TheLe
First Post
Simply put, Tekken 6 is an awful experience.
We start off with the single-player campaign, which is a mess anyway you look at it. Namco tried to make it into a "Bad Dudes" style beat-em-up, but it just doesn't work. The character you choose keeps its signature move, but it's nigh impossible to do them successfully because of the sensitivity of the button/joystick movements. It certainly doesn't help that every level is exactly the same -- you walk for 5 seconds, 2-6 bad guys appear, you smash them, and they drop loot. That's it... over and over again. On that note, the loot themselves are needed to unlock special items to equip your character later, and the money you pick up is used to buy those unlocked items later. This mindless experience is painful at best. After spending a couple hours I simply gave up as it was just too tedious and was sucking the fun out of the entire thing. That's right, it sucked the fun out of the game. The good news is that each level only lasts about 10 minutes. The bad news is that it takes about 2 minutes to load up the next level, which is absurdly long for a game that I installed onto the hard drive (Xbox 360 version).
Which comes to the next problem: load times. It takes an absurdly long time to load EVERYTHING in the game. Want to play match? Wait 60 seconds to load. Want to customize your character? Wait 30 seconds to load. Want to change the in-game settings? Wait 30 seconds to load. This is ridiculous, especially since I installed the bloody thing to my hard drive. I don't have this problem with Street Fighter. Heck, I don't have this problem with Tekken 3 on the Playstation One!
[imager]http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/3984/heiap4.jpg[/imager]The long load times really emphasizes the overall problem with the interface itself. This presentation is simply horrible as you scroll though a fairly mundane if not confusing menu, which feels like cascading menus found on a web page. For example, Where you would go to customize your characters? Under "PROFILE", which is puzzling.
As for character customizations, this is a curse within a blessing. It takes 10-30 seconds to load any character you select, and the options are numerous... actually it's too numerous. While it may be fun to put the giant PANDA into a pink bikini and heels, it's not nearly as interesting to dress up PAUL or LAW to look like office pimps. When it comes to fighting games, the character's look is critical, and this is where things fall apart. I don't particularly enjoy playing a character that looks nothing like himself. Imagine playing Street Fighter's Ryu with a Mariah Carey Hair Style and Gandalf's robes. It may sound interesting on paper, but it's insulting to play with (or against) on the screen, and completely breaks the spirit of these characters. Ryu should look like Ryu.
(To the right is a custom HEIHACHI, which I've seen in my online games)
Which brings me to the online experience. This isn't as bad as people have claimed in some respect, but not as good either. Lag is a very serious problem as 9 out of every 10 games will slow down to a crawl (about 4 out of 10 games will end with a network disconnect, leaving you even more frustrated as you are in the middle of the final blow). Tekken 6 solves laggy connections by slowing down the game for both players. So one player has a bad connection, the game will play as if you both have a bad connection. Simply put, the game becomes SLOW. You may end up playing a match where EVERYTHING moves at 40% normal speed, while other times it's 60% normal speed. This makes it playable in the sense that your characters aren't skipping around everywhere (as in Marvel vs Capcom 2), but it's also terrible because timing is completely off. For example, you can see your opponent winding up for a big punch, so you try to block it... but it fails! The timing is so "off" that you'll usually get hit by that punch anyway. As such, Namco would have been better off keeping online play out of the game rather than giving us this broken version.
That being said, the overall presentation for online play is just bad. You start out by choosing a character, then waiting for an opponent to connect to. This can take up to two minutes, even in the dead of night when there should be little network congestion (I am not exaggerating). Once you connect to an opponent, you'll have to wait another 30-60 seconds for a VS screen to appear, displaying your character choice and your opponent's character choice, with the name of the character beneath it. After that, you have to wait another 15-30 seconds for the match to begin. This makes it a slow and tedious experience, and it's been consistently this slow for the hundreds of matches I tried.
Now comes the other multiplayer problem -- if you didn't pay attention to the VS screen, you're out of luck because you can rarely identify your opponent. With the hundreds of customizations out there, your opponent will usually look like this: a tall man dressed in 3-piece suit, with slicked-back hair. Who is he? You have no idea because he doesn't look like any character on the roster at all. It doesn't help that the screen only displays your Login Name and your opponent's Login Name... it will never show the actual character's name! That's asinine. Do I really care that I am playing against "UrLameButImL33t?"
Marvel vs Capcom 2 presents this much better, which is a shame since Tekken used to be a superior game. MvC2 does this: (1) you find an opponent, (2) you and your opponent have 60 seconds to choose a character (at the same time I might add), (3) match starts with your Login name at the BOTTOM, and the character names AT THE TOP. The time going from "quick play" to the time you start your actual match can be as quick as 20 seconds. Is that so hard to do? (Apparantly it is for Namco)
Once you get past the presentation layer, you get into the heart of the game. A good set of game mechanics can help you look past the presentation problems. Unfortunately Tekken 6 disappoints here.
