Tekken 5 has been around for ages now, it first made its appearance on the PsOne back in the early ninety’s. Since then the series has never looked back, but it could be said that the last game was not a big enough leap to justify the cost of buying the new version. Hopefully Tekken 5 will put the series back on track and give the fans something worth forking out their hard earned cash on.

Tekken 5 in some respects seems to have gone backwards a bit to go forwards again. For example Tekken 4 didn’t offer much over the previous installment, but it did add some position change moves which didn’t go down too well, so these have been removed as have all the uneven surfaces in the fighting arenas. However walls are still present in some arenas.

The arcade mode does exactly what it says on the tin, you are challenged by numerous fighters until you finally reach the big bad boss. To add a bit of spice to the game you will earn gold as you battle your way through the challengers. The gold can be spent on customizing the Tekken characters. You can alter everything from the characters colour to the clothes they wear and even give you characters accessories such as shades and jewelry. Each character has different options for customization, if your character is wearing the alternative outfit the options will change again and in some cases you will be able to buy a third outfit for some characters.

Tekken 5 sees some familiar old faces as well as new. The obvious characters are here such as Law, Yoshimitsu, King and Nina as well as some older characters that aren’t regulars such as Bryan and Hwoarang. The three new characters seen in Tekken 4 are back and Tekken 5 introduces 3 completely new characters to the mix Raven, Asuka and Fengwei. Raven has an uncanny resemblance to Wesley Snipe especially from the film Demolition Man. Asuka is a school girl and the cousin of Jin Kazama and she also happens to be a master of the Kazama style. Feng is a mysterious character that has entered the tournament to find a sacred scroll owned by Mishima Zaibatsu.

The character roaster is not the only thing which has changed, the three new characters fit in very well and each of the characters that has been seen before has a revised set of moves that make them feel fresh and some how better, but not so different that they feel unrecognizable to fight with.

Tekken series has been known to add extra mini games in the past such as ten pin bowling and Tekken double dragon style on a side on platform level. This time the mini game is similar to the double dragon take, but this time the camera is behind Jin as you set on the path to raid Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation headquarters in Devil Within. As the camera is always behind Jin there is a locking on system which will enable you to make sure you will always hit the person you intended, but in reality this doesn’t really work so well. You are constantly outnumbered by guards and the lock on system can cause you to get hit, as you are only aiming at the one person, if you don’t use it you will find you can take out numbers of guards at the same time.

The animation is better than ever, you can see a few old animations left in the game bit for the most part Tekken 5 is incredibly fluid. This is even more noticeable when you see kicks and punches connect, you really do get the sense of hard hitting bone crunching moves.

From a graphical aspect Tekken 5 impresses even further, it has to be one, if not the best looking games on the market for the PS2. It looks so good you can hardly believe you are playing the game on a PS2. Skin tones and textures are incredibly realistic, you won’t see any plastic skin here. Some of the areas are absolutely amazing, especially the arena where everything is on fire, you can even see heat haze on distant objects as you look through the fire.Tekken 5 is probably the best looking PS2 game to date and it doesn’t look like anything is going to get close in the near future.

The sound effects are most of less the same as Tekken 4, not much has changed here. The music has always been a fairly weak point in previous Tekken games, this time Namco have up’d the anti and the music is more fitting to each of the background arenas. Tekken 5 also sees the characters speak in the native language which is a very nice touch. It does get a little bonkers when you are listening to a bear talk in bear language but the game certainly benefits from it.

There aren’t many games that have been made to such a high quality as Tekken 5, maybe it is because they have had four goes at it previously and honed their skills in the trade, but whatever you put it down to Tekken 5 is an awesome game. The fighting is super fluid the fact that they have made changes to the older characters moves makes the whole thing feel like a new game. Then you have the outstanding visuals and a great sound track to finish the whole thing off with a cherry on top. What more could you want?

9.5 out of 10