Tekken 6 Review

I got Tekken 6 on my birthday, and I've been playing it off and on for the last couple of days, after finally completing the scenario campaign mode and playing a few online modes, I can provide to you a solid review of the game. On first glance you think Tekken 6 is just going to be some run-of-the-mill arcade port of a game with possible DLC coming our way, but Namco (/bandai) has been on their game with fleshing the title out to be a fighting experience. This is apparent in it's wealth of content.

Tekken 6 like it's previous iterations (Tekken force/Devil Within) include a 1 player beat-em-up section called Scenario campaign mode. In this mode you play as Lars a former member of the Tekken force, who holds the key to stopping the Mishima feud that pretty much has the world on the brink of destruction. Players will fight their way through the game while earning articles of clothing used to increase the character's stats and add status effects to their attacks. Useful? maybe. I didn't even start using these until i was at the end of the story, as it's easy to just juggle bosses mercilessly until they're defeated.

Unfortunately the biggest drawback to this mode is the atrocious camera. Seriously, guys can we please have a controlled camera on the second thumbstick? or at least fix the camera to where it isn't rotating around in the opposite direction when I'm fighting someone or grabbing items behind me? The other drawbacks consist of the AI of Alisa. Alisa wasn't so bad at the beginning, but later on she tends to die often or do unnecessary moves that allow her to fall off of platforms that leave you being overwhelmed by the onslaught of hired thugs. That is so damn frustrating! Oh and i hope you guys enjoy long cutscenes, because this mode it full of them, with their own long winded monologues about war and the evils of corporations. Very Kojima-esque, but kind of a bit much for a mindless brawler. I'm glad this is bonus content, because if this were released ala MK: mythologies it would of been a hard pill to swallow.

Aside from that, Tekken 6 has a lot more going for it. There are a total of 46 characters (the largest Tekken roster so far) , and eighteen stages with some that are multi-tiered with collapsing floors. The newest feature is the RAGE system (which reminds me Garou: Mark of the wolves) A feature that activates when your life bar reaches critical and grants players added damage to deal up to 100% damaging combos. Also T6 has brought juggling back into the forefront of the game's mechanics. This is good for people who enjoyed Tekken 3's juggling gameplay, and bad for me since I tend to play more strategically for parries combos and throws.

The difficulty is an odd bird, where some stages the AI is pretty easy to defeat, and some stages are an exercise in patience and frustration. Usually in fighting games the difficulty starts low and ramps up as you progress, but this seems more like it's based off of various player data than trying to gradually mold you into a more conscious fighter. Then you get to the final boss and you're ready to just turn the damn game off. Azazel is a cheap cheap monster.

The online features versus, ranking and the ability to download and upload ghost data to use in your struggle to be the the king of the iron fist. The ghost data is great, and the versus and ranking are fine. There was a bit of lag, but the patch seemed to fix all of that. The only gripes I seem to have are with the players you come across, some being fairly skilled to some who just flat-out abuse the "one button FTW" philosophy. It's alright though, as I've been pretty gracious about preferring and blocking out who i want to play with, which is just an awesome and necessary feature for online anything.

I tend to enjoy Tekken 6's music more than i did with previous entries. there just seems to be a wide variety of different styles from trance, to metal, to yodeling. That's astounding, yet entertaining. True, there's fewer standout tracks like Ogre's stage in Tekken Tag, and "Touch and Go" in Tekken 4, but the whole is still largely appealing.

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The Spiracy Scale







Graphics- Sweet! Top notch graphics, and very impressive background and special effects.

Sound- Good! Diverse, and yet still fitting. Nothing too spectacular but still good.

Difficulty- Good? it's a mixed bag.

Controls- Sweet! Tight as always with lightning fast responses.

Replayability- Good! Online and Scenario campaign modes will keep you playing this long into the year with a possible patch for online scenario co-op in the works

The Verdict- Buy it! Tekken 6 is a solid arcade experience with a little something extra, and if you're into that then this definitely for you. There are a few things that don't work out well in the execution, and could probably stand improvement in future installments, but for what it is it's a damn good fighter and does a hell of a lot better in the content department than it's competition.