An excellent game.
Ill start with the graphics, theyre the best Ive seen on the PSP and look fantastic by any system standards, everything looks really good, the animations are slick at times you can notice that the characters might look alittle undetailed in places but this is a portable system hardly an xbox 360 or PS3 and it still looks brilliant.
Gameplay wise its the classic Tekken formula, the series has evolved quite abit since its beginnings, now all the characters even the ones with similar fighting styles have deferentiated combos and moves - the likes of armour king and King, heihachi and kazuya, anna and nina williams are good examples of this.
Each button controls a different limb and the player can string together combos with various button presses and d pad motions - a VERY good player can string together insane 10 hit combos over and over with very little effort. I should also note that the controls work absolutely fine, i havent found myself struggling to jump, pull of a combo or string a few moves together because of akward d pad contro lissues that I unfortunately found in street fighter alpha max 3 on the PSP.
The player can block throws , counter attacks, side step, leap up from the ground etc making the fights very tactical and not just a button bashing game - its certainly on par with Street Fighter and the like and it can be very challenging depending on difficulty setting/how good you are with the character you have selected, but it isnt as insanely difficult as say street fighter alpha is on its default setting!
Also there are a plethora of gaming modes in dark ressurection, some of which are the Tekken Dojo, survivor mode, arcade and one of my favourites, Tekken Bowling Tournament, you unlock some of these during play and also you can purchase items+accesories for your characters whom you can edit in the options, this allows for some character customisation in terms of appearance, and also an incentive to keep playing.
Also the game features alot of characters from the Tekken universe, -over 30 something like 34 in total each has there own storyline - presented at first in a rather cool looking comic style and then capped of at the end with a CGI sequence most of which are light hearted. Also each character has their own nemesis to fight so each storymode play through with a different character is slightly different excluding the beginning and ending sequences.
Sound wise, its pretty dam good, the music (especially the menu music) rocks , some of the stage music fails but overall its still pretty good to listen to , sound wise the character voice overs are pretty good and the odd sounds they make during the battles arnt too distracting.
Overall I would defintely recommend Tekken Dark Ressurection not just to a fighting genre fan but to anyone who owns a PSP.