Tekken 6

You know that arcade stick we’re always going on about that you should get to play fighting games? And how we always say that the 360 pad’s d-pad is an abomination? Well, here’s another fighting game to give you a reason to buy a decent peripheral. Look, you didn’t mind forking out money for a Rock Band or Guitar Hero guitar, so why should this be any different?

The simple fact of the matter is that while Tekken is sort of playable on the PS3 pad, it’s not on the Xbox one. You see, Tekken requires much more precise timing of dragon punch and fireball movements; you also need to be able to double-tap directions, and since you can block low just by pressing down, you need to know that you’re actually pressing down rather than down-forward (though if you do down-forward at the right time you will do a handy low parry, but you need to be able to know that you’re pressing that direction too). So get a stick – it’s just better.

We played Tekken 6 at Namco’s recent press event using half-remembered skills from Tekken 4 – turns out Heihachi’s Twin Pistons move has changed and doesn’t juggle any more. Instead, the second hit knocks opponents to the ground instead of launching them into the air for a juggle combo. So that kind of messed us up and everything else we tried resulted in us getting punched in the face by the button masher we were playing against. Like Soul Calibur, Namco’s other fighter, button mashing can get you places, and it’s especially infuriating when you’re trying to get a move out and you’re being stopped by annoying low kicks.

Obviously the low parry mentioned above helps in these situations, but not when you’re standing at a pod playing Tekken 6 at an odd angle because you’re trying to prevent your pint from falling off the pod because there is never a decent flat surface to put your glass on. Then we lost some more, which is just embarrassing when you’re the Queen’s University Tekken 2 champion of 1997.

But the beatings just resolved us into actually wanting to learn Tekken 6. After pretty much ignoring Tekken 5 for unknown reasons, it felt really good to be playing Namco’s explosion-filled fighting game again. It looks amazing, so that helps, as it’s the first proper Tekken game for this generation of consoles and that just makes the explosions and screen-ripping special effects look that much more exciting. And there are so many characters, 40 of them in total, to choose from. Even the original palette-swap sub-bosses from Tekken 2 are significantly different from each other… well, probably, it’s not like we’ve sat down and noted all the differences between sisters Nina and Anna Williams, but we’re pretty sure their moves lists diverged away from each other a good while ago.

In Tekken 3 and 4 there was Tekken Force mode, which some people liked because there was an onslaught of enemies to demolish, but Tekken 6 has the Scenario Campaign mode, which, despite its stupid name, is like Tekken Force 2. We had a brief go on it and it seems like fun in the same manner as the previous ones, where you beat down various enemies before facing a boss. The fact this is now a two-player game means lots of juggles between players and, yeah, we’re really up for a bit of that.

It's ages away when you’re wanting to try out that new robot girl with the exploding head.