Review: Tekken 6 (X360)

The answer to the above question isn’t an easy one to come to. In a year that has seen Street Fighter IV, Soulcalibur IV and the brilliant, yet not out here yet, BlazBlue, it was never going to be easy for Namco to compete. But in some ways it has. Tekken 6 has its problems, and depending on your gaming preference they may be deal breakers, but in local multiplayer, it’s up there with the best.

Be gentle, it’s my first time

As this is the first time that Tekken has graced the Microsoft console and not appeared exclusively on a Sony console, there may be some people out there wondering what differentiates Tekken from the rest. Essentially, it’s juggling. Tekken’s best players know how to juggle their opponents into the air, and keep them there for the maximum amount of time so that they can dish out as much damage as possible to their stricken opponent.

This year, however, a player can also bound their opponent back in the air. Every fighter has their own bound move, which bounces their opponent back up in the air, thus enabling them to be juggled all over again. It’s important to know this as this can make Tekken matches mercilessly short, especially against seasoned players. It’s not unusual to see nearly half of your energy bar go in one continuous juggle-combo.

It’s not a fighting game that those who like to continuously go on the offensive will likely excel at. To succeed you need to know when to sidestep, how to get up from a fall, anticipate your opponents’ combos and then know what moves are best for the situation you’re in.

Variety and repetition

With over 40 fighters to choose from, Tekken 6 can not be accused of lacking variety. Although some fighters share similar move sets, most reward a different playing style. Some have stance based moves (including the new addition, and extremely hot, Zafira) whereas others are all about mixed-martial arts and speed. Whoever you choose though will often feel refreshingly different to play as. This can’t be said about all fighters, and in itself it does make Tekken more difficult to master for newcomers, but this is all part of what has made Tekken so successful over the years.

What hasn’t made Tekken so successful over the years however is a turgid Scenario Campaign mode. Quite why Namco decided to spend so much time on a mode that has such a convoluted storyline, pepper it with far too frequent and needless cut-scenes (it’s approaching Metal Gear Solid levels at times), give it the graphical finesse of a PS2 title and make it as repetitive as possible, is beyond me. Personally I would have preferred it to have put more effort into the net code (more on that later), or even retail the game for a cheaper price at the expense of not wasting their time producing a game mode that very few people would play, let alone complete, if it wasn’t for the easy achievements and the necessity to play it to earn enough money to purchase different outfits for your favourite fighters. You can’t even play it with a friend (although you wouldn’t be much of a friend if you forced someone to anyway). Instead you have to put up with the inept friendly AI to play as your partner, that will always head into battle, no matter what the odds or what their health meter is, even when there are plenty of health pick-ups in its vicinity.

Effectively forcing players to play the Scenario Campaign mode in order to unlock in-game items is, frankly, a nasty thing for Namco to push on to long-term fans of, and newcomers to, the series. From the camera that never knows which way to point, to having to move with the left analogue stick and then swapping to the d-pad to fight, it seems to go out of its way to annoy the gamer at every turn. Even little things like having to destroy ten aliens to gain an achievement are hampered by the controls, because the happy little blighters will jump across the screen and you won’t be able to catch up with them as you’re fighter refuses to run whilst an opponent is on the screen. Genius.

Namco’s online code is Tekken the piss

But thankfully if you’re not into making your fighters look like gimps, don’t have fetishes for Panda’s in bikinis, or have an urge for an easy 300 or so achievement points (easy, yet still taking close to six painful hours to achieve) you could theoretically leave that mode well alone. And my advice is to do just that, as the main game is pure Tekken of old. As long as you don’t want to go online.

Online isn’t King of Fighters bad (which I think will always remain the yardstick for how to make a game as unplayable as possible online), but it is inconsistent at best. Each time you connect to an opponent their connection status will display showing you whether it’s bad (red), okay (amber) or good (green). Except it doesn’t make sense. I’ve had terrible, lag-infested bouts against opponents with green connections, and perfectly playable bouts against those with red connections.

The good to lag-infested ratio is probably 60-40, but a high proportion of those 60 will still most likely suffer from a little lag. This is disappointing as played against human opponents, Tekken is an extremely in-depth and rewarding beat-em-up. Namco have already released a patch but that seemingly did nothing to improve the net code. They have also promised another patch that will address some of the online issues that gamers have been complaining about. But we can’t review a game on what a patch might fix. Nor can we wait until a game has been properly patched before reviewing it, otherwise we wouldn’t be reviewing the latest iteration of Football Manager until well into the next season. We’ve got to review what we’re given and, as it stands, Tekken online is very hit and miss.

Local is best

But as long as you have a few friends interested in beat-em-ups, perhaps as a post-pub session, Tekken is one of the best on offer. With a huge selection of fighters to choose from, all with extremely rewarding and in-depth move-sets, and when you finally learn how to regularly perform ten hit combos, Tekken is just a joy to play.

It’s therefore such a shame that the online suffers so much, and that the single-player campaign suffers from having one of the cheapest bosses ever (Azazel, who’s essentially a Poundstretcher boss if ever I’ve seen one). Without those issues we could have had a real contender for the beat-em-up crown. As it is Tekken 6 comes highly recommended to those who can play it regularly with friends, or to those that are prepared to wait to see if the soon-to-be-released patch really does sort out all of the online issues. Just stay away from the Scenario Campaign mode. It’s six hours of your life you’ll never see again if you don’t.