Tekken 6 review

Tekken and Soul Calibur have always been my fighting games of choice. I even liked Mortal Kombat over Street Fighter in the past so go figure what that says about me. Anyway, Tekken 6 has hit the next-gen systems so does it deliver all that you’d expect?

Well, if you want a fighting game which you can pick up and play but also master if you put the effort in with a massive roster of characters to play as then I guess that’s a yes. If you want a fantastic campaign mode to play through as well then forget it because it’s rather bad.

In the story mode you play as a character called Lars who’s so tough he can punch people from the other side of a wall. You break into a corporation and then rescue a girl called Alisa who’s actually a robot. It’s more confusing than an episode of Lost and unfortunately the Tekken controls don’t translate to a run around and hit things mechanic. Combat feels clunky in this mode and it’s just no fun – however you may feel compelled to trudge through it as it’s the quickest way to earn currency for tarting up your characters and for unlocking new characters and locations.

The main modes you’ll be playing are the online and offline modes. Online modes can pair you up with anyone in the world for a quick scrap online and offline modes comprise of arcade mode, ghost battles, time trials, survival and my favourite, team battle. You can play these against the CPU or against a friend in the same room.

When it comes to looks, the pre-rendered animations are gorgeous as you’d expect but the graphics don’t quite beat those of the recent Soul Calibur. They’ve also been clever by keeping the Japanese voices in the campaign mode and using subtitles to stop things sounding silly.

When it comes to characters there are all the ones you’d expect plus new ones in there, including a massive dragon-type thing called Azazel. This thing is massive and it’s really tough to see what’s going on when you fight it as it almost fills the whole screen!

I’ve been playing Tekken 6 on the Xbox 360 and I can’t help thinking it will play better on the PS3 simply because the controller’s d-pad is better. If you have both machines, get it for the PS3. Tekken 6 gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: Street Fighter review, Soul Calibur review, Youtube Tekken 6 review