Over the years, my experience in fighting games has swung from very interested to not a chance and while my skill has never matched my level of interest at times, I have always found myself enjoying them when I do play them. While I grew up with Street Fighter, the Tekken series could probably be described as the one I keep going back to. Thankfully Bandai Namco were kind enough to invite me to put a good number of hours into the game and I came away impressed.

Now it is important to note that I am not a fighting game master, I would place my skills just a few levels about button mashing, but I was willing to try here and you know what, I didn’t need to worry. One of the things that the game brings in is a new system that lets players press single buttons to pull off big moves, instead of needing to worry about learning multiple input combinations. This system does allow handful of combination attacks to be used, but it doesn't provide all of them and as the Bandai Namco rep pointed out, pro players will know how to counter the limited move set on offer with it. What this means though is that players who have been deterred by fighting games in the past, can now lay the smack down in the single player modes or with friends on the couch and still feel accomplished. If this sounds similar, Street Fighter VI: 3D Edition on the Nintendo 3DS offered something similar, but there was more restrictive than the one here. But enough about new ways of playing, let us talk modes and the game has a lot of them.

The game offers a story mode, which is a continuation of the one found in Tekken 7, which as that released 6 years ago for consoles, may not be fresh in your mind. Now I did get to play more than the first chapter, but sadly I can only talk about the first, which is a good thing as the story has a few interesting turns. The story does pick up from where Tekken 7 ended, with Jin Kazama heading towards Kazuya Mishima, in order to stop the war that is coming. There are plenty of story moments between the fight that takes place and it does get a little chaotic at times, but I had fun with it. Now normally fighting games and story modes are not a mix I generally support, but here the fighting felt like it belonged, which was a little surprising, but very welcome. Beyond the first chapter there is a lot to look forward to, including the reveal of many new and returning characters, but again I can’t talk about that in detail, I will say that you will be entertained.

But what about when you are not engaging in a story, well there are a few options here, there is the traditional VS mode, where you can battle it out against the CPU or a friend locally. There is a plethora of online options for those looking to battle it out, there is a new Arcade mode called Arcade Quest and the beloved Tekken Ball returns. Arcade Quest is the one that I put the most time into, so let us insert a coin and begin there. Arcade Quest lets you create your own avatar, from the body shape and colour to the clothes you wear and go on a quest to become the best Tekken fighter in the world, at least the world that the mode is set in. I used the games customisation system to create a character that looked like Megamind and that was a great treat to see on the screen. The mode does have you interacting with a host of characters, all of them little chibi versions of people, but the matches you take place in are pure Tekken. This isn’t a second story mode, though there is a small story attached, but rather it acts more like a tutorial for what Tekken is and how to play it. As you progress through the mode, you will enter tournaments and get to fight stronger and stronger characters, which will test your skills. Outside of the story mode, I can easily see this being the mode I spend the most time in, given how approachable it is.

The other mode that I wanted to make sure I put time into was Tekken Ball, which is beach volleyball, but you use the ball to deal damage to your opponent. The mode made its debut in Tekken 3, but then popped up 14 years later in the Wii U edition of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. The basic idea is that in order to deliver damage to your enemies, you need to hit the ball at them, but you can’t just push it at them, you have to damage the ball and when it lands, that damage is transferred. There are multiple ball types, with some being quite easy to lay into and others requiring more effort. You can also counter the ball as it comes near you, doubling down on the return damage, but your opponent can also do the same to you. It isn’t the deepest of modes, but it is one fun mode and does break up the standard fighting. The only complaint I have is the lack of Tekken Bowl, which is ten pin bowling, Tekken style, but you can’t win them all.

Now while the story mode has lots to offer, as I was only given access to a small portion, I was not able to see if my main Tekken fighter Yoshimitsu made the cut, but thankfully in the Vs mode, I could see he was there. This is your basic fighting mode, you pick your character and if you are fighting against another human, they pick theirs and then you select a stage and duke it out. There are 32 characters announced for the game, that will all be there on release day with Reina being the latest addition and quite a mysterious character. With those 32, some of them have ties to the 16 stages, like Azucena Milagros Ortiz Castillo and the Ortiz Farm. Some of the stages feature a host of options that let you break through to new areas, like Wall and Balcony breaks, but some have a few extra things going on with them, like the one that takes place in space. Something that I liked is once a match was done, whether winning or losing, you can make quick adjustments to characters, starting position and even the stage, without having to jump back to the full menu, meaning the fights can stay happening.

All this talk though and I didn’t mention the replay system, you might just be thinking it’s your very basic replay watching option. Well yes you can do that as the game does automatically save all your battles, the reason why the replay system is so impressive is that this time it will actually teach you as well. One of the replays I watched was a battle between Kuma and Panda, in which I was Panda and I had set Kuma’s skill level to hard, which of course led to me being absolutely decimated. What the replay system does is it pauses when it gets to a massive combo and points out where you could have done something to stop it or counter, letting you cease the senseless beating you were receiving. This is not a training tool, it's not going to show you every possible option, but rather is a way of getting you thinking about what you can do, how you might recover in the midst of a battle. The training system the game offers does teach you things, you can also turn on options like frame counting to know how many frames you've got before you would land an attack, if you're in the air or if your opponent is in the air and all the attacks either side has used. Between both the replay and the training system for those players who may not be pro level, this could be a way to help boost up your skills and even the pro players may find something useful here as well.

There is much more to Tekken 8 than I have words to explain it all, there's the Rage system which will help you perhaps turn the tide of a battle if you're near defeat, or the only Heat system that will power up your player when activated. Health is also recoverable again something that the Tekken Tag series had in place previously and there's even more systems beyond those. Coming away from this, will I spend hours playing Tekken 8 going forward, unlikely but that is because fighting games are not my forte, however it has refreshed the adoration that I have for this series, it was approachable, fun and provided plenty of ways to play and if a friend wants to jump into the game for a few rounds I'll be up for it.

Tekken 8 will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 26th.