
These "environmental hazards" in turn allowed players to juggle opponents for consecutive combos and allowed the designers to implement a "switch maneuver", which let players escape from cornering and throw the tide in their favor. For the first time, it allowed players to maneuver around an arena interacting with walls and other obstacles for extra damage. Tekken 4 introduced significant new gameplay changes from the previous games in the series. The game's story reveals that Kazuya has been revived following his death 20 years prior and enters the King of Iron First Tournament 4 to take back the Mishima Zaibatsu. There are up to 23 characters to choose from, including 6 new.

Placing distinction on the plot in the home version, the game also included many gameplay revisions, such as the ability for the player to move about before the round begins and the introduction of walled stages. It was released as an arcade game in 2001 and on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2002. It works especially well for catching an opponent in a combo string, juggling an airborne fighter or inflicting extra damage on one who's down for the count.Fighting Tekken 4 (鉄拳4) is a 2001 fighting game developed and published by Namco as the fourth main installment in the Tekkenseries. Every time you land a punch or kick on an enemy who's up against one of these barriers or the wall of the arena, he'll take extra-impact damage when he hits it.

Using these obstacles and the new grab-and-shove maneuver (see sidebar on previous page), you can set your opponent up to take major damage. But objects like trees, phone booths and statues make handy strategic blockers in almost every stage.

The huge playing fields are fenced in for the first time in the series, though you might not even notice for several rounds-they're that big. But its crisp visuals and interactive arenas are the best on the PS2 thus far. It doesn't have the fluidity and depth of Virtua Fighter 4-it's a bit clunkier on the control. Watch Lei's open shirt or Christie's long hair animate and you'll see what we mean-everything looks just as good as it does in the arcade version of Tekken 4. Every fighter has two costumes (or in Kuma's case, a Panda alter-ego) that contribute a great deal to the vibrant style of the game.
