less experienced players would complain that 'grabs are so cheap, I can't just mash and break them'. At high level Tekken grabs are actually very weak because there are so many ways to react to them — they're slow, you can break them, you can sidestep them and you can also duck them because they're high. But for someone who's new to the game though, throwing can seem OP and too strong. So the way Bandai Namco approached Tekken 7, they decided that, you know what, with grabs you don't have to react with timing — you can mash and you'll break any generic grab."
"Some characters are actually a bit better now because of this," he continued. "The character I play, Dragunov, he still has command grabs. He has three different command grabs and with each of them you cannot mash to break them — you have to react to the hand that is leading, so a 1 break, a 2 break or a 1+2 break if the grab is leading with both arms. Characters like Dragunov, Paul and King who have these command grabs where you have to react to break them, they now have a slight advantage. But at the end of the day grabs are still nowhere near as OP as some people tend to think. They're best used when an opponent is scared to make a move — if they're waiting there for me to do something, I grab them. If they break it, no loss. If they don't I get some damage."
Eddy returns in Tekken 7, bringing more Capoeira
© Bandai Namco
Tekken 7 will see more play time at Battle Arena Melbourne 9 this weekend, where some of the best players from around the world are flying in to play the game, including Echo Fox's Choi “Saint” Jinwoo and Kim “JDCR” HyunJin. You can view the full schedule for the event on the CouchWarriors Site.
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