Shacknews Top 24 Games of the Year 2024

#10 Game of the Year 2024 - Tekken 8

There's a lot of stress involved when building a new game from a popular franchise in a new engine. Instead of simply iterating and taking what it needed from Tekken 7, Bandai Namco had to build Tekken 8 from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. There was a lot of stress about physics, character look, and the overall features of the game…

But in the end it all paid off. Tekken 8 is a masterpiece of a fighting game, and only Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive are really capable of the kind of quality that competes with it. However, Tekken 8 brings something they don’t: 3D fighting without being an arena fighter. Tekken 8 is amazing in its stage design, offering players some of the most beautiful arenas ever while making them highly strategic and interactable as always.

The characters are amazing and intense as well. This game launched with a massive roster and has only added to it since. The characters are also incredibly fun and balanced. Many will tell you that Dragunov or Feng are a problem, but the truth is that if you put in the time and effort, you can learn to do well with any character. Take it from TJ Denzer, who has made it to blue tier ranks with the supposedly C-Tier Kuma.

Or don’t! You can easily pursue your own path in Tekken 8 because the game gives you a ton of options to play, have fun, and learn. It features a solid story mode, an arcade-style mode with character endings, and one of the most ridiculously well-equipped training modes ever put in a game. Put that together with solid rollback netcode and crossplay and you have all the pieces that make Tekken 8 one of the best fighting games ever, not to mention an excellent addition to 2024's gaming release lineup.

Tekken 8 is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms.

Shack Staff

Shack Staff stories are a collective effort with multiple staff members contributing. Many of our lists often involve entires from several editors, and our weekly Shack Chat is something we all contribute to as a group.