Tekken 6 is the canonical installment from Namco of the popular fighting game genre. As someone who spent many many hours on Tekken 3 on the Playstation, this was a relatively unnoticed release and I managed to pick up a copy for a relatively bargain price. Tekken 6 at least has stayed true to the style and kept the moves and button combinations largely the same making an experienced Tekken player ease into the game without having their hand held throughout the obligatory tutorials too much.

Scenario Mode replaces the original Tekken Force mode

The customary arcade mode has taken more of a backseat in this edition however, with the game focusing mainly on the Scenario Campaign mode as it’s primary function. In this you start off the game as new character Lars Alexandersson and his android sidekick Alisa, the latter of which for all you Tekken buffs is the latest creation from Tekken’s resident bonkers scientist Dr. Boskonovitch. The Scenario mode is more like a modern day Streets of Rage style with a scrolling beat ’em up feel to the game. You battle through a lot of stages with a “boss” at the end, which is another Tekken character, who is then unlocked for Scenario mode to play as. You can fight using the character’s movelist if you want to but there are “weapons” hidden in boxes and enemy drops if you can find them. These are a gatling gun, flamethrower and a lead pipe, which I mistaken took for a golf club judging by the way it is wielded.

The targetting system in it however is totally bollocks. You automatically lock onto an enemy and have to adjust the combination presses according to where your assailant is facing, for example Bryan Fury’s Mach Punch is forward, forward, X, but if the enemy is in front of you i.e. 12 o’clock from your position, you have to press up, up X to hit them. The camera swings about radically like a monkey on a spinning carousel which makes it difficult to execute the more powerful moves. Alisa too is a typical stupid and prohibitive AI character, managing to focus on illogical targets and doesn’t usually help you when you’re surrounded by about 8 or 9 goons. She also has an annoying habit of not picking up health items when she’s dying, but picks up all the goodies if you’re dying and she doesn’t need them at all. This will lead to many restarts of each level as quite often she will casually fall off the level into either the water or off a gangway for no apparent reason, leaving you on your own to fight the masses of the level.

Bryan adding insult to injury on endangered species...

Enemies will drop off items upon defeat or you can find them in crates scattered all over the level. They will sometimes also drop items for you to upgrade your character, like in an RPG game. The combinations of the best items however always make your character look ridiculous usually by the colours not being suited at all and while you may have optimum stats for you, you look like you got dressed in the dark, in a circus wardrobe. I used Bryan Fury for the campaign levels and I was trying to keep his attire akin to his military persona, instead had to wear a bright red helmet, purple Gok Wan style vest and Elton John star shaped sunglasses just to get the best stats out of him, otherwise I would not have survived the last few levels. While the stats boost does help, I can’t help but think he looks more like a flamboyant gay rights activist instead of the secret military weapon cyborg of which he actually is.

Zafina: hottest new addition to Tekken

The later levels really do test you out to your maximum skills and are very challenging, but does get unfair in some whereby you have to face three and sometimes four bosses in a single level. Obviously exiting the level through failure will result in you having to fight them all over again. And with the shitty targetting system and the floods of minions during boss fights, this is quite frustrating. Similar to arcade, they seem to have implement the obligatory automatic blocking reflex which sees you batter the crap out of your opponent for them to receive no damage whatsoever. However for you, blocking when the camera is spinning all over the shop, it’s quite hard to press away from your opponent when the relative direction is constantly changing. There also some serious clipping issues as larger enemies inbetween your character and the camera will give an impromptu close up of the enemies face instead of actually showing you what the character you’re controlling is doing. Even if it looks shit, at least making the inactive foreground characters transparent would give you a slight fighting chance!

Azazel: cheapest boss in fight game history? Yes definitely, and I'm including SF4's Seth!...

The final boss in arcade mode is a total joke however. He’s called Azazel as is some kind of ancient god/beast/destroyer thing who looks a cross between a Pharaoh and a resurrected crow. Tekken always unlike Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat never really relied on having the final boss as a massive, over bearing monster apart from Tekken 3 when they had True Ogre, who was pants anyways. However, they have bucked trend now with this big pile of shit. Azazel is quite possibly cheaper than Seth from SF4. I know that may seem incredulous but it’s true. Azazel has a repertoire of about 4/5 moves which he can unleash almost back to back, not giving the player any benefit from being able to block or dodge successfully. All his moves can hit you when you’re prone on the floor meaning that you can’t actually defend yourself and you will end up dying over and over again by the time you go for the achievement of complete it with every character. He also seems to auto block all the time making you attempted attack seem paltry compared to his two or three health bar draining unblockable cheap attacks. He also has a teleport move which when you do manage to knock him down, he’s stamped on your face before you’ve realised that for a split second he has the upper hand. Personally, Namco have seriously dropped the ball with this boss.

There are the usual versus and time attack modes and of course the online battles whereby you can fight people blocking all over the world, and as the online community has dwindled since this release, the vast majority of people online will be total pros, or complete cheats, as I’ve had qutie a few people quit out on me when they’re losing. Maybe it’s the new tactic which wasn’t around when I was playing Tekken 3 back in the day of block, block ,block block, 20 hit combo/one hit death move. But you do get some people playing online randomly who are good sports so there is a balance.

In summation, Tekken 6 is a really good fighting game and probably one of the best on the 360 by far. It’s fantastic for all Tekken fans such as myself with really enterprising customisation tools and arcade modes. It is let down by having a cheap and tacky end boss but that shouldn’t spoil the lustre of this good fighting game. A definite must have for any Tekken fans with a 360.