Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion

When I heard that Tekken 6 was coming out on the psp I wasn't sure how to react. I loved the last one, all the story, secrets, unlockables, characters, minigames and of course the beautifully smooth and fun fighting made it one of my favorite PSP titles. I wasn't sure how Bandi Namco would be able to stick even more into a game like this, and was hoping that it was possible. After all they had a winning strategy on the PSP version sure to sell well even if it wasn't as good as it's console counterpart. 
 
Unfortunatley, other than the new characters, and some new game tricks such as ghost mode there's been more of a downgrade than an upgrade. For instance the story mode in tekken 6 for the consoles is a new mode as well as the old mode. On Dark Ressurection the Characters would have special battles on certain stages as well as good length endings and plenty of voice work. Unfortunately all the diolauge and the new mode was taken out, and though there are special battles, the explanations for them aren't given leaving you confused about why it's a special fight. And after you beat story mode with a character you get a EXTREMLY short cinimatic that doesn't tell you anything. And as if to furthen the futility of even including a "story" mode, the intros aren't voiced and don't give you enough info to understand the story, only enough to understand the characters. I don't even understand why this mode even exists if it's this pointless. I note this because for me it's the biggest drawback compared to the last game. There was so much variety, intresting stories and twists to make the game feel much bigger than it was and keep me playing. 
 
The game itself looks good compared to the last version. The loading screen is highly improved and feels more high tech than the last one. The Character fights also look and play excellent, though some of the detail that should be possible isn't.  There isn't much improvement here, but it's so fun, frantic and great that it's not that much of a drawback. 
I just wish there could have been some effort put into refining and upgrading this system. I'm not saying that nothing was done though, the feature of becoming powerful near death was included, but it was such a minor detail that I don't even notice it's impact. The enviorments also need some work as they were much more detailed and interactive in the last game. I enjoy the new enviorments, yet I wish I could still see some improvements on this as well (The snow effects especially. feels too plain). 
 
There's also the issue of the boss fight. Their are two bosses inside the game, 
notice very easy to find spoiler and very pointless. This is only to stop people who care about generalisations not details 

. The names are given but no backround or story (If you want to know more, play the console versions). The characters themselves are annoyingly hard. I enjoyed fighting the last boss Jinpachi because he was a normal character with overblown moves. This made him tough, but still fightable. For the bosses, most of you r moves don't work and they have some really cheap attacks like one hit KOs and very long range attacks. Most of your moves won't work on them so don't bother for huge combos or grabs/special attacks. This makes the bosses really cheap and rather than make it feel hard yet fair, it becomes unwinnable and annoying. So far I've only won by sheer luck and my skills, while I've died many times in the process.
  
The ghost mode is a cool concept. I hear there's a patch somewhere, but I can't find it. This means that at least for me there's no online mode. That also means no online ghosts. I love ghosts in general. Most can be useful for beating records or examining your mistakes/achievements.  I wasn't sure about how this would play out in a fighting game, as every fight is different and a ghost is pretty much an interactive replay. I was surprised that this had made it on to the psp fromt the console version and not just the story stuff. For those who don't know, fighting ghosts record what your fighing style is like, then try to replicate it best as well. It ends up working well despite my suspections, yet it still feels more of an extra or bonus rather than a core feature. After all the AI is already quite good

Also if you remember all the special modes and minigames you shouldn't expect more. All of them have dissapeared in this version. I don't understand how they could fit so much into one version, and then take away a lot of the polish and features in the next. It was done so it's not saving space or anything. So what's up? 
 
My score is not based on this game based on the last one. It's this game as a whole and what it could have been. It's still a good game, but it had so much potential and that was barely taken up. I didn't care if this became a psp game so soon if they could have spent more time and didn't take out some of the features that made the last game so special.