Tekken 6 Review [X360, PS3]

Posted November 17, 2009 by Benjamin Blank in Featured, Featured Home, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360.

Reviewed on the Xbox 360

For many the release of the original Tekken was an unfortunate one; Street Fighter Alpha was blowing up, King of Fighters was making a name for itself, and of course, Virtua Fighter 2 was wowing the entire world over. But despite all the odds Tekken pulled through to become a killer app for the PlayStation, and remained a key title in every PlayStation library since.

So with that you can hardly blame fighting fans for being so excited about the newest instalment. But with King of Fighters making a revolutionary jump, Virtua Fighter 5 demonstrating some of the most skilled fighting mechanics ever conceived, and yeah Street Fighter IV wowing the world over, Tekken 6 – will have to pull of the same trick as it did before to really make a splash.

And well here it is, the game is split up into three main modes. Offline you’ve got all the usual suspects; arcade, survival, endless mode and time attack. Online you’ve got your ranked and player matches along with the ability to upload and download ghost and replay data. And then there’s Scenario Mode, which takes you through the story of the series, first giving you a detailed, if somewhat confusing, summary of the previous five titles.

The actual gameplay here is reminiscent of your traditional beat ‘em up affair, as you take Lars through stages beating up on random thugs, till you face off against an end boss. It’s a cute mode that works well with added items, power ups and all the usual suspects of this type of gameplay. But it would’ve been nice to have this story etched out in a more dramatic one on one style arcade mode, as the whole thing feels like an after thought. And sadly so does the story.

Like with Resident Evil 5, if you’re coming new to this don’t expect to really know what’s going on. Unlike Resident Evil 5 however, the presentation here is dire. Aside from some nice CG cut scenes, characters swap dialogue in levels through text boxes with no lip synch and no dub. It all looks low budget, and for a Namco Bandai title, it’s questionable that it does so.

In addition to Offline and Scenario, there’s the now mandatory Online mode, which much like the recent KOF, is completely unplayable. And also like the recent KOF, a patch is in the works but the bottom line is the game shouldn’t have shipped in this state.

The main issue with Tekken 6 that will split audiences is that it just doesn’t feel that smooth. Fights can feel quite rigid with the characters and their attacks coming off as far too stiff. In comparison to other 3D arena fighters, like Virtua Fighter 5, the whole fighting system comes off as sluggish.

The reason for this isn’t a bad fighting mechanic, but one that Tekken has in place on purpose. The focus here isn’t on stringing moves and combos together, but rather pulling of powerful attacks one by one, or individual combos using air juggles.

On paper it sounds perfectly reasonable — after all King Of Fighters works on a slower and more powerful move based system. The problem lies in that you can pretty much just button bash your way through most fights. The fact that the fighting system is literally copied and pasted into a beat ‘em up mode proves this.

But this isn’t really a bad thing per say, as it’s far more accessible than other fighters in terms of pulling off combos, and can still be quite fun once you get into the grove of a particular fighter. But ultimately it’s just not that rewarding when you can get pretty much the same results from button bashing, while other titles will punish that amateur style of play.

Although Tekken fans will no doubt disagree with me, Tekken 6 just doesn’t stand up to the competition, but as a Tekken fan this game will indeed be the best fighter out there for them. It may not be fair to compare the title, but from a consumer stand-point it has to be done. And really Tekken 6 just doesn’t play as well as anything else on the current gen market. Some will love the air juggling and simple combo system, but while they work in context and can be fun, they don’t lend themselves to a highly rewarding experience.

But the fact remains that Tekken 6 is the best of the series by far and has some brilliant features, such as the character customisation, and a hugely varied roster of characters. But the bottom line is if you already love Tekken and its fighting system, you’ll love this game just as much. However, gamers coming new to the series will probably find there are much better and more fluid fighters out there.

Tagged as King Of Iron Fist Tournament, Namco Bandai, Playstation 3, Tekken 6, Xbox 360