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Tekken 6 Review in 2 words:-

“It’s Tekken”.

That pretty much sums it up. If you are not a fan of Tekken, you will not like this game. However, if you are, then your appetite will be appeased. The game contains over 40 characters, with the new characters being Lars (a Tekken Force rebel soldier), Miguel (a stereotypical spanish fighter), Leo (a metrosexual fighter), Bob (a super agile fatso), Zaphina (an odd character that’s stupidly bendy) and Alisa Bosconovich (a cyborg that can regenerate parts of her body). Characters have had makeovers (Armor King, for example, fights in a more Lucha Libre style), a lot of the characters have remained the same though, so if you want to stick with one of the older characters, you’ll be comfortable straight away.

If you are a Tekken fan, you’ll be most interested in two modes. The first is the Scenario campaign, which is basically the story of Lars & Alisa, their involvement in the tournament, and how they came together and why they are fighting together. It’s similar to similar modes in previous games, but plays quite well, with a chance to expand your characters with custom attire, it’s a nice touch and good fun. Furthermore, early on in the mode you unlock “Arena” mode. This gives you a chance to unlock the ending movies of characters you unlock as you make your way around Scenario. What makes this great is that you only have to beat 4 people to unlock the ending movies, rather than 7 or 8 in the Arcade Mode.

As well as Arcade Mode, mainstays such as time attack, survival, team battle & practice mode are also on the “Offline Mode”, but the second mode that has whetted the appetite of a lot of people is the “Online Mode”.

Yes, I know Tekken has been online before, but that was on the PSP & PS2, which didn’t really have great online support, certainly not to the level of the PS3 & Xbox. It’s your standard battle fare, with ranked (score recorded) & player (score not recorded), and you can download ghost data of any fight fought offline, which is interesting. Each character has to advance through levels, so it encourages you to play with more characters, rather than sticking with one character, though at higher levels, you unlock things for offline mode such as money for the shop, so sticking with one character could be worthwhile.

Bad points? Well the graphics don’t really shine. They’re not bad, but some characters look a bit odd, plus there are some horrible clipping issues within the game, particularly during throws. Furthermore, the text was designed for HD screens, which makes it nigh on impossible to read on a normal screen, it’s too small and blurry. I missed a lot of the setup story because of this. It doesn’t have even the voiceover like Tekken 4 does.

Speaking of voiceovers, one really odd thing is that everybody speaks both Japanese and English, so the Japanese characters will converse with Westerners with no language barrier, it comes accross as a little odd & lazy from Namco, as I suspect the western characters spoke Japanese in the Asian markets. I don’t suspect, I went to Japan, I played this, and I know. Furthermore, subtitles for English speakers are set off by default, which annoys me as I usually play games late at night, with no sound on, so I missed a bit of the storyline.

Other than that though, it’s a solid game. Some great looking stages (my favourite one is based at La Tomatina festival), which many of them appear as a surprise. There’s a great score, a tough last boss in Azazel (but not unbeatable). But the best thing is the gameplay. It’s solid, you lose because you screwed up, not because of the controller. It’s easy to play, but it’s so difficult to master.

It’s so, to explain it in one word, Tekken.

Click Here To Buy Tekken 6 for Xbox 360

Click Here To Buy Tekken 6 for PS3