Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion

 The long running 'Tekken' franchise is commonly thought of as one of the better fighting game franchises of all time, often being compared (albeit frequently unfavorably) to the legendary Street Fighter series. Tekken 6 retains much of what makes the Tekken games great, and it is arguably the most ambitious game in the series. Despite being hampered by disappointing single player and online content, Tekken 6 is still a great fighting game.

Tekken 6 features an impressive roster of 40 fighters, including six new characters since Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. The arcade release of the original Tekken 6 saw the introduction of the androgynous martial artist 'Leo', the Spanish street fighter 'Miguel', 'Zafina', the defender of an ancient tribe and the plump karate master 'Bob'. On top of this, two new characters where introduced in an arcade upgrade titled 'Tekken 6 Bloodline Rebellion', a Mishima Zaibatsu rebel soldier 'Lars Alexanderson' and Tekken 3's "Dr. Boskonovitch's" robotic creation, 'Alisa Boskonovitch'. As the home console version of Tekken 6 is actually the upgraded version of Tekken 6, all 6 new characters are featured. Lars is the most powerful of the new characters, with some powerful juggles and intimidating lows at his disposal. Zafina is the most imaginatively animated character, as Namco have given her some creative stances to play with, including the 'Scarecrow' and the 'Tarantula' stances, making her hard to defend against. Leo, Miguel, and Alisa are fairly well rounded, with Bob being second strongest of the newbies, with deceptive quickness and powerful attacks.

With that being said though, Tekken 6 has a remarkably balanced roster. This can be attributed to the aforementioned arcade upgrade, as the original Tekken 6 was heavily imbalanced, witth characters like Bob and Kazuya being much more powerful then most others. But Namco patched this all up in the 'Bloodline Rebellion' upgrade, with character power being regulated. Of course, some characters have advantages over others, Law and Steve for example, are looked upon favorably due to their excessive speed and pressure exertion, but its not as if playing against either character puts you at a considerable disadvantage.

Each character is also fully customizable, with hundreds of customization options available for each character. The customization aspect has improved significantly from Tekken 5 and Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection, as the available customizations in Tekken 6 are much greater, both in quantity and quality, then that of its predecessors. It is now possible to fully customize characters so that they are visually unrecognizable (though their fighting stance is a giveaway), and there are some customizations options that are just plain awesome, such as being able to customize Jack-6 to look like Optimus Prime.

Tekken 6 introduces many new aspects to the fighting system, such as the 'rage' component, wherein a player with less then about 5 percent health gets a red aura around them, and their attack power increases considerably. The 'bound' system allows players to lengthen their juggles, as a player can launch their opponent into the air, hit them a few times, then perform one of the many character specific 'bounding' moves, which will then make the opponent to land on the ground with their lower body in the air, allowing for the player to continue their air combo, or 'juggle'. Environments are now also destructible, with floors of specific stages breaking through to reveal a different area. Breaking your opponent through a floor leaves them in a 'bounded' position, allowing you to continue your juggle. As well as increasing the creative possibilities of combos, these features allow a player a greater chance at a comeback. A hallmark of the Tekken series has been the unpredictability of a match, which is amplified by these new systems. For example, if a player is driven to rage mode with 5% health remaining, with the opponent still having a good 40% health left, if the player driven to rage mode can launch their opponent into the air, utilize the bound system, and integrate walls into their combo (there are specific combos that can be performed at walls), they will most likely be able to win the round because of the added rage power. Some may view this as unfair, but it just means you have to play it safe when your opponent is in rage mode, and makes the round interesting to the last second.

Other facets of game play are expanded in Tekken 6 as well, though these are components that casual players may have never noticed before. The punishing system, which refers to the frame disadvantages players are in after moves, for example, if a player is using Lars uses his 'Blue Bolt' attack (forward, back, triangle, square), they are left at a 14 frame disadvantage, and are vulnerable to any attack 14 frames or less. This is something most casual players don't notice, but it is integral to competitive Tekken play. Punishers (the attacks a player does after their opponent is left at a frame disadvantage) now come in 10 frame to about 20 frame variations. The 'crush' system is also present, and refers to moves that bypass other moves. Most moves that entail jumping in the animation have the 'low crush' property, meaning they bypass low attacks. For example, if a player uses King's hopknee while his opponent uses a low attack, the opponents attack will miss and he will be struck by the jumping attack. Crushes come in both low and high variations, with several low attacks being able to bypass high attacks. Another component that casual players may not notice, but it is crucial to know what moves crush what for high level play. There are also moves that 'track', which mean they hit the opponent when they attempt to sidestep an attack.

