Tekken 6 Online Co-Op Update Impressions

Tekken 6's lengthy Scenario campaign was a decent addition to last year's brawler, but as we noted in our Tekken 6 review, it sported a pretty noticeable omission--the lack of two-player co-op support. Namco Bandai's recent free update to Tekken 6 remedies the situation, adding in the ability to play the campaign with a partner online.

While the offline Scenario campaign was a multi-hour romp featuring dozens of levels, the online version truncates the experience down to 10 levels and can be beaten within a couple of hours. Just as in the offline game, you and your partner have to face wave after wave of increasingly tough enemies, with characters from the Tekken 6 roster acting as bosses. You need to work closely with your online partner because either player's death will cause both of you to fail the level completely. You do, however, have the ability to revive a fallen partner once, but this is annoyingly tied to a timer. If you fail to resuscitate a downed player within 30 seconds, it's game over. This can lead to moments of frustration, particularly during the more hectic fights as you urgently try to reach a comrade while numerous enemies get in your way.

You have three difficulty settings to choose from, and even at the easiest difficulty, the mode can be quite a challenge because of the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you (significantly more than you'd experience in the offline mode). You need to equip the best items you've already earned so far if you want to tackle the higher difficulties, although if you don't have anything decent, the online mode features pretty generous item drops that can help bring you up to speed quickly. You'll come across plenty of high-level gear here, making it an ideal way to quickly build up your characters. Playing online is quite stable, with most sessions running smoothly during testing. Slow connections result in serious input lag, however, and even connections that read as healthy can sometimes be choppy.

This latest Tekken 6 update also includes a fix for Mokujin in online matches, with the wooden pugilist's fighting style now changing with each round. But the big news here is the addition of co-op to the Scenario campaign. However, with its limited levels and occasional connection issues, it's not something that will convert you if you weren't already a fan of this bashing side quest.