Tekken 8 Hwoarang
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Tekken 8 has sold 2 million copies, but suffers from pluggers, cheaters and major gameplay bugs

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Bandai Namco has announced that its latest fighting game, Tekken 8, has sold 2 million copies worldwide. Tekken 8 came out on January 26th, meaning that it took a month in order to hit this sales goal. And while this is great news for Bandai Namco, the game suffers from MAJOR issues.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a huge fan of Tekken. I’ve clocked 277 hours in Tekken 7 and 70 hours in T8. I’m also a “Battle Ruler”, so while I’m not a Tekken God player, I’m certainly not a rookie. And, right now, a lot of characters in T8 are completely unbalanced. Victor and King are two characters that are broken in many ways. For instance, under certain conditions, you can’t break King’s chain grabs (Lil Majin has explained these issues, so be sure to watch his video).

Then we have the pluggers and the cheaters. To be honest, I don’t give a damn about pluggers. Yes, it’s annoying but since I don’t really care about my rank, I also don’t care whether or not I get points. All I want is to have great matches. And that’s where the cheaters come into play.

Like Tekken 7, Tekken 8 has people that use macros, auto throw breaks and auto parries.

Here’s an example of someone using auto-block. Hwoarang’s kick combo can be avoided in the third kick by ducking. That’s because the third kick is a “High” (which you can only avoid by ducking). Now if you’re an experienced Hwo player, you can slightly delay the kick so that you can deliver a “Mid” kick. If your opponent falls into this trap and ducks, he’ll get punished. That’s precisely what happened here. However, in a matter of nanoseconds, Jin blocks the “Mid” kick (although he was ducking).

During my time with T8, I’ve seen every possible hack. I’ve seen people who are 3 levels below me break EVERY throw (no matter which grab I do). Breaking 100% every different throw is not even possible in big tournaments. I’ve seen people never dropping combos (I don’t mind that but no one can be perfect EVERY time). And I’ve seen people falling repeatedly into specific traps I set after hitting specific keys.

And, to be honest, I don’t even mind cheaters. If you want to use macros and cheats, be my guest. What really annoys me is the MAJOR gameplay bugs that T8 currently has.

For example, when an opponent presses a “High” punch or kick, Hworang can punish them with this combo (D-4-4). This punisher has been working since Tekken 3. It worked in T7 and it worked in Tekken 8’s beta. In the final version, SOME characters can regain their defense after getting hit. Here’s an example. As you can see, Jin was able to block the combo, even though he was hit. I’ve punished a lot of people with this combo in T8. From what I could see, Jin, Kazuya and King will miraculously regain their defense, whereas other characters will get hit by the whole combo.

Something similar happens with side-stepping. When someone side-steps and you hit them with a low combo, they wouldn’t normally be able to recover in the middle of it. Again, I’ve punished a lot of people that have tried to side-step. The fact that ONLY SPECIFIC characters can miraculously recover shows that something is messed up. And I don’t care if Bandai Namco makes this combo completely useless (but then you’ll have to wonder, why include it in the first place if it’s completely useless). All I want is consistency. Either make all chars able to block it or not.

To prove my point, here is what happens with Reina. It’s the exact same situation. Like with Jin, the match starts and she immediately side-steps. Notice that when she side-steps, she gets punished by the full combo. It’s the exact same combo.

And things don’t stop there. Here’s King who miraculously avoids a direct low punch (how the hell?).

Or how about this? After side-stepping, I tried to punish Victor with Hwoarang’s classic kick combo. And Victor manages to block the second kick in the middle of the combo? That’s not possible. If you get hit by the first hit, YOU WILL get hit by the second. The only way you can avoid the combo is by ducking in the third kick.

I could go on and on about all the gameplay bugs and issues Tekken 8 has. All I can hope for right now is for Bandai Namco to fix them in a future patch. However, since I’m not a Pro T8 gamer, I won’t keep playing this broken mess. I’ll certainly enjoy watching some tourneys on weekends. But man, this is the buggiest Tekken game I’ve seen to date. And that’s a bummer because I like it.