Go to arcades in your home.... sort of.

User Rating: 9 | Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection PS3
By TriangleHard | Review Date:
I remember my days in arcades. It was always the place for competition. It started out as fighting for the numbers. The leaderboards of Pac-man. Then something else came to arcades that lit the fire on every corner deli or just about anything that had arcade machines. Street Fighter II has hit the arcade machine. For the first time ever, I've been to arcades not to play, but to watch. To watch how other people play and how they react to each other. Then few words I normally haven't heard before started to pop out. The words like combos and cheesy. It wasn't until much later that fighting game really took another level of evolution, which is Virtua Fighter. For the first time we saw polygon figures in motion and how realistic (at least at that time) the fight looked. It blew everyone away, not only by the looks of the game but how different the game played from classic 2D fighters. Then there was Tekken. Quietly coming into arcades. I haven't even played Tekken until Tekken II came out. Tekken was something different from Virtua Fighter. First it played much slower and more restrictive with the movements, and every moment of the game you couldn't leave the words like combos and cheesy, because that's what this game was all about. And it was a good thing. Now Tekken 5 Dark Ressurection Online is out. Just when you felt like fighting game has gone to oblivion, it comes out to give some life to this dying genre. Once arcades and fighting games used to dominant arcades, but not they are no where to be seen. This is a big moment in the fighting game genre because it is one of the 4 fighting game franchise that matters the most in the world in terms of popularity and enjoyment. Those 4 are Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Virtua Fighters, and Tekken. Let's talk about the game itself first. Tekken 5 DR is evolution of Tekken to it's core. You can juggle your opponents in the air like there is no tomorrow, and in some cases, a well planned chain of combos can instantly land you victory. That's right, this game is all about being cheesy and chaining combos. Give opposing player no breathing room if possible. If not, wait for that opening to land that one hit, that will make your opponent fly to the sky, doing nothing but wait for you to kick their asses. Of course there are other ways of kicking people's asses, but mostly you need to be ruthless to have big success in this game. Kick them when they are down and/or vulnerable. It is true to most fighting games, but Tekken 5 takes it to another level. Then another highlight of Tekken is vast number of exotic characters. From Panda bear to Robots, Tekken is just full of interesting and odd characters to choose from and mostly they play vastly different from one and another. Large number of character can be great for some people, but in fighting game it often causes problem, which would be balance. Tekken does fairly great job balancing these characters so one doesn't seem dominant compared to another. It doesn't feel as carefully balanced compared to Virtua Fighter 5, but as long as you have the skills, you can beat any character with your favorite character. Some character seems to have better combos that connects very well and mixes high and low very well and some characters feel much easier to use, but mostly it comes down to your skills. In the end, Tekken 5 DR does exactly what it does. Bring more of Tekken you love and add more flash to it. Graphically it is subpar because it is PS2 game ported to PSP that's ported to PS3, but it looks good enough. It won't wow you like Virtua FIghter, but it gets the job done. Now for the online mode. I've had some mixed experience with this and it all relates to your internet connection. I've had some great matches where the game felt responsive enough for me to land all my juggles and make my throw escape, counters, etc, so it is great. It's still has some slight delays of movement but most people won't notice it, and to the ones that's experienced in Tekken, it is something you can live with, without much complaints. When the connection is bad, then it becomes major problem.

Very often it will look like game froze, but it didn't. Also your button input will be noticeably slower. You can look down, and pound your 10 hit combo and then look up, and then it will start doing the combos. I've seen bad as 1 second delay, which is complete disaster in fighting games, but those are rare cases. On more frequent cases, it will just make you miss your juggles which can be frustrating. So make sure you have good connection and your opponent has good connection, that's how it is with just about any online multi-player so it isn't much to complain. However, there are room for complaints in online mode. Too frequently there seems to be network connection problem that doesn't let you stay in the room. This is very annoying problem that occurs frequently so I hope they fix it in the future. Another problem would be that online mode is bare to the bones. You can create a room upto 8 players and 6 if you use voice chat option. That and there is ranking system. It does function very well as there is easy to use buddy system and all, but you can't help but to feel that something is lacking. One of them is text chatting. There isn't any. So if the host didn't have voice chat on, you can't chat with other players at all. It would've been nice if the viewers can chat among themselves while watching 2 players duke it out just like in the arcade days, and that would've been helpful. Also it would've been nice if they had team fight. Somewhat like King of Fighters. It could've made things more interesting than just waiting for your turn to fight against the winner. Also bettery lobby system would've been nice. It is just impossible to interact with another players due to lack of chat options. If it had channels so that people can chat using text, that would've been also helpful. My last complaint about online mode is leaderboard system. It is nice to have ranking and for the most part it is good, but again it feels like bare boned system. It would've been nice if they had ranking for each indivdual characters and see who is best Jin user, Paul user, etc but no such thing exists. However, the leaderboard system has been implemented so it does feel pretty fair how these players were ranked. The rank starts with beginner, then climbs up the number of Kyu and then It goes down through Dans. Then after Dans you recieve titles starting with Master to Dark Lord (I think that is highest) These ranks are gained through battle points you win and lose during fights, and through these battle points the leaderboard is decided. This is also how the game matches you up against similar skilled players. The difference between Kyu and Dan is Kyu don't lose points when they lose. Actually they gain points. So expect most people to climb up Kyus fairly easily. Now when you hit Dan, things gets more interesting because each fight can make you lose battle points. To people who play for fun, this don't matter but to those competitive people who wants to climb the leaderboard, this is what makes it fun. But unfortunately there is some flaw. The battle points are given out no matter who you beat. Whether you beat Dan or Kyu, so some people might take this system to their advantage. However the amount of points you win and lose is different against Dans and Kyus so it somewhat balances things out. Overall, if you love Tekken, this is a must have for you. For the first time you can play Tekken against other people through online. It might not be perfect replication of having someone over, but it is good enough that it functions like Tekken and instead of being stuck playing with limited number of people, you can now play against the world..... sort of, and that's all it matters.

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