Now a hit produces an maelstrom of different effects - particles, shaders and flat textures. We've come a long way from the low resolution alpha - small puffs of fire - used in Tekken Tag 2 or Tekken 6. Most obviously though, hit impacts between characters now produce an excess of effects we just didn't have before. Intro sequences and the new Rage Art moves also use Unreal 4's bokeh depth of field and bloom - adding spectacle to cutscenes, though dialled back for gameplay. Series staples like Kazuya and Heihachi get a clear mark-up in shader complexity for skin and clothes. The move to UE4 opens the door to cutting edge visuals in Tekken 7, and the very latest physically-based rendering techniques. Just as crucially though, all four fighters have one major thing in common: a successful lock at 60 frames per second. But whether it's Unreal Engine 3 or 4, clearly that flexibility attracts attention from developers. Impressively, even recent Unreal Engine 3 fighters turn in entirely different results using related technology - from the cel-shaded style of Guilty Gear Xrd, to Injustice 2 with its push for realistic facial animations. Tekken 7 joins the likes of Street Fighter 5, another title that uses its advanced shader toolset, post-effects pipeline, and physics on character hair and clothes.

In this generation, it's seen a huge rise in interest from Japanese developers, particularly in fighting games. Namco's move to Unreal Engine is hardly unprecedented. In the years between, tweaks to visuals and gameplay have stacked up, and what we have now with the PS4, PC and Xbox One is the most up-to-date iteration of the game yet - albeit with sizeable graphical differences between them. It demonstrated very quickly the successes of moving away from the Tekken series' proprietary engine, this time daring to make the shift to the increasingly popular Unreal Engine 4.

Tekken 7 launched yesterday, though it's worth stressing its original debut was in 2015, on Namco's PC-based System ES3 arcade board in Japan.

Tekken 7 pc