I think I saw Tekken 6 as an opportunity to reach a life long goal, to own an arcade stick… perhaps a little over dramatic… but still… I’ve wanted one since my days with Mortal Kombat 2 in the arcade… now I have one. Seems like a silly reason to buy a game I know…

Thats not the only reason though, Tekken has been my favorite 3d fighting franchise since Virtua Fighter 2, although I haven’t played one in it seems forever, I think Tekken 3 was the last in all honesty. Despite my long absense from the series, it doesn’t seem that much has changed. The action is still fast paced like I remember, and moves lists are huge for each character. I think I read the total character count was 40 or more… thats a lot of learning to do.

It seems the scenario mode is back and better than ever… which isn’t saying much, it was terrible, it’s still terrible, I really wish they’d stop investing development effort into this. All it is, is a very linear brawler with Tekken characters, it doesn’t translate well at all.

There appears to be a TON of character customization you can do, provided you can win enough matches to buy anything… I don’t think I can, especially after the several year hiatus I took from the franchise. I’m struggling in the arcade mode even on medium difficulty now after the 4th or 5th match.

The character specific win/loss counts are nice touch though, and I’m still learning how this ranking system works. I haven’t tried the online portion of the game yet for fear of being humiliated by a child (I’m sure it’s only a matter of time), but I’ve heard I should be waiting for patch before moving on to that, due to some horrendous lag in online play.

The arena’s themselves look fine, however some of the assets that appear in the background in some of these arenas are terrible. The Tekken animators seem to have no business creating tank, helicopter, and/or other vehicle models, it’s quite unnecessary… thats not what this game is about.

So in short, I’m not terribly impressed with Tekken 6 so far, but if you’re a Tekken fan like myself, and you can get a few people in a room for a game of pass the controller, I’m sure you’ll have a good time with this one, I will spend some more time with the title before writing a full review.