Tekken 6 Member Review for the PSP

The Good: Beautiful characters and arenas, customizing your character is fun, every Tekken character is present, smooth, tight controls

The Bad: Frustratingly difficult even on the easiest setting, not enough modes, very simple, no online multiplayer

Fighting games just seem to get less and less popular these days with just the big guys coming out with new sequels every year, and Tekken is no exception. Probably the second most popular Japanese fighter (under Street Fighter) Tekken has some of the most memorable characters, and it caters to button mashers and combo memorizes. One thing that Tekken is famous for is how gorgeous it looks. Tekken 6 may not have the glitz that the PS3 versions does, but it is one of the best looking PSP games made this year.

If you don’t know the story behind Tekken I can’t really tell you since there are dozens of them. Everyone enters the Iron Fist Tournament to stop someone with a hand drawn beginning story and your typical pre-rendered ending movie. Fighting games aren’t really famous for their stories (with Mortal Kombat probably having the most in depth story of any fighter), so don’t come into this as a newbie and expecting something spectacular. The story is just something to keep you playing the story mode and nothing more or less.

There are a lot of characters in Tekken 6 and if I’m correct they pulled a Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and including every Tekken character ever made. This should keep you real buys unlocking all their stories and gold to upgrade the characters. It takes awhile to get enough gold to buy anything, but once you do you get some pretty neat stuff.

Each fight consists of four battles for each character and they vary depending on their story. The main boss, Azazel, is a real ***** to beat since he is so big, and the game is so damn hard. I mean REALLY hard. I was on the easiest setting and still had my butt handed to me. I don’t suck either the game is just based on pure luck more than skill thanks to the ability to button mash so much.
When you’re actually fighting the controls are very tight and responsive. You block by backing away, you have high punches, low punches, high and low kicks, and grabs. It’s your bare bones setup, but it works well on the PSP and feels natural and smooth. If the difficulty wasn’t so painstakingly difficult I would be more forgiving for the game overall, but the hair tearing difficulty drops points on this one.

Tekken is really just an arcadey eye candy fest and bare bones combat. The whole setup is great and it’s simple so fans and new comers will rejoice for how well the game is executed. All I wish are for more modes, and online multiplayer and it would be perfect.