The overall game mechanics are the same as previous games, but the tweaks are completely unwelcome. Whereas the previous games focuses on tactics and balanced game play, Tekken 6 focuses on big combos and juggles. The moment you're launched in the air or knocked down (which is very easy to do), your opponent will be able to keep you there all the while knocking you back into the wall, which is when he or she will unleash a flurry of more combos. And you can't do anything about it! So when all is said and done, you're going to lose 50%-75% of your life from these cheap juggles. Worst of all, they're very easy to do!
It's almost as if they took the cheesiest characters in the previous games and upgraded ALL the characters to pull the same cheese. This makes the game more accessible to button mashers, while at the same time less accessible since those same new players will feel cheated when they're taking all that damage (simply because they pressed one wrong button). This unforgiving game play is very frustrating and just isn't fun. I've taken out many opponents with these combos and have always felt bad about it... it's never felt like a fair fight since it all comes down to who gets the first air/ground punch in.
This is far different than the previous core mechanics, which resolved around small hits or the ten-string combo (which you can interrupt) and block and maneuver tactics. Heck, even side-stepping is practically useless in Tekken 6.
On the other hand the game still feels like Tekken of the past (unlike Tekken 4, which didn't feel like a Tekken game at all). The rage bar is a good addition, allowing you to deal extra damage when your life bar is critical (which helps prevents people from rage quitting in the middle of the match). But again, the pure focus on juggles ruins the game because your opponent can have a sliver of life left, but end up winning the game by dealing a huge juggle combo on you thanks to Rage. There's also a new mechanic allowing you to bounce your opponents of the ground, but that's just made things even worse. (The wall cheapness has been severely increased too).
Don't just take my word for it, check out these cheese combo videos:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROaZ23hx5io]YouTube - Tekken 6 - Spectacular combos[/ame]
Summary:
Tekken 6 is really a game that's morphed the franchise into a juggle fest that will appeal to those who like huge Killer-Instinct style combos. It's really only going to appeal to the true die-hard Tekken fans who feel Namco can do no wrong, but it falls short in every other way. It's a clear step back from the spectacular Tekken 5 on the Playstation 2 (which is probably the best of the series). I'd argue that Tekken 6 is even inferior to Tekken 3 on the original Playstation One. This game is simply a mess where the sum is as bad as its parts.
2 stars out of 5. (I would like to give it 1 out of 5, but that's reserved for the awful Tekken 4)
-The Le
www.HeroClixWorld.com
(note: I have been a huge Tekken player since Tekken 2, and ranked #2 in the Canton/Akron area for Tekken Tag. This review is not a mindless rant).
We start off with the single-player campaign, which is a mess anyway you look at it. Namco tried to make it into a "Bad Dudes" style beat-em-up, but it just doesn't work. The character you choose keeps its signature move, but it's nigh impossible to do them successfully because of the sensitivity of the button/joystick movements. It certainly doesn't help that every level is exactly the same -- you walk for 5 seconds, 2-6 bad guys appear, you smash them, and they drop loot. That's it... over and over again. On that note, the loot themselves are needed to unlock special items to equip your character later, and the money you pick up is used to buy those unlocked items later. This mindless experience is painful at best. After spending a couple hours I simply gave up as it was just too tedious and was sucking the fun out of the entire thing. That's right, it sucked the fun out of the game. The good news is that each level only lasts about 10 minutes. The bad news is that it takes about 2 minutes to load up the next level, which is absurdly long for a game that I installed onto the hard drive (Xbox 360 version).
Which comes to the next problem: load times. It takes an absurdly long time to load EVERYTHING in the game. Want to play match? Wait 60 seconds to load. Want to customize your character? Wait 30 seconds to load. Want to change the in-game settings? Wait 30 seconds to load. This is ridiculous, especially since I installed the bloody thing to my hard drive. I don't have this problem with Street Fighter. Heck, I don't have this problem with Tekken 3 on the Playstation One!
[imager]http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/3984/heiap4.jpg[/imager]The long load times really emphasizes the overall problem with the interface itself. This presentation is simply horrible as you scroll though a fairly mundane if not confusing menu, which feels like cascading menus found on a web page. For example, Where you would go to customize your characters? Under "PROFILE", which is puzzling.
As for character customizations, this is a curse within a blessing. It takes 10-30 seconds to load any character you select, and the options are numerous... actually it's too numerous. While it may be fun to put the giant PANDA into a pink bikini and heels, it's not nearly as interesting to dress up PAUL or LAW to look like office pimps. When it comes to fighting games, the character's look is critical, and this is where things fall apart. I don't particularly enjoy playing a character that looks nothing like himself. Imagine playing Street Fighter's Ryu with a Mariah Carey Hair Style and Gandalf's robes. It may sound interesting on paper, but it's insulting to play with (or against) on the screen, and completely breaks the spirit of these characters. Ryu should look like Ryu.
