Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Video game number forty five: Tekken 6

Game review number forty five in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Tekken 6".

Back in the Street Fighter 2 days, I was a big fighting game fan. I probably spent enough money in quarters playing that game in the arcades to actually buy the stand-up version itself. In fact, that's probably not too far off from the truth....because I'd very often go in with around 5 bucks and for a period of 2 years...I played at least a couple of times a week at this little mini-mart near my friend David's house. Later in life when I was a home-owner, I actually did end up buying the stand-up, and it sat in the living room at my house, next to the futon. Eventually I sold it (to some guys from Bungie) to free up the space. Here it was in all it's glory:



Where was I going with all that? Oh yeah. Fighting games. So...in my opinion, the days of Street Fighter 2 were the best. That was the golden age of fighting games. Leading up to it, I loved Pit Fighter and Wrestlefest (I actually owned that stand-up for awhile too), but nothing beat Street Fighter. When I was about 16 I bought the imported Japanese version for the Super Nintendo (this is WAY before Ebay and the internet, I actually had to order it from some overpriced reseller in the back of a magazine). It was actually pretty close to the arcades. Then Super Street Fighter two came out on the SNES, and suddenly...I wasn't playing arcade fighting games as much anymore. The 2D fighting games got more complicated (Street Fighter Alpha, SNK King of Fighters, etc)...and I sort of lost interest. A few years later, Virtua Fighter from Sega came out...and that game was rad. I didn't spend anywhere near as much on it as I had Street Fighter...but I liked it. That eventually led to Tekken.

I played the Tekken arcade game quite a bit. They had it at the movies, and they had it on the ferry to Seattle, so I became halfway decent at it. When the original Playstation came out...that was one of the big games for me...I played it a lot. Then, somewhere in there...Soul Blade (Soul Calibur on the consoles) came out and I haven't played Tekken since. It's been a decade, there have been 5 sequels....and Tekken 6 is the first one I've played since I was fresh out of high school.

A lot has changed.

Tekken 6 has about 40 characters. I remember about 8 in the original. There's the arcade mode, like you might expect...where you can battle two against each other. There is online multiplayer (surprisingly, I was able to log on and win a few matches, even 15 years later). There's also a scenario campaign mode, which I actually really enjoyed. Apparently, there are 38 stages, and you have to go kill a bunch of foot soldiers (Final Fight style) before you get to a boss on each one. I beat about 20 of them before calling it a night...but it was a lot of fun.

I'm not sure why I forgot about Tekken. I liked it when I was younger and I was good at it too. A lot of the old moves came right back to me, to the point where I was breezing through some of the levels. I got beat by some of the better players online...but I held my own against some of them too.

Soul Calibur is still my favorite fighting game series these days, and Street Fighter 2 still holds the all time top spot as far as I'm concerned, but this game is really good...and made me remember the good old days.

Overall score: 7/10. There are fighting games I like better (Soul Calibur, even DOA)...but this one isn't bad at all. Kept me busy for several hours...and I'm up way past my bed time on a work night again. Always the sign of a good game.

Online Multiplayer: YES. There are people playing this one. I found opponents instantly with the quick match for both ranked and player matches. There was no lag...everything worked as expected.

The campaign mode is a really nice touch....and the cinematics are beautiful, even if I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the story.

Here are a bunch of achievements I got. They're spread out pretty nicely...and I'm confident I can unlock the bulk of them if I keep going.