Tekken 6 is a street fighting game developed and published by Bandai Namco Games. It is the seventh main installment in the Tekken franchise. It was released in arcades on November 26, 2007, as the first game running on the PlayStation 3-based System 357 arcade board. A year later, the game received an update, subtitled Bloodline Rebellion. Both versions also saw a limited release in North America.[4] A home version based on the update was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 27, 2009. This was the first time a main installment was produced for a non-Sony console. It was ported for the PlayStation Portable on November 24, 2009.[5] The game was produced by Katsuhiro Harada, who aimed to give the fights a strategic style while remaining faithful to the previous games in the series.
While this version retains elements from the earlier games, Tekken 6 introduces a new Rage system that increases the strength of the player characters when their health gets low. It also features a beat ’em up mode focused on a soldier named Lars Alexandersson who leads a coup d’état along with his underlings. Losing his memory in an attack against Jin Kazama‘s Mishima Zaibatsu special forces, Lars goes on a journey with a robot named Alisa Bosconovitch to learn his identity, so that he will be able to recover the subject of his mission. In this campaign mode, the player can win items by completing missions and enhance different power areas of any characters they choose to control.
The game received generally positive reviews. Critics praised the visuals and the new fight mechanics but had mixed opinions about the handling of the Scenario Campaign. Nevertheless, the PSP port was also well-received for how faithful it was to the initial console versions. The game’s sales have reached 3.5 million copies worldwide. It was later re-released with the spin-off Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Soulcalibur V for the PlayStation 3. A sequel, Tekken 7, was released to Japanese arcades on March 18, 2015, and was ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and released internationally on June 2, 2017.
Gameplay
Tekken 6 features bigger stages with more interactivity than its predecessors,[6] including walls or floors that can be broken to reveal new fighting areas.[7] The character customization feature has been enhanced, and certain items have implications in some aspects of the gameplay.[6]
A new Rage system gives characters more damage per hit when their vitality is below a certain point. Once activated, a reddish energy aura appears around the character, and their health bar starts to flicker in red. The Rage aura can be customized with different colors and effects to appear like fire, electricity, and ice, among others.[8] Another newly added gameplay feature is the “bound” system. Every character has several moves that when used in a juggle combo will cause the opponent to be smashed hard into the ground, bouncing them off it in a stunned state, leaving them vulnerable to another combo or an additional attack. As of the Bloodline Rebellion update, successfully parrying a low attack will also put a character into a bound state.
Lars facing two bosses in the campaign.
The console versions (excluding the PSP version) include an extra beat ’em up mode titled “Scenario Campaign”, which bears similarities with the “Tekken Force” and “Devil Within” modes from previous installments. In this mode, the player can move freely in an environment similar to that of a third-person role-playing game. Players can also pick up weapons like poles and Gatling guns, along with lootable items, money, and power-ups which can be found inside crates that are scattered throughout the playing environment. Players can move freely between fights, but when a group of enemies is encountered, the gameplay switches to the traditional, two-dimensional Tekken style. This mode originally included offline single player only, but on January 18, 2010, Namco released a patch that allows online co-op for the Scenario Campaign.[9]
Both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game include an online versus multiplayer mode over the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.[10] It includes Ranked Matches mode, where the player can promote their character to a higher ranking, and Player Matches mode, where the player’s fights are not ranked and they can invite friends to have matches with them.
The game uses a proprietary graphics engine running at 60 frames per second as well as a dynamic physics engine named the “Octave Engine”, which simulates fluid dynamics and among other things, allows water to behave realistically according to how the characters move.[11][12] The graphics engine has been designed with a focus on character-animation to make movements look smoother and more realistic. This led to many animations being remade to either reflect the impact and damage caused, or to create new possibilities in gameplay.[13] The developers considered animation extremely important for a fighting game and wanted to make the game “look good in motion”, whereas previous installments had been designed to “look good on still shots”. Since Bloodline Rebellion, the game has supported dynamic full-body motion blur, making Tekken 6 the first fighting game to do so.[