Leveling Down

When Tekken 6 originally released, I ended up picking up the Tekken 6 special edition that was bundled with the wireless arcade stick. This bundle was originally priced at $150, but apparently it didn’t sell very well so Amazon is now selling it for only $76 – practically half the price. The game itself is also seeing many sales – ranging from $20-$40 discounts on its original $60 price tag. Is there any reason for this? Maybe it’s not selling as well as anticipated? In any case, hit the jump for my conclusive thoughts on the game.

First off, I want to talk about the joystick. I currently have been playing my fighting games on the 360 with Hori’s EX2 fighting stick. This is basically the same type of stick I’ve been playing for years, as I used a very similar stick on the PS2 as well. The EX2 fighting stick isn’t a terrible stick, but the stick itself clicks and has a square gate, so it doesn’t feel like the arcade sticks I used to play fighting games with growing up. It worked OK for me with Dead or Alive 4 and Soul Calibur IV, as those games didn’t require as much stick precision. Street Fighter IV was a bit more difficult – double fireballs and even dragon punches were sometimes not being pulled off (to much frustration). The Tekken 6 Hori stick is basically the same as the EX2 stick, but lighter, wireless, and has 8 buttons instead of six. If you liked the Hori EX2 stick, the Tekken 6 stick is certainly an upgrade overall but the same joystick issues remain. Obviously, this stick is not going to beat the $150 MadCatz Tournament FightStick. At only a fraction of the price though, it appeals to a different type of fighting gamer – one that isn’t super hardcore enough to own a $150 fight stick, but one that doesn’t want to use the 360 controller either. For that gamer, the Tekken 6 stick is a good balance. (Ironically, the Tekken 6 stick isn’t ideal for playing Tekken 6, since the strafing in the game is not as responsive when using the stick.)

Tekken doesn’t really need an introduction by now, as it’s a series fighting game fans have been playing for practically 15 years. I haven’t played the series since Tekken 3 on the Playstation 1, so I’ve definitely been out of the Tekken scene. I thought Tekken 6 was a nice return to the series for me, and fortunately, I had my brother around to help me evaluate the game. The guy is definitely a better fighting game player than I am, and he spent a lot of time with Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection on the PS3.

Tekken 6 sports the largest roster the series has ever had: 42 different characters – a monumental feat compared to other fighting games. The last serious fighting game I played was BlazBlue, and that title only had 12 playable characters so I was blown away by Tekken 6. To be honest, feature wise, Tekken 6 pretty much does everything right for a console fighting game. In fact, I’d practically give it a perfect score in what features it provides for gamers.

The game has a strong single-player element, with two distinct modes of play: one being a completely different scenario adventure mode where you play through it like a beat-em-up in order to unlock random item drops that boost your character’s abilities. While its gameplay was a little rough around the edges (the autolock onto targets took a while to get used to), it was still an enjoyable RPG-like diversion for fans of single player modes of fighting games. I am a rare breed of fighting game fans that actually looks for enjoyable single player modes for fighting game fans, as I enjoy fighting games, but I don’t have enough patience or dedication to really devote to competitive play so Tekken 6′s Scenario mode was right up my alley. I even appreciated the fact that I had to find good places to “farm” highly ranked items, as it appealed to the lootwhore in me. What’s more interesting is that the random item drops you find in the Scenario mode can be equipped by your character in the online versus mode too.

If you find the Scenario mode to be trivial and boring (my brother did, since he cares more about the actual versus part of the game), there are several modes that may fit your fancy: an Arcade Mode, a Ghost Mode, a Team Battle Mode, and a Survival Mode. The Team Battle Mode and Survival Modes are self explanatory, so I’ll describe the difference between Arcade Mode and Ghost Mode. In Ghost Mode, you play against computer profiles of players. This is reminiscent of Virtua Fighter 5, where you didn’t simply play against the AI, but actual unique profiles that play differently and some are even “ghosts” of professional players. Tekken 6′s Ghost Mode allows you to continually play against only ghosts, whereas the Arcade Mode has you play against the normal AI but throws in ghosts every once in a while. In both of these modes, you have a ranking. Playing through the Ghost Mode, each of the ghosts have a ranking as well, so you can rank your way up to the top if you are interested in playing a more traditional single player game. From a single player standpoint, I was very happy about both the scenario adventure mode and the single player ranking mode. The combination of these two modes was more enjoyable to me than BlazBlue’s single player story mode, Street Fighter IV’s Challenge Mode, and Soul Calibur IV’s Tower of Lost Souls mode. In short, Tekken 6 perhaps had the most enjoyable single player modes for a 360 fighting game I’ve played since perhaps Virtua Fighter 5′s Quest mode.

Playing through every mode also earns you money, which you can use to buy specific accessories for your character to wear (which show up when you play online too). This is an excellent hook, as this accessorizing allows you to change the hair, clothing, accessories, etc. of your favorite character to look practically nothing like the original.

From an online standpoint, Tekken 6′s features are also pretty much perfect: a ranked mode, a non-ranked mode that does not affect stats in any way, auto-matchmaking for the online modes, custom rooms that support up to four players, and the removal of a character select screen when two players are matched together. Basically, you have to choose your character before you start playing online, so you can’t change your character after seeing someone else pick theirs. I had no complaints at all about the online features and modes. In fact, if I were to end my review here, the game would sound pretty much perfect. Unfortunately, there are two pretty huge negatives that must be addressed.

The lesser of the two negatives (but still relevant) is the loading time. With the loading time on the 360 version of the game relatively long, I can’t imagine how long the PS3 version is, with its slower Blu-Ray read speed. While loading is a typical thing in any game, it seems longer in Tekken 6 than any other fighting game I’ve played on the 360. It’s not terrible, but enough of a nuisance that you actually notice that whenever you want to do something, you need to wait like 5-10 seconds before it actually happens.

The primary negative that can pretty much break the game for people is the lag. I’m not going to lie – Tekken 6 spots some really bad lag. I remember a patch was released on Thanksgiving to address the lag, but with today still suffering from lag, I can’t imagine how the online scene was before the patch. I would say that about 50% of the 30 or so matches I played online were playable. The other 50% would start frame stuttering, and a majority of those games would simply end because the players got desynced. My brother played a few matches online before calling it quits for good, as the lag was too much for him to bear. I played many matches after him, and I was able to actually get in some good online time. The only caveat to keep in mind is that basically 1 out of every 3 players you get matched up against will result in a disconnect. If you’re prepared for that, the online game is playable.

As an overall package, Tekken 6 offers a lot of features for the fighting game fan. Unfortunately, the excessive loading and lag means Tekken 6 stumbled on the execution part of the game itself, marring an otherwise enjoyable fighting game. If you actually look for fighting games with interesting single player elements like me, then I wholly recommend Tekken 6. You’ll find a lot more than just a simple Arcade mode to play in. There was also a time when we didn’t play fighting games online, so if you also have friends/brothers/etc. over a lot and like playing offline versus, this game delivers. It’s just the online lag that’s a bit dicey, and for those that want to play this game online, if you’re ok with getting lagged or disconnected maybe about a third of the time, Tekken 6 is worth checking out.

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