Tekken 6

Review from Matt - Monday, 30 November 2009 @ 1:33pm

Videogames have evolved in leaps. Games such as Uncharted 2 match the cinema and scope of (admittedly fairly average) movies. Games like Modern Warfare 2 stimulate thought and discussion, raising moral challenges like never before in a video game. The increasing depth and scope of games has gone hand-in-hand with an increase in graphics, providing an unprecedented capacity for audience involvement and emotional response.

In Tekken 6 you punch stuff.

Punched!

The Tekken series pre-dates agriculture. I played obsessively since the first game hit arcades with its hexagonal fist. I maintain Tekken 3 as among the best (or even THE best?) game on the original Playstation. Not having a PS2 until late in the generation, I skipped over Tag Tournament and 4 before picking it up for Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, which I bought for both my PSP and on the PS3.

Still, I've been watching Tekken 6 in much the same way as ive been watching Miley Cyrus. Waiting for it to finally come of age and hoping I get a chance to play with it.

There's no doubt it's one of the more "technical" fighters. A lot of effort has been taken to represent real fighting styles, including boxing, Capoeira, Taikwondo, Jeet Kun Do, Wing Chun and even wrestling. Each iteration of the Tekken series has added new characters to expand the reportoire of the series, adding new fighting styles.

And it's at this that Tekken 6 excels. The are more characters than we've ever seen in a Tekken game, and probably more than I've seen in any other fighting game. It's an impressive array of wildly differing styles, and everyone can find someone that suits them or that they like. Good players will do well with the more technical but difficult characters, such as King or Nina, whereas scrubby losers will just stick to confusing cheap bastards like Eddy or one-hit wonders like Law or Paul. The new characters for this version add something fun, too.

Lars is a Mishima Zaibatsu soldier attempting to lead a revolution against the oppressive corporation. He's both powerful and quick, and his moves are impressive looking without being overly difficult to pull off. Not to mention he's prettier than a box of Shakiras. Alisa is another new character. She's an android, not really new for the Tekken series, where crazy comes in large bottles, but she has moves that involve throwing her head at people and growing chainsaws out of her arms. The fun of that cannot be overstated. Zafira is another new character. She's just plain hot. Her fighting style is kind of "waspish". Like some other characters (Lei jumps to mind) she has several different stances that change her move set, and this gives her an unpredictable style that combines with her speed to make a very effective fighter.

Lili - in the AIR

Like the rest of Tekken series the game goes from adequate to sublime when real people play each other. Against your mates the action is great, especially if you're both any good. T6 has gone out of its way to make this good too - characters are not locked from the beginning. That's right, instead of having to unlock half the characters to play the game you just bought for a party, you start with everything ready to go.

I'm trying to think of a good metaphor now for Tekken 6.

Imagine, if you will, that Tekken 6's multi-player fighting game is a diamond. Not just the shape that's on cards, I mean an actual lump of crystalised carbon. A pure, sparkling, beatiful gem. Now imagine that the Tekken 6 diamond is set on a ring made of razor wire and dried dog shit.

Scenario Mode is the real problem. It's another example (see Tekken Force) of them trying to expand the fighting engine intended for an essentially 2D plane into a 3D environment. The controls are borderline unworkable. Unable to handle complex combos and special moves you're limited to essentially punch punch kick and the tedium of the fighting gameplay is matched only by its length, with wave after wave of generic enemy attempting to kill you with ennui.

Devil Jin is a freaking DEMON. How is that fair?

As if that wasn't bad enough Scenario Mode has my current most hated gaming bullshit item: RPG elements. Enemies drop motherfucking loot like not only is it a brawler but it's fucking World of Warcraft, and these give you stat increases in the actual game. Possibly. I never used them because... you know.. that's idiotic. Worse still instead of just collecting items there are baby chickens and eggs and random cutesy items whose purpose eludes me. The "Scenario Mode" has more crazy and annoying bullshit than Tila Tequila on a webcam.

Even worse is the fact that Scenario Mode is full of cut scenes. Think of Metal Gear Solid 4 only with 8 times the cut scenes, sloppily presented, significantly longer, and with absolutely no gameplay to present. The cutscenes are poor. Very poor. They undermine character traits already established (Jin grieving over his fallen soldier is a stark contrast to the distant and brutal character presented elsewhere, for example) and contribute nothing in the way of story. Most awfully they're very long. Long and boring. Long and boring and awful and.. GAH! Naturally you can't skip them. If you do so you end up now standing somewhere else with someone else wondering what the hell just happened. The cutscene starts with you walking into a building when you skip you end up starting by walking out of the building, which is now made of poptarts and your character's wielding a ferret. I have no doubt that it would have been a 7 hour ordeal of crap video to watch, but I AM still curious where they got the poptarts.

Scenario Mode I see in much the same way as Lindsay Lohan going into rehab again. We've seen it tried before and it didn't work then either, so stop it because it's just getting fucking annoying.

Playing by myself made me remember my joys in Tekken 3, playing through every single character in story mode to unlock their ending videos, which varied from good to exceptional. Namco have always excelled at the CG for their games, and it seemed worth while to look to Tekken 6 for the same thing. Hell, logically (mathematically) it would be twice as good!

Sadly it's not. The ending videos the are unlocked are not up to the standard of Tekken 3. I mean, technically they are, but relative to the current standard of animation they don't stand out, and they're generally short and uninteresting. Worst of all, they're not unlocked in story mode.

They're unlocked in scenario mode.

Fuck. That.

I suppose I should conclude on this rather than just raging. Tekken 6 is excellent in many ways. It excels at what it should excel at. The story is getting contrived and weird, with way too much of the Mishima Zaibatsu bullshit, but the gameplay of "punch your friends" frankly never gets old. I wasn't particularly impressed with the graphics of this title. It seemed a little muddy and dull. There's really nothing we haven't seen (and better) in other fighting games, but it's always been a great way to spend an evening with a few mates, beers, and scores to settle.

Marduk (seen here going upside down) is drawn from an Aussie Wrestler

Taken on that shallow level of multi-player fun alone, Tekken 6 is a winner and should be on every fighting fan's list. But the single player experience is so compromised that it actually reduces the total. Some of the design decisions seem to owe more to hard drugs than experience with the series, and the scenario mode and Azazel stand out as some of the worst things I've seen in games.

Pros

Multi-player experience as strong as ever, huge character line-up, new characters are a solid addition

Cons

Fuck you Azazel. Scenario Mode is made of liquid fail. RPG elements have no place in a fighting game. Doesn't really add much to the genre or the series.

Summary

The Tekken series continues strongly, with another entry that fails to really add much to the series beyond a graphical update and a few new characters, but those additions are very welcome. If you have friends it's recommended, especially if they are (and you are) any good. But solo players should avoid the entire fighter genre and this especially. And don't play Scenario Mode. You've been warned. Seriously.