Namco has gone through many different fighting games throughout the years, however none could ever come close to the famous, Tekken. Like previous versions of the game, the new  release always has something new to offer, whether it be new characters, game modes, customisations or even just pretty new stages. Tekken 6 comes with all of that, and more, but does it do justice for more than a year’s wait to it’s fans. Some may think so, others eventually forgot about the amazing series.

The first thing everyone goes to is the arcade mode, where you find your story of a particular character, play through the multiple opponents and soon after, you watch an epilogue of your character. Unfortunately this is not the case in Tekken 6, there is no story in the Arcade mode, you literally start fighting and, at the end, you’re done. In all previous Tekkens you would have the pleasure of watching a short story to the character, and once you have completed the tournament, you had the pleasure of watching their end. In Tekken 6 there is none of this. Instead you have Scenario Mode, which allows you to play through a Story-like game, watching cut-scenes and running around in an adventury 3rd person angle — very much like Jin’s Story mode in Tekken 5.

Scenario mode is comprised of a new character in the series, Lars, who also makes his way around through the open world kicking ass in a 3rd person camera angle. When you get into a battle, however, it changes slightly so you can easily differentiate between where you are on the screen (right or left). The main problem I found with this mode, which put me off completely within minutes, is there is a cut-scene far too often. You would come from a loading screen to a cut-scene and then to another loading screen. It’s as if they wanted you to play in between a movie — very frustrating and demotivating.

The Ranking system is very similar to that of Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection on the Playstation Portable — however there is one flaw to note. If you beat someone of a certain rank, the next opponent will only be a higher rank than that of which you just beat. I was a 6th Kyu facing a “Devastator” which I had never even seen in Tekken 5: DR. Another thing to note is that as you face people of a higher rank, the AI doesn’t increase by MUCH. I was always under the impression that the AI is relative to your rank, so if you’re 6th Kyu facing someone of 7th Dan, it should be very, very difficult, however if you’re facing someone of 7th Dan while you’re 6th Dan, it should be a walk in the park. At the present moment, it does not seem that way.

Graphically the game is right up there, as have all the Tekken games been. The game is played in High Definition, featuring good use of the PS3 resources, such as Depth of View, HDR and other cinematic visualisations.

I’m going to play it a lot more in the near future, as so far it looks really good. However I’ll be sticking to Arcade and Ghost mode — I still haven’t completed arcade due to the huge boss-dude at the end.

7 Responses to “[PS3] Tekken 6: First Impressions”