Tekken 6 - Featuring Bob, world's most agile obese man.
 

Tekken 6 (or rather, its arcade upgrade Bloodline Rebellion) is hitting 360 and PS3 next week, with a PSP version coming in the fall, so I thought it was time to make a thread.

Tekken 6 contains at least 40 characters, both old favourites like Eddy and Hwoarang and new characters like the aformented Bob, Namco's rip on fat Americans, and Alisa Bosknovich, an android who uses jet boosters in her moves and can turn her arms into chainsaws. Getting straight to the point, here's what Tekken 6 has that's new to the series:

-Bound. During a juggle, you can slam the opponent into the ground with a Bound move, causing them to bounce off of the ground, allowing you to continue your juggle. This allows for huge combos that carry opponents all the way to a wall, where they get wallraped. You only get one of these during the same juggle though. Beta Tekken 6 allowed for two bounds in a juggle, and was about as insane as you would expect.

-Scenario Campaign. Replacing the traditional arcade mode single player, this is a scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Tekken Force, only x10, complete with in-engine cutscenes. A more traditional single-player mode is contained within this mode, and you have to unlock characters for it, but only for that mode. It also supports offline and online co-op for Tekken Force heaven.

-Limited item use in fights. Tekken 6's huge customisation mode allows for certain items to be used during fights. Everyone has at least one item move, and they do things from taunts to new moves or even additional throws. One of Jin's items gives him a Devil-style laser beam, for example. Steve's huge boxing gloves give him a launcher that lifts the opponent up in slow motion as he strikes a pose.

-More dynamic stages. In T6 you can smash opponents through stages for extra damage, taking you to a new area and maybe giving you the chance to continue your combo.

-Good online play, hopefully. Tekken 5 DRO's online was terrible outside of absolute optimal conditions and Soul Calibur 4's netcode wasn't brilliant, but Namco have claimed to have completely rewritten their network code for Tekken 6, so hopefully it should be a smooth experience. People have claimed that the netcode is better than SC4, and one person has even claimed that it's BlazBlue level good, which would be great but highly unlikely.

-Motion blur. Tekken 6 manages motion blur at a smooth 60 FPS a second, but you can toggle this off if you want a higher resolution, at least on the 360 version. If you're on PS3, toggling it off gives you 2x anti-alising without a boost in resolution. Curse you Cell processor!

Tekken 6 is coming in both standard and limited editions, with the limited edition being hugely expensive because it comes with a wireless stick for arcade players and people who really don't like stock pads for fighters, which is understandable.

Now, onto some videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9zZ8r_BFKc Steve using his Boxing Gloves in a combo.

http://sdtekken.com/2009/10/08/misse...-watch-it-now/ 1up's Game Night, well worth watching to get some more indepth info on Tekken 6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw1-isT4CGI Footage from a Japanese 3-on3 tournament, featuring pink edition Bob.

Want info on combos, the dark notation used by Tekken players, and the dreaded tier lists? Head over to Tekken Zaibatsu. The community isn't the greatest, but it's probably the best source of info for all things Tekken right now. SD Tekken is a blog dedicated to Tekken, and is also now running a podcast centering on Tekken.

FUCK. THAT!

Jin + Long ass combos + short recoveries + bound = unstoppable long combo which kills you in one life.

Welp, this pretty much kills King for good. Not that I'm big into Tekken, but King generally has a slow attack rate AND a slow recovery time and is easily juggled by fast characters with no ability to juggle, himself. This puts him firmly in the "fuck you" section of the list, I'm sure.

Note that I haven't played anything after Tekken 4 or so (not sure on the chronology of the series), so while this may have changed, I'm guessing not.

You aren't missing much. If you can't play with the Mishima or Kazama clan, you're basically SOL. Eddy/Christina is still the easy mode and Yoshi is still great at popups. Other than that, I just can't see anything past Jin and Heihachi dominating the competition with unbelievable combos because of so much air time.

I've never really played a Tekken game, mainly because I thought the character designs were too crazy in a stupid way, as opposed to an awesome way (like Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat, or...Clay Fighter). Are there any big differences in how it plays compared to the other big fighting series?

Tekken is more about memorizing combos and juggling where other games aren't.
The main fighting series to compare it to is Soul Caliber for obvious reasons. These are the main 3D fighting games to really stand out. Out of the two, I'd say Soul Caliber is the better overall game. It's less emphasis on combos and more "noobie" friendly with its emphasis on weapon fighting than the very punishing brawler known as Tekken.

... Actually, I guess you could say Tekken is more 2.5D in the fact that I haven't really seen a significant shift from using the joystick to duck rather than shift on the planes.

Ehhh, never been a big fan of Tekken. I mean I'll play just about any fighting game put in front of me and stand a good chance but not a game I'm tripping over myself to purchase.

'Sides I play Hwarong, and everyone knows Hwarong is the thirdmost noob character!

Jin isn't even top tier in T6, the current *official* tier list puts him at B+, 4 tiers below the top. Eddy and Christie aren't right at the top either. Also, long juggles do less damage in T6 BR (or console) than in the previous games because of damage scaling. For example, a juggle from DR does as much damage as a juggle+bound+rejuggle in T6, unless a lot of good things happen at just the right moment. Huge combos that kill you in a single round don't happen much. Original Tekken 6 had some crazy stuff in it though.

Actually King is alright in Tekken 6, with the latest tier list putting him at AA, so he can hang with the top guys. Well, everyone in Tekken 6 can hang tough. King has juggles too you know.

Tekken is an aggressive fighter. You generally want to be up in the other guy's face, trying to frustrate him into making a mistake so you can get a launcher. If you make a mistake in Tekken, a good player will punish you big time. Perfects actualy happen in serious competitive matches, usually when one player makes two or three huge mistakes from the off. Juggles are important, but knowing what moves your character has that are safe, what you can use for "frame traps" - leaving small gaps in your offense to trick the opponent into attacking - and what moves can be used on your opponent's wakeup, among a lot of other things are important in Tekken too.

For those interested, here is the most recent tier list for T6 BR, the version that's hitting consoles. It's from October 6th:

A+ = Steve, Law, Bob
AAA = Bryan, Paul, Julia, Lars, Lili
AA = Bruce, Baek, King (says NIN), Jack, Eddy, Feng, Nina
A- = Roger, A.King, Heihachi, Kaz, D.Jin, Christie, Anna, Miguel, Leo, Lee, Alisa
B+ = Lei, Dragunov, Marduk, Jin, Asuka, Ganryu,
B = Hwo, Ling, Wang
B- = Yoshimitsu. Raven, Bears
C+ = Mokujin. Zafina

Rufus disagrees.

I'm surprised on Jin not being top because he had the quick recovery from a lot of moves in 5. I saw at least two combos he had there that left a person with less than 25% of his health, on one combo, that started with a launcher and went onto the wall.

His entire play of "tap, tap, tap" had him in a league of his own for (I believe) two games.

What is really mystifying me is how Law has gotten to the A+ standard when he used to be the "noob" magnet.