Hands-on: Tekken 6 (PS3, Xbox 360)
When we arrived at the Bandai Namco booth for our appointment today, we were immediately thrust into a back room and shown Tekken 6. We took it through the new Scenario mode, the series' evolution of Tekken Force Mode, and tried our hand at some of the classic brawling. Basically, it's still Tekken.
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The first thing we tried out was the new Scenario Mode. We selected Paul Phoenix, then headed into the first stage for some fighting fun. Turns out, though, that this mode isn't quite fun, and the Tekken formula does not translate to a 3D brawler too effectively. Our first issue was not being able to target individual enemies, which can be a real problem when you're fighting five generic enemies and one of them keeps punching you in the back. But, still, we soldiered on.
The second stage, however, was way worse. Controlling a gigantic robot that was both slow and clumsy, we were tasked with clearing a long hallway of enemies within 200 seconds. The attacks the gigantic robot had at its disposal varied; a chaingun could be used to spray enemies from a distance, and a ground stomp maneuver allowed us to dispatch enemies directly in front of us. The problem was the robot just moved too slow, and it was more about spamming a single attack than anything else.
But, then we moved on to the real Tekken experience in Arcade mode, the classic way to play the game. We tried several characters (King, Heihachi, and our favorite, Paul) and found the game to play much as it has in previous installments, which is just fine by us. King's ten-hit combo remained the same, and we even found most of our tricks with Paul remained intact. Outside of our old familiars, we found a huge roster, providing plenty of classic Tekken characters to play with, along with the already-revealed new fighters.
What fans should expect from Tekken 6 is more of the same fighting action they've come to know and love, and not a new, revolutionary experience. If you're like us, and you just want to fight people online and play some Tekken, then you'll enjoy this for what it is. Just don't expect there to be anything else of merit here when the game releases this fall.
