The best fighting game in the catalog
TEKKEN 3, the versus game that never aged
- Critic score
- 96
- Player rating
- 4.7/5
- Main story
- 1.9 h
- Genre
- Fighting
Released in arcades in 1997 and on the original PlayStation a year later, TEKKEN 3 still holds the highest fighting-game score in the whole PS Plus catalog. Here is why it holds up.
TEKKEN 3 is the third entry in Namco's fighting series, and the one that locked in the formula for the following two decades. This is where Jin Kazama, Ling Xiaoyu, Hwoarang and Julia Chang first appear — faces that became fixtures — in a roster of twenty-three characters that almost entirely replaced the one from the first two games.
What sets it apart technically is genuine three-dimensional movement: you can sidestep, break out of your opponent's axis, go around an attack instead of merely backing away. That sounds unremarkable today because every 3D fighter adopted it afterwards. At the time, it made the two previous entries look dated overnight.
The bonus content explains its reputation too. Tekken Force turns the game into a side-scrolling brawler, and Tekken Ball — volleyball played with the game's own attacks — remains one of the most absurd and most successful extras the genre has produced. With more than 8.5 million copies sold, it is the second best-selling fighting game ever made.
The playtime shown above deserves a word: under two hours is what it takes to clear arcade mode once. That is obviously not the measure of a fighting game, which lives in dozens of hours of practice or in an evening on the sofa with someone else. It is a useful reminder that playtime means very different things depending on the genre.
It sits in the Classics Catalog, so it requires a Premium subscription. If you have never touched a Tekken, this is the ideal way in: more readable than the recent entries, and just as sharp to play.