(To the right is a custom HEIHACHI, which I've seen in my online games)
Which brings me to the online experience. This isn't as bad as people have claimed in some respect, but not as good either. Lag is a very serious problem as 9 out of every 10 games will slow down to a crawl (about 4 out of 10 games will end with a network disconnect, leaving you even more frustrated as you are in the middle of the final blow). Tekken 6 solves laggy connections by slowing down the game for both players. So one player has a bad connection, the game will play as if you both have a bad connection. Simply put, the game becomes SLOW. You may end up playing a match where EVERYTHING moves at 40% normal speed, while other times it's 60% normal speed. This makes it playable in the sense that your characters aren't skipping around everywhere (as in Marvel vs Capcom 2), but it's also terrible because timing is completely off. For example, you can see your opponent winding up for a big punch, so you try to block it... but it fails! The timing is so "off" that you'll usually get hit by that punch anyway. As such, Namco would have been better off keeping online play out of the game rather than giving us this broken version.
That being said, the overall presentation for online play is just bad. You start out by choosing a character, then waiting for an opponent to connect to. This can take up to two minutes, even in the dead of night when there should be little network congestion (I am not exaggerating). Once you connect to an opponent, you'll have to wait another 30-60 seconds for a VS screen to appear, displaying your character choice and your opponent's character choice, with the name of the character beneath it. After that, you have to wait another 15-30 seconds for the match to begin. This makes it a slow and tedious experience, and it's been consistently this slow for the hundreds of matches I tried.
Now comes the other multiplayer problem -- if you didn't pay attention to the VS screen, you're out of luck because you can rarely identify your opponent. With the hundreds of customizations out there, your opponent will usually look like this: a tall man dressed in 3-piece suit, with slicked-back hair. Who is he? You have no idea because he doesn't look like any character on the roster at all. It doesn't help that the screen only displays your Login Name and your opponent's Login Name... it will never show the actual character's name! That's asinine. Do I really care that I am playing against "UrLameButImL33t?"
Marvel vs Capcom 2 presents this much better, which is a shame since Tekken used to be a superior game. MvC2 does this: (1) you find an opponent, (2) you and your opponent have 60 seconds to choose a character (at the same time I might add), (3) match starts with your Login name at the BOTTOM, and the character names AT THE TOP. The time going from "quick play" to the time you start your actual match can be as quick as 20 seconds. Is that so hard to do? (Apparantly it is for Namco)
Once you get past the presentation layer, you get into the heart of the game. A good set of game mechanics can help you look past the presentation problems. Unfortunately Tekken 6 disappoints here.
The overall game mechanics are the same as previous games, but the tweaks are completely unwelcome. Whereas the previous games focuses on tactics and balanced game play, Tekken 6 focuses on big combos and juggles. The moment you're launched in the air or knocked down (which is very easy to do), your opponent will be able to keep you there all the while knocking you back into the wall, which is when he or she will unleash a flurry of more combos. And you can't do anything about it! So when all is said and done, you're going to lose 50%-75% of your life from these cheap juggles. Worst of all, they're very easy to do!
It's almost as if they took the cheesiest characters in the previous games and upgraded ALL the characters to pull the same cheese. This makes the game more accessible to button mashers, while at the same time less accessible since those same new players will feel cheated when they're taking all that damage (simply because they pressed one wrong button). This unforgiving game play is very frustrating and just isn't fun. I've taken out many opponents with these combos and have always felt bad about it... it's never felt like a fair fight since it all comes down to who gets the first air/ground punch in.
This is far different than the previous core mechanics, which resolved around small hits or the ten-string combo (which you can interrupt) and block and maneuver tactics. Heck, even side-stepping is practically useless in Tekken 6.
On the other hand the game still feels like Tekken of the past (unlike Tekken 4, which didn't feel like a Tekken game at all). The rage bar is a good addition, allowing you to deal extra damage when your life bar is critical (which helps prevents people from rage quitting in the middle of the match). But again, the pure focus on juggles ruins the game because your opponent can have a sliver of life left, but end up winning the game by dealing a huge juggle combo on you thanks to Rage. There's also a new mechanic allowing you to bounce your opponents of the ground, but that's just made things even worse. (The wall cheapness has been severely increased too).
Don't just take my word for it, check out these cheese combo videos:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROaZ23hx5io]YouTube - Tekken 6 - Spectacular combos[/ame]
Summary:
Tekken 6 is really a game that's morphed the franchise into a juggle fest that will appeal to those who like huge Killer-Instinct style combos. It's really only going to appeal to the true die-hard Tekken fans who feel Namco can do no wrong, but it falls short in every other way. It's a clear step back from the spectacular Tekken 5 on the Playstation 2 (which is probably the best of the series). I'd argue that Tekken 6 is even inferior to Tekken 3 on the original Playstation One. This game is simply a mess where the sum is as bad as its parts.
2 stars out of 5. (I would like to give it 1 out of 5, but that's reserved for the awful Tekken 4)
-The Le
www.HeroClixWorld.com
(note: I have been a huge Tekken player since Tekken 2, and ranked #2 in the Canton/Akron area for Tekken Tag. This review is not a mindless rant).
