Introduction
The Tekken franchise is one I’ve previously covered as part of an accessibility review and, at that point in time, the landscape was a very different beast, with gaming without sight arguably only beginning to be considered with things like menu narration and console interfaces in the relative early stages of improvement.
But now, almost 7 years on, what changes has the series undergone for better or worse from its 7th to 8th main-line entry as a gamer without sight?
Demo Impressions
Before going into this, I had played the demo and, though I recorded footage in the form of a first-impressions video that I’d hoped to show to you all, the resulting audio was unfortunately not usable, thus leaving the video on the cutting room floor. As a product of these investigations, however, I did discover that the game’s font did seem to lend itself well to positive OCR results, though not without some confusion in places.
Taking this knowledge in-hand, I loaded up the final retail build.
The Retail Version
Note
Given my previous experience above with the demo for the game, I decided to try and do as much as I could without sighted assistance and analyse it purely from that point of view. The following instructions (at least up until I reach the game itself) also work with Xbox, though I played on PS5 for the writing up of these elements.
First Boot
Firing up the game, you’re greeted by the logo that begins all of the various character trailers that you might’ve seen, followed by an intro movie with a very heavy techno soundtrack. Pressing confirm brings up a press any button screen.
On doing as instructed, with a loud boom you are presented with the end user license agreement. To accept this, you can press left (in a non-wrapping menu I might add), then confirm again to agree.
The privacy policy follows the same pattern, just left and confirm to accept, at which point you are presented with the “handling of user data” screen.
It’s my understanding that you can decline the processing of your data by hitting the right-hand of the two options in this menu, but I chose to allow it here during my review.
Though at this point I hadn’t tried it yet, cross-platform play is supported as exemplified by the next screen you’re brought to. Unfortunately, this menu is both a vertical one and of the wrapping variety, meaning that you have no idea which option you’re selecting. Opting for the default as I’d hoped it would adhere to the recommendation of turning cross-platform play on, you’re brought to what the OCR showed as the “dynamic range settings”, though I reckon a key word was missing as these are for display rather than audio, thus meaning that it should’ve said “High Dynamic Range”.
Again, this is another wrapping vertical menu, though the usual strategy of leaving everything at default and then going up once and hitting confirm did not in fact get me to the next screen. Pressing right on the DPad did play a different sound cue, though what it was I couldn’t tell due to lacking menu narration. Oddly enough, pressing circle (or back as it might be called throughout parts of this review) allowed me to proceed, telling me that “this game has an autosave feature”. This prompt can be dismissed with confirm, as you’d probably expect.
Entering A Player name
At this point, much like Street Fighter 6, you’ll be asked to enter a player name with, if the OCR is accurate, a limit of 15 characters. Hitting confirm brings up the PS5 keyboard which, as of the time of writing, does not speak, thus meaning that you’ll either have to use a physical one and hope that it works or just enter something random and hope. This could be a huge progression blocker as from what I could tell there is no way to randomly generate a name, though of course it can be changed in the options menu if you’re able to get past this in any way.
I myself have a physical keyboard and thankfully it seemed to work, though I didn’t get any feedback to tell me characters were being entered at all from the PS5 interface. Going down once and hitting confirm, after seeing my name successfully entered via OCR, gave me a prompt about a Tekken ID with the words “Enjoy Tekken 8” at the bottom. One final press of confirm takes you to the game itself.
The Game Itself
The game loads in with a rather soothing synthesiser soundtrack that almost sounds like it could’ve been in Tekken 7 as well, if I’m honest. Initially OCR showed me a prompt that highlighted the store, but when I went back to check how to dismiss it, it had gone, replaced by a screen welcoming me to the world of Tekken 8, dismissed with circle/back.
Now, after all that, we’re finally at the main menu, which is vertical and wrapping. Once again it must be reiterated there is no menu narration, so OCR, memorisation or sighted assistance are your only options here realistically, at least as of the time of this review.
Hitting circle to dismiss a prompt, seemingly about addon content from what I could gather, I was surprised to see accessibility listed in amongst the various onscreen elements. Accessing this though seemed rather complicated, as not only does the main menu support vertical movement, but also movement via tabs with R1/L1
In addition, rather confusingly, there is the ability to remove elements from the first menu, which is actually your favourites tab. I say confusingly as the main menu options still show up via the aforementioned tab system as well, making for what at first looks like duplicate options to an overwhelming degree.
