The ultimate King of the Iron Fist Torunament is about to commence
Version reviewed - Xbox 360What is Tekken 6?
Tekken 6 sees the return of the infamous King of the Iron Fist tournament that started off life at arcades around the world in the mid-Nineties and then became one of the most established PlayStation exclusive hand-to-hand fighting franchises of all time. Tekken 6 marks the first time that Namco Bandai’s series has spread its wings and received a release on a non-Sony platform.
As a deviation from the traditional arcade mode, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions both feature for the first time in the series a scenario campaign, playable by one player offline (online o-op will be added via a patch shortly.) Scenario mode is essentially a free-roaming Streets of Rage-like brawler featuring dozens of thugs and boss battle, and it's backed by a storyline, which starts off with a ten year history of the Tekken series. As well as moving through stages taking on a range of thugs with your fists, you can lock onto enemies and then engage in typical Tekken-style hand-to-hand combat and also use a variety of weapons from machine-guns to flamethrowers. In addition to taking down the bad guys, you'll get to smash a lot of wooden crates that hide power-ups, hunt for collectibles and unlock items that you can use to improve your fighter's stats.
In arcade mode the roster has been updated with eight new characters, including martial arts legend, Bob, and Miguel Caballero Rojo the Spanish matador, but all the old favourites are still here, bringing the total tally of fighters up to 42, including Sergei Dragunov, Anna Williams and Marshall Law. Tekken 6 introduces a few features designed to add strategic depth to the battles, including the rage system, which gives players the chance to fight back even if their health is low, plus multi-tiered stages and item moves, where you can, for example, throw a salmon at an opponent or shoot a bazooka.
Online versus multiplayer boasts the usual ranked, player mode and online leaderboards and you can also create and upload ghost characters which are based on your fight style, which other players can download.
Click for larger imageGameplay impressions overleaf...