The legendary Tekken franchise makes its latest home console appearance as Tekken 6, a port of the updated arcade machine variant – Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. A solid four years after its last iteration Tekken 5 was released on the PlayStation 2 system (not counting the HD PSN remake for PS3), Tekken 6 unbelievably contains an even bigger roster. But with this year already playing host to Street Fighter IV and the new contender BlazBlue, does it match up to the heavyweights?
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The Tekken storyline gets more and more complex as the series progresses, with each evil Mishima family offspring (Jin, Kazuya and Heihachi) and his plans of world domination causing somewhat catastrophic wide spread damage and then, overconfidently, yet foolishly, the diabolical dictator providing an opening, to be overthrown by the others, in the form of a King of Iron Fist Tournament. Tekken 6 has Jin going psychotic and hosting the tournament, but his intentions somehow involve the greater demonic powers of the newly discovered ancient deity Azazel. At least the story writers can’t be blamed for slacking off, but as with most fighting games, the story hardly matters.
Undoubtedly, the best feature of the Tekken series is its accessible gameplay. With a pick up and play system that is easy to learn but difficult to master, Tekken still remains perhaps the best fighting game to play locally when you have casual gamers as guests. The button combinations couldn’t get any easier – each face button maps to one of the four limbs and either the d-pad or the left analog stick can be used for movement, with a quick tap to up/down keys changing the plane for a quick dodge. But merely button mashing your way through your opponent rarely works and it is that depth that the game offers which makes it extremely fun. An aggressive opponent can efficiently be defeated with well timed defences or a good parry, but a badly timed block can just as easily result in being dragged into an unforgivably massive combo with no escape. Even the minute choices of how to respond when knocked onto the ground add new depths to a player’s combat strategy.
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Apart from the gameplay elements employed in the previous games, Tekken 6 adds some new features. One of them – the Rage system, allows the player’s moves to become much more damaging to the opponent. Rage automatically kicks in when a fighter’s life bar falls dangerously low and allows the player to perform very effective counter attacking to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Another new element is the Bound juggles, which allow the player to perform a high impact move towards the end of a combo which makes the opponent smash into the ground hard and bounce back to continue taking damage. This, when perfected, can lead to some seriously damaging lengthy combos.
Tekken 6 also lets the player assume a blocking stance when just standing still without the need to press the ‘back’ button to do so, although it’s not a dependable way to ward off an aggressive opponent. An additional feature is the introduction of weapons, which can be brought into play during fights. These weapons, unique to each character, can be used in single special moves once when acquired in the scenario campaign or bought using earned money, but provide more of a novelty factor rather than drain a large chunk of the opponent’s life bar.
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Coming back to Tekken 6’s insane roster – with more than 40 unique characters (42 to be precise) it is the largest collection of fighters seen till date in the Tekken franchise. The 6 brand spanking new playable characters – Lars, Alisa, Zafina, Miguel, Leo and Bob, come as a welcome addition, most of them worthy of being as much as part of the Iron Fist Tournament as the rest. Lars plays the protagonist in the scenario mode and the leader of Tekken Force. He is insanely strong; almost a good match to Jin Kazama himself. Alisa is a robot with a strange move set which includes using chainsaws attached to her arms and detaching her exploding head from her torso, and then growing it back. The mysteriously hot Zafina is an ancient assassin who incorporates some very shockingly interesting stances in her fighting while Bob is an overly obese American who is as fast as lightening in his karate. I personally did not find Miguel and Leo too interesting; just your run of the mill generic new additions.
Next page: IVG Verdict