Reloading the entire game in an effort to see what might change and to try and find the accessibility options, getting back to the main menu through the press any button screen and waiting for the server to establish a connection, I realised that going up once from your starting point should get you to the options screen once you hit confirm. Regular co-pilot Gibbon and I called the area of the menus containing the settings option and other similarly grouped elements the “bar” or “bottom bar”, as it can be moved through horizontally and also contains the accessibility-specific settings too. You can access said “bar” by moving up one from the main menu and then horizontally to enter certain submenus.
Interestingly, though I could see the word “accessibility” as a part of the OCR for the main menu, I could not find an accessibility tab under the options menu. Instead, it’s a separate part of the bar. With no narration this means that I’d have to go through the tedious process of looking through every menu to try and find what I wanted which, whilst theoretically possible, has the potential to cause problems especially when going into menus like controller setup.
What’s In The Accessibility menu?
Tekken 8 is the first game in the series that I can think of that acknowledges accessibility out right, though its journey hasn’t exactly been a smooth one in that regard. From what I could tell from OCR, however, there is only one option, relating to “colour support”. If this is indeed the case and there’s only one option, then I hope more are added in the future, but it’s good to see some kind of progress in a series at least, it could be argued.
True Arcade Experience
Tekken has always been known as an arcade franchise, some might even call it an arcade-first series, with entries often coming to consoles years after they first appeared on large physical machines designed for thousands of people to play for a price.
However, with world events happening as they have over the past few years, arcades, it could be said, are very much a thing of the past. Whatever the reasoning behind it, it appeared that Tekken 8 no longer, on the surface at least, had an arcade mode of any kind where you fight through a series of increasingly difficult battles with a boss at the end.
Strangely enough, on digging a little deeper, I discovered that there was in fact an arcade battle mode, though it was sadly harder to find, instead being located in one of the aforementioned tabs. Each arcade battle playthrough consists of several consecutive fights with a final boss and some cutscenes to frame the overall experience.
Control Schemes
In playing through character episodes, I found out about Special Style, this game’s version of “modern” controls in Street Fighter 6 and other similar implementations. By default, pressing L1 during a match engages it and pressing it again returns the controls to their standard functions. However, there is no sound cue for this, which is unfortunate as it then means that you can’t tell which mode you’re in. Switching in and out, however, does seem to be pretty responsive.
The Story
As much as I enjoy Tekken for its sound design and impactful gameplay, the fact remains that the story mode, whilst it is interesting and at times absolutely ridiculous, is still as incomprehensible as ever without a way to read the subtitles, thanks to its trademark of having everyone speak their native tongue, as well as of course the lack of audio description to know what’s going on in the scenes aside from dialogue as well.
However, one thing I will compliment Tekken 8’s story on is a likely unintended piece of accessibility implementation.
Story Spoilers Follow
At a point a little way into the story, the game harkens back to previous tournaments, not only through music and characters, but also in using announcer styles similar to those previous games to select your fighter between choices of two, with accompanying soundtracks from the games in which they appeared. These left and right choices don’t wrap and are voiced when you move between characters, a great example of how you could integrate accessibility directly into character select screens if you already have the assets, something that has rarely been done by default at least.
As much as I couldn’t understand the story that led up to this, nor what came after (and even OCR wasn’t making much sense of the subtitles), I was overjoyed to see this as part of the mode as it meant that I knew who I’d be fighting as without having to try and work it out from, say, audio alone.
What followed this fight was actually a frustrating battle. Though I attempted it many times and failed for no discernible reason, it seemed as though, when I pressed buttons during a particular moment, things happened differently during the final round, making me realise that if there hadn’t been before this instance, there were now certainly QTEs in the mix. Having admittedly not followed the game too closely as I’m only a casual Tekken enjoyer, I found that QTE options had been mentioned before release.
