2009 was a hell of a year for fighting games. Not including Tekken, we received the home version of Street Fighter IV, UFC 2009: Undisputed, Blazblue, and while there were some duds (King of Fighters XII), there was little doubt that across the board, if you wanted a good game where you punched someones head in, there were fewer bad games to do it in. Yet why go with Tekken?
Yes, Tekken problems compared to some of these games. Initially, the online mode was janky as all hell and the scenario campaign mode (the big, new story mode) is not a particularly fun mode, and it’s the only way to get endings for characters. And much like Street Fighter IV, characters endings aren’t quite as good as they should be. Yet the one thing that Tekken has over most of these other fighting games is not only a diverse and large character roster, but also a large and diverse range of modes of play.
Where most fighters are cutting down on modes, Tekken has the traditional Arcade, Time Attack, Survival, and the always fun Team Battle mode, in addition to the surprisingly long Scenario Campaign mode and online modes. And the 40+ characters are all well defined and well balanced, and everyone can stand a chance against one another. And then you get to the final boss, whom will make you scream and shout in rage. It’s almost on the same level of frustration that Seth would frequently provide in Street Fighter IV.
And the game itself? It’s still the same Tekken fun. Sure, characters have been tweaked, but that’s all a part of the balancing. The new rage system, wherein once you’re at a critical level of health, your attacks become much stronger, is a great idea and helps to balance out fights and make them much more competitive, especially knowing that one hit can pretty much knock you out.
That being said, Tekken 6 still does have its problems. Scenario Campaign being perhaps the biggest one of them – it’s badly designed, not particularly fun and often frustrating. Azazel, the game’s final boss, is particularly frustrating when it really shouldn’t be, and anyone expecting a full renovation of Tekken is bound to not see anything of worth here – since it’s really just a tweaked version of the already excellent Tekken 5. Otherwise, absolutely worth picking up.
I don't know what it is about that series, but I adore the Tekken games. I don't know if it's the actual fighting mechanics, the unique characters, the awesome music, the insane extras Namco heap onto the game (Tekken 3 & 5, in particular), I'm not too sure. But the funny thing is, as someone who adores that series, and is jonesing heavily for Tekken 6, I'll freely admit that there are games in the series that I haven't played, and no desire to.
While there is the obvious answer of the Playstation2 Death by Degrees game, this also extends to the original Tekken game. I've only ever really played the home version once, at a cousins place, and all my other experiences with it come from the arcade version present on the Tekken 5 game as part of the incredibly awesome "Arcade History" mode.
Last I played it, it didn't hold up reasonably well. Granted, the game was originally released in the early days of 3D fighting games (and 3D in general), and Tekken was created as a response to Sega's Virtua Fighter (which had launched a couple of years earlier), but the way the game plays, such as still being on a 2D plane, slow fighting, and the general lack of responsiveness once you get knocked down. I mean, you can get knocked down and you takes a long and near excruciating while for you to get back up again. It's probably worth checking out later iterations of the series, if you're interested in the older games - Tekken 2/3 in particular. Though the idea of swapping cameras is a neat idea, and no other fighting game (and even later Tekken games) used this functionality.
Though thanks to stuff like YouTube, I've been able to catch up on one of the cooler things about the series - its CG endings.
Tekken is one of the few fighting franchises that does something unique with its endings compared to different versions. In the arcades, there is no story whatsoever - you're treated to a generic "CONGRATULATIONS YOU WIN" screen - similar, but not quite, to Virtua Fighter. It's a weird decision, especially when you consider that with the exception of those two games, pretty much every other fighting game worth its salt in the arcades has an ending. However, when the games are released onto home consoles, Namco go the extra mile to actually including CG endings for each of the characters.
Being the first iteration of the series, and also one of the earlier 3D games, the original Tekken has some of the most fantastically awesomely outdated CG I've ever seen in a game. The intro to the game looks and sounds like a bloody demo reel of a mid-90's CG artist - but doesn't hold a candle to the actual endings. Which are some of the most awesome things I've ever seen.
All of the endings in the game are about 30 seconds long, all of which set to the same piece of music. There's no dialogue, but there are associated sound effects. What gets me about these endings are twofold. The first is the effort that Namco went to for some of these. Take King's (the second ending, if you're watching the above video), for instance. If you can't watch the video, here's a quick explanation - King returns from the tournament to an orphanage, and as he arrives, the kids flood out to meet him.
To say that I was expecting kids to be flooding out of the church would have been the preferred response, but I honestly doubled back a little bit and was shocked to see that the kids themselves are actually REAL kids - greenscreened into the shot. You have to understand, there are practically no fighting games that have ever had FMV kids inserted into a CG shot. Though the pose that King makes as the scene fades out is completely awesome and made for some inappropriate captioning.
The other thing these endings (and the game itself), is that it's made for some awesome reactionary imagery. Yoshimitsu's (second from last) is the best example of this. Shortly after he opens up the case and the cash goes flying, there's a dude that just looks up in complete and utter disbelief that hundreds and thousands of dollars in cash is just FLYING around. His slowly transforming face as he looks up and sees the cash makes for quite possibly the greatest "OH MY GOD" look ever used (if not intentionally) in a video game. This is also coming from a video game where characters portraits literally distort when you select them.
I should probably go back to explore the original Tekken game, but really, is there any point now? The game has been superceded (and made better) by later iterations, the endings are all online, and hell, I can get a copy of the game free of charge by buying the PS2 (and I think PSP) versions of Tekken 5.
I would close off by saying that future iterations of Tekken never included awesomely bad reaction faces in their endings...but...
