If you’re an utter recluse or just don’t have access to the Internet, the game also tries to emulate the experience of playing against real people by having your AI opponents appear with their own individual gamer names, win/loss ratios, and ranks.
The AI here is strong–there are five difficulty levels to choose from, ranging from ridiculously easy to frustratingly tough, so there’s a good chance you’ll find a fit for your own experience level. If Arcade mode isn’t your bag, then you can take on a virtually endless lineup of opponents in Ghost Battle, which is a mode that pits you against the ghost data of real players downloaded online. There are also the stock-standard fighter modes of Survival and Time Attack, as well as two dedicated two-player modes–VS Battle and Team Battle, the latter of which allows you and a friend to choose up to eight characters to fight in consecutive battles.There are definitely some impressive details to be found on each character model, and the whole game runs smoothly at 60 frames per second, but some of the game’s textures look rather bland. Skin, for example, looks pretty waxy, giving near-nude characters like Ganryu a mannequin-like look.
There’s plenty going on in each level, such as helicopters crashing, jets flying by, and even livestock milling around, but some of these aren’t rendered in impressive ways. Seeing a poorly animated sheep or pig bounce away as you accidentally hit it, for example, just serves to draw your attention away from the solid fighting. Thankfully, the sound is quite impressive, with solid and bone-crunching effects adding a great deal of believability to your every strike.
But perhaps Tekken 6‘s most apparent technical downside has to do with its load times. They’re not so long as to break the game, but there are noticeable lags when matches load and character models appear on selection screens. Installing is practically a prerequisite on the PS3 version to get it on par with the Xbox 