Having to go through the rest via simply pressing buttons when I thought there might be a QTE (seemingly indicated by a sound cue), there was one that got me, right at the end of the story mode. Having fought through numerous enemies, irrespective of the fact that I skipped the cutscenes to look up a full story explanation later, I wanted to finish this legacy-spanning epic, but couldn’t. I’d get to a certain point during the final boss battle and, without fail, lose during a cutscene. I then remembered what I’d seen a while earlier and realised a QTE might be my barrier. Watching a video on YouTube of the final boss fight and ending which had already been published by someone else, I heard a sound cue that I understood to mean “you’ve pressed something”, confirming my theory to be correct.
Getting sighted assistance, I was informed that it was indeed a QTE, but that instead of being a press, it was a hold. As a result, I would never have known it was there without a massive amount of luck to pick the right button and hold it for the right length of time.
In addition to these button prompts, there are tutorials that pop up at a later stage of the game that must be closed with circle and cover mechanics around the heat system. Having these not be narrated is frustrating, but given the rest of the game isn’t narrated, it’s not really a surprise, though it might leave players feeling like they have to turn on the aforementioned Special Style to get the most out of the game. Whilst it could be true that this is the case, Special Style can only get you so far, but definitely gives you the feeling of power without having to dive into the move lists or try and find screen reader friendly guides online.
All of this being said and language barrier aside, I loved the gameplay of story mode as a casual fan of the series, having played all the way since Tekken 3 on PSX. Why? Because it not only took visuals and characters from the previous games, but the music as well, thus meaning that I could feel a little more included as someone previously invested in the series.
Stereo and Sound Design
A key difference you may immediately notice when comparing Tekken 8 to other titles in the franchise is that you can actually hear characters positions on the left or right of the screen thanks to their voices and, specifically, their stereo positioning. The punches and swings of combat appear to be all centralised, but just by having character’s vocalisations be panned, you now finally, after decades of waiting, have a way to tell which way to block without having to do so randomly as well as know where back and forward are in terms of your control scheme, meaning that outputting those masterful combos is easier than ever.
The crunchy impact of Tekken 7 returns, now with an atmosphere almost reminding me of Street Fighter though only in its sheer scale and power as opposed to that most recent game’s hip-hop aesthetics. The commonly seen super-style moves make a reappearance too, with just as much flare and flash as you might hope to see.
All in all, from a sound perspective, it’s not necessarily surprising other than the introduction of stereo in combat, but what’s here is definitely appreciated and feels solid, with every blow and impact feeling weighty and powerful.
Arcade Quest
Arcade Quest, in spite of the rather unusual name, is a secondary mode designed as a tutorial of sorts. Talking to characters and fighting battles, though they can be got through with either OCR or skipping of cutscenes, are not the only things you have to do. You still have to walk around to find people. This can lead to some frustrating issues where even if you only have to find a single NPC to progress, you are stuck wandering around trying to locate them as the game doesn’t have any accommodations for those who can’t see where the NPCs are. This was sad as I was hoping to get as many achievements as I could in this title, but unfortunately would have to get sighted assistance for a smooth experience in this mode.
Summary
Pros
- Great sound design and scoring
- Good utilisation of DualSense haptics during story sequences compared to previous iterations of the franchise
- Gameplay feels responsive and fluid
- Story recognises its legacy and embraces it
Cons
- Lack of menu narration makes the complex menu system more problematic to navigate and find accessibility options
- No accessibility options for those who can’t read subtitles, unfortunate as this makes a lot of the story incomprehensible
- Accessibility menu only has one option
Conclusions
Tekken 8 is an interesting game as a gamer without sight. On the one hand it presents fluid gameplay and responsive controls, on the other it contains a complex menu structure with no narration and a story where you have to be able to read the subtitles and ideally have audio description to get the full picture.
With Arcade Quest and other minigames like Tekken Ball returning, neither of which have enough accessibility to be fully workable without just luck, trial and error or brute force, it’s rather a mixed bag. In amongst all this though, the fact remains that Tekken 8 is a big improvement on the previous entry, even if it’s only in one key aspect of audio design. Having this be the first stereo-oriented Tekken game where it is a fully implemented part of the combat system is a huge win for accessibility for anyone who relies on stereo positioning. I only hope that this progress continues.
Hopefully we keep seeing strides being made in the Tekken series and throughout the fighting game industry and of course, across gaming as a whole so that gamers all across the spectrum of sight loss are able to join in, participate and be included.