Tekken is often criticized for not being deep, though its evident that the people leveling this criticism have never cared to learn how to play the game properly. With that being said though, Tekken is an extremely accessible game, remarkably so, as button mashing will get a player quite far. This is a legitimate flaw in Tekken's gameplay, as it's ridiculous how well a player can do by simply mashing buttons. Of course, a button masher will be winning no tournaments, but if a button masher plays someone who is just learning to play properly, the randomness of the button mashers attacks will often be enough to overcome the amateur player, even though if the amateur player has a greater knowledge of how the game works. After a player gets more competent they will learn how to deal with button mashers, but random button mashing should not be as effective as it is. Button mashing is much more common in casual Tekken play than it should be, as I have come across many people who simply randomly press buttons and think that that's all there is to Tekken, unaware of the staggering depth of proper Tekken gameplay and Tekken 6 does nothing to rectify this.

But despite that, Tekken 6 is an excellent fighting game. It has tremendous depth, and when two similarly skilled players meet it is a thrilling experience for all involved. But practically every additional single player mode featured in the game adds little to the game as a package, and in some cases hampers it. The game features the standard arcade, survival, time attack and practice modes, as well as a 'ghost battle' mode where the player plays an endless stream of computer controlled characters, mean to mimic verses play. Unfortunately, playing against the computer is a much different experience than playing against another human being. This is exemplified by the fact that the computer constantly gets hit by most hop kicks and launchers (which launch the opponent into the air to begin an air combo or 'juggle'), but can consistently block un-seeable lows and break grabs. This means that's players who practice against the computer will fall into bad habits, like using only launchers (which often leave them at a frame disadvantage and leave them open for punishers) and not use lows or grabs, which are important to use in order to mix up your attack patterns, and playing against the computer quickly becomes combo practice rather then proper practice.

Then there is the 'Scenario Campaign' mode, wherein the player takes control of Lars and is aided by Alisa, and taken through a '3D adventure game-esque mode'. Scenario Campaign is comparable to the 'Subspace Emissary' mode in 'Super Smash Bros. Brawl'. It's interesting at first, but gets repetitive long before it ends. It does feature an interesting story, and allows players to quickly earn gold for customizations; it becomes more of a chore then anything else after a few hours.

Online play has been recently improved by a patch released by Namco, but the online play is still lacking, as 5 Bar connections are hard to come by, although the online play is quite fluid with good connections. However, for competitive players, online play is just not good enough, as at even the best connections there are a few frames of lag, which may not effect the animation, but makes the gameplay much less precise. This isn't so much Namco's fault, perhaps lagless online play will only be possible in the future, but as it is, true competitive play is still limited to arcades or offline play. However, for those not so concerned with a few frames of lag, with a good connection, the online play works perfectly fine.

Tekken games are often some of the best looking of the systems they appear on, but this is not true for Tekken 6. The original Tekken 6 was released in November 2007 in Japanese arcades, and while the game was touched up a bit during the 'Bloodline Rebellion' upgrade, the game is ultimately two years old, and not as visually impressive as more recent games like Metal Gear Solid 4 or Uncharted 2. With that being said though, Tekken 6 is by no means a bad looking game. Character models are finely detailed, and most of the textures are sharp, with a few exceptions here and there. Fully customized characters are a sight to be seen, and the cinematic cut scenes are certainly nothing short of a spectacle, despite the fact that they will surely soon be beat out by Final Fantasy XII. Scenario Campaign looks nowhere near as good as the arcade fighting game, as textures are less detailed and enemy models get repetitive and are unimpressive. Still, the core game looks great and Tekken 6 is a fantastic looking game on its own merits.

The audio of Tekken 6 is not particularly impressive, though some of the background music is good, like the techno track to the 'Electric Fountain' stage; the soundtrack is not on the same level as the excellent music found in Tekken 5. The English voice acting in scenario campaign is usually bad, sometimes laughably so, though the English characters sound convincing enough in their introductory and winning poses. The Japanese and foreign languages are usually convincing and most of the important characters (the Mishima's) sound consistently good. The audio is sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually just okay, and never as good as it was in Tekken 5.

The majority of the complaints that can be leveled at Tekken 6 are unrelated to the actual fighting game in Tekken 6, with most of the additional content being somewhat of a letdown. But the games saving grace is the core content, which is excellent. Those looking for a great online experience would be disappointed by Tekken 6, but Tekken,, and indeed fighting games in general, were not designed to be played online. They are designed to be an offline competitive multiplayer experience, and while the single player and online content is disappointing, to those who put in the effort to learn the game properly, Tekken 6 offers one hell of an offline competitive multiplayer experience.