Review: Tekken 6 (PS3)

My friend came to visit on Halloween and brought to me the Tekken 6 for the PS3. I payed my half of the prize and we started our first 8 hours session of this new game. I want to write something about this first hours with the game and  share my thoughts with you. The new Tekken isn’t something new, but it can be played a way faster than the 5th installment of the series and features some new and entertaining game-modes. Lets start with my first First Look about Tekken 6.

Some story please?

The previous installments of Tekken always featured short less-detailed stories about the reasons for a Tournament.  A little overview on the story so far.

• Heihachi Mishima, the owner of the Mishima Financial Empire, throw his son Kazuya down a cliff because of his secret powers and started some years later the first King of Iron Fist Tournament to see him again. He wanted to know what happened to his abandoned son. Kazuya really appeared and defeated his father and ruled over his empire from now on.
• In the second Tournament, announced by Kazuya, Heihachi defeated Kazuya to get his empire back. After the tournament, Heihachi trow Kazuya into a vulcan to destroy him  and his power forever.
• The 3rd Tournament: Heihachi wanted to give Kazuyas son Jin Kazama the chance to defeat the murder of his mother: the ancient monster Ogre that was killing fighters all around Japan on the search for someone who could really challenge him. Jin defeated Ogre and was shot in the head by Heihachi. But Jin survived transformed into a devil and escaped.
• The 4th Tournament: Heihachi wanted to capture Jin.  Kazuya, that was reborn by the G-Corp, used the Tournament to have his revenge on Heihachi. Jin could escape again and Heihachi and Kazuya started to fight.
• The 5th Tournament: The  G-Corp attacked the Mishima empire while Heihachi was fighting with his son Kazuya. Kazuya could escape the attack, but Heihachi died. With Heihachis Headquarters burning, the G-Corp opened the secret cell of Heihachis father Jinpachi by mistake. Jinpachi started the next tournament and got defeated by Jin that now ruled over the Mishima Financial Empire. Heihachi survived the attack from the start of the game and still waits for his time to come back.

There are a lot of other characters that take on the challenge to win the tournaments that never win in the end, because of the main story-line you could read about above. But they got their own story, concluding into a short animated cutscene at the end after succeed in the final stage.

The Scenario Mode

It looks like that the Team Tekken learned a lot from Team Soul (Soul Calibur series) and added the first story-line mode into the Tekken universe. They first tried this in Tekken5 with the Devil Within Game in which you play as Jin Kazama through the Mishima Headquarters to defeat Ogre in the end. Tekken6 instead features a large story-mode on a big map from which you choose your next stage. Long cut scenes and a item-system deliver multiple more hours of fun.
When fighting through the stages you can open chests that hold cloth with special powers inside. You can change the cloth between each stage on the map-screen to increase your character’s health, resistance against elements and increasing attack-ratings. You can also regain health and earn money by defeating enemies that drop chicken and credits. Credits are needed to buy new clothes and equipment.

There is help through every Stage by a Cyborg with the Name Amelia. In the beginning of the game she is not very helpful but the more you continue through the stages, the higher will be her A.I. level and the better she will help you. By defeating the end boss of each stage (one of the 40 characters of the game) makes them available as playable character during the campaign and the tournament mode. The tournament inside the scenario-mode only uses 4 stages and is the only way to unlock each characters end-movie. If you want to play through a 9 stage long tournament then you have to use the Arcade-Mode.

The only things that I have to rant about in scenario-mode is the camera that cant be turned by yourself. The targeting system also troubles you at first. Most of the time you will hit the air and not your opponents. But some hours of training should help you to get into the controls.  The scenario mode overall gives you a reason to play through some of the stages over and over again, since with every completed stage, more items will drop, which you can use to power up your characters.

Beat em up online

The Arcade Mode from Tekken 5 was just a little taste of what to expect if the Tekken game would went online. You can choose between Online and Offline Mode. While the Offline part features Time-Attack, Survival and Team-Battles, the Online part allows you to have random matches against players worldwide. There are a statistics about your Win/Lost difference and other aspects depending on your fighting knowledge. Choose one favorite character and play with him as long as you want and reach a higher rank to challenge stronger players.  It’s also possible to save replays of matches and to share these with your friends on demand. It’s a nice feature and can be used to find out how the other player is fighting. It allows you to learn how to defeat them by just watching their replays. Create your own server on your Playstation 3 and invite up to 4 friends and beat the shit out of them in a row as long as you want.

Special abilities on New clothes and equipment doesn’t work during online play. Tekkens little brother Soul Calibur still allows the player to fight with item powers. Maybe there will be a Custom-Class and Normal-Class mode in Tekken 7. But we will see.

If you search for a mark you will be disapointed, because I dont give a mark to any of the games I did a review of. It all depends on you. Give it your own rating and still have fun to play it! Its only the gaming that matters.