Tekken 6 For PSP

How the mighty are fallen. In the days of the PS1, the arrival of a new Tekken game was a cause for celebration, rejoicing. So important that one magazine eschewed all other demos the month that Tekken 3 emerged, instead featuring that single game on its preview disc. Tekken was the undisputed master of 3D fighters in those days; Virtua Fighter was relegated to the second-place Saturn, and Dead or Alive merely a cult sideline success with interesting physics.

Here we are at Tekken 6, the first retail release on next-gen consoles- Tekken 5 only materialised as a download title on the PSN, apart from its PSP port. And 6 arrives with little fanfare, little celebration. Little more than a nod of the head from its genre competitors.

Tekken has changed a great deal from its early days. What began as a carefully understated technical fighter with a couple of quirky characters has evolved into something very different; a louder, brasher title in many ways, with a more diverse cast of miscreants and a slew of different game modes to its name. Nowadays, it feels more like a mixture between Namco’s other popular fighter, Soul Calibur, and Tecmo’s Dead or Alive than anything else- it’s certainly a far step from the technical marvel of Virtua Fighter 5. It’s also, sadly, not as good as any of the others.

The roster of characters now numbers an impressive 41, though we’d be lying if we said even half of them were very interesting. Most are bland, musclebound warriors with equally uninspired move sets, whilst only a few are real stand-out original designs. Series stalwarts show their copycat designs more than ever: Sumo Ganryu is an uninteresting E Honda, wrestler King is Virtua Fighters Wolf with a mask, Ninja Raven might as well be Kage Maru or Ryu Hayabusa. Even the newcomers fail to inspire; Alisa is a generic anime android that could have been lifted from any number of manga, Lars is a young military soldier who bears a striking resemblance to a certain Final Fantasy character, fat bloke Bob could be Street Fighter IV’s Rufus, and only asian assassin Zafina boasts unique visual and gameplay mechanics with her stance-based, middle eastern themed move set. Arcade mode’s new final boss, Azazel, takes a leaf from Dead or Alive’s book of pitting you against a ridiculous, supersized opponent, and fighting him is an exercise in sheer frustration.

Arcade mode, though, actually makes up very little of the Tekken 6 experience. The focus here is actually on the lengthy Scenario Mode, which puts you and an AI companion (there’s no co-op mode, at least not yet) against hordes of enemies in a free-roaming beat-em-up in the vein of classic Streets of Rage. In this mode you play initially as new boy Lars, accompanied by Alisa, through a branching series of stages. New characters are unlocked after you defeat them in the stages, and throughout the journey you can collect money and items from defeated foes. The items are part of Tekken 6’s deep customisation mode that, like Soul Calibur IV, allows you to completely change the appearance of the characters in game. You can buy items from an in-game store with money you have earned- which is collectable across all game modes, thankfully- but those you find in Scenario mode confer their own bonuses to your stats and abilities when equipped. Of course, equipping the best gear might result in your character looking like a complete buffoon, but that’s just an unfortunate side product. What’s more unfortunate is that you’re then stuck with that appearance for the character when you select them in any of the other game modes, too.

The scenario mode is a nice idea, that’s fleshed out much more than similar game modes ever have been, but it’s not without its niggles. For starters, the one-on-one mechanics don’t really translate well to free-roaming fighter; a clumsy lock-on system is the only way to pull off many attacks, which limits you to fighting a single enemy at a time if you want the full range of character moves. There are at least a decent range of enemy types, with different abilities and fight styles, but their AI is generally woeful- they’ll often stand around whilst you beat up an ally- and both enemies and your own character lack any degree of spatial awareness. It’s quite common- and highly frustrating- to watch your character plummet into an instant-death abyss because of the way a throw or special animation moves them around, though enemies are even more inane, oftentimes back flipping quite voluntarily off a ledge. And yes, that even goes for bosses, too.

The scenario mode doesn’t look that great either, with decidedly PS2-era backgrounds and character detail noticeably dialled-down from the core game modes. Textures are often blurry and indistinct, and some animations are shockingly bad- most character’s standard running animation would have you believing that they’d crapped themselves. Possibly several times. It also suffers from some poor pacing choices, with some later levels requiring you to fight several bosses in succession- sometimes with restart checkpoints inbetween them, sometimes without. There’s a fairly complex storyline that runs through the scenario, but regardless of your choice of character the cutscenes will always show Lars and Alisa, which seems pretty lazy.

Outside of scenario mode, there are a handful of other single player modes to try. Arcade mode is the standard sequence of 9 fights, culminating in the fight with thrice-damned Azazel, a boss that makes SFIV’s Seth and Dead or Alive 3’s Genra seem like walkovers by comparison, requiring cheap tactics in order to defeat him. There’s the typical time attack, survival and team modes, but the most interesting is the Ghost Battle, which allows you to download Ghost data of other players from around the world and try your skills against them. These Ghost players tend to be much more interesting opponents than normal CPU counterparts, and make up –slightly- for the appalling online play, which suffers from some of the worst lag we’ve seen in a one-on-one fighter.

As for the one-on-one fighting itself, well, it’s pretty much Tekken as its always been. There are a couple of stages that offer destructible floors or scenery, but nothing as dynamic as Dead or Alive 4’s interesting locales, and it feels like a bit of a half-hearted effort if we’re honest. Other than that, you know what to expect from Tekken’s particular brand of fighting, so you can expect a balanced – if sometimes dry- fighter that is light on spectacle but heavy on strategy. Alarmingly, the visuals aren’t that great here, either- characters boast nice lighting and fine detail, but the game runs at a sub-HD resolution with flaky motion blur (which can thankfully be turned off in exchange for a marginally nicer native 720p, though with no antialiasing). Backgrounds are busy and lively, but lacking in texture detail, leading again to some fairly bland effects, especially when some of the arenas have atrociously animated sheep or pigs that bounce out of the way when you bump into them. The music is a highlight to the presentation, at least, with some pulse-quickening beats and moody orchestral pieces befitting the stages of the game.

Source:http://www.gameshard.net