Tekken 6 Review [PS3]

There’s no denying that the one-on-one fighter has made a bit of a comeback in 2009, thanks to the impressive return of Street Fighter to the current generation of consoles. Street Fighter IV offers familiarity and yet includes enough subtle gameplay enhancements to make the game feel new and, more importantly, relevant. Namco Bandai has followed a similar formula with Tekken 6, albeit with less-impressive results.  While the classic Tekken gameplay is as accessible and deep as ever, the tweaked mechanics will divide the fan community and the new game modes are of varying quality.

The major new game mode in Tekken 6 is the Scenario Campaign which builds on the Tekken Force mode from Tekken 3 and 4, adding a Streets of Rage/Final Fight-style scrolling beat ‘em up mode to the roster. Scenario Campaign starts off quite brightly, with a potted history of the Tekken mythology told through voiceover and comic-book style cutscenes. However, these soon give way to the rather tatty-looking in-engine cutscenes which introduce two new player characters, Lars and Alisa. These cutscenes manage to be both way too long and criminally tedious – if you’re a fan of people walking very slowly into a room, looking at absolutely everything in the room very slowly and then saying something mysterious then you’re in luck. If, like me, you find this about as deep as a 50 Cent lyric, you’re going to want to skip them.

Unfortunately, the gameplay in Scenario Campaign is no better than the story-telling. In each stage, you and Alisa will face off against a number of grunt enemies before taking on a boss character.  If you’ve played any half-decent third person fighter of recent times, then Scenario Campaign is going to feel a little primitive. For a start, you have no control over the camera – presumably because fiddling about with the right stick would get in the way of the face button attacks – and unfortunately you can’t rely on the game to keep the camera looking in the right direction. All too often you’ll find yourself attacking an enemy just off-screen and it’s something which should have been avoided. The shonky camera also means movement can be a pain, especially as there are two types of movement – the left stick activates free movement while the d-pad is used for combat movement, in theory allowing you access to all of the moves from the one-on-one mode. Switching between the two, however, doesn’t feel very natural and as a result the controls in Scenario Campaign feel confused and clumsy. Factor in insta-death areas of the game world (eg water), lots of enemies, lazy presentation (some scenes have voice acting, many don’t) and sub-par visuals and you have a recipe for a shit sandwich.

However, one redeeming feature (or annoyance, depending on your point of view) of playing the Scenario Campaign is that, once you get a few stages in, you’ll unlock the Arena Mode which is much more fun. In Arena, you’ll take your character through around five fights and once you beat final boss Azazel you’ll be shown your character’s ending cinematic, many of which are very good and mark a definite step up from the lacklustre cutscenes in the Scenario Campaign. Of the other game modes, Ghost mode is the standout allowing you to download the fighting style of a human opponent and try your skills against it. The main benefit of playing Ghost mode is that you become more adaptive as you’re forced to defend yourself against a more varied set of moves than the AI usually provides. It’s also a good way for those who fear a pasting online to hone their skills before taking on human opponents in multiplayer. And with the new gameplay tweaks, Tekken newbies might find it harder than ever to hold their own online.

The two main gameplay ‘enhancements’ in Tekken 6 are the Rage system and the new Bound mechanic, The former kicks in when your energy drops to a critically low point, increasing the power of your own attacks in a bid to add a bit of last minute drama to matches. Nine times out of ten, the Rage will make no difference whatsoever as, by the time it kicks in, you’re one decent hit away from being KOed anyway. However, take on a human fighter who knows his juggle combos and, if they manage to land one when Rage is activated, you’re likely to get pillaged.

The aforementioned juggle combos have also been tweaked in Tekken 6, with the addition of the new Bound mechanic. This allows you to slam an enemy into the ground during a juggle combo, bouncing them back up into the air so you can continue to juggle them. While this will not be a major concern to casual Tekken fans, who will pull off the occasional Bound move, the serious players who know how to launch and juggle their opponents will no doubt take full advantage meaning you can expect some frustrating times online against the skilled players. That’s assuming you have the patience for an online mode which, currently, is plagued by poor netcode resulting in some criminal input lag. And let’s face it, Tekken is not a game in which you want to find yourself wrestling with the basics while your opponent pulls off a ten hit combo.

Fortunately, despite the poor online game and the dodgy Scenario Campaign, the core gameplay in Tekken 6 is enough to warrant a purchase. The Tekken games have always struck an impressive balance between accessibility and depth and this is still true in the game’s most recent outing. The four button/four limb fighting is easy to grasp for beginners while intermediate players will find themselves experimenting with some of the more ambitious combos on the command list. And then, of course, the best players will juggle you halfway across the screen. As such, Tekken 6 is no real departure for the series, but rather a subtle evolution. If only Namco spent less time on the Scenario Campaign and more time on the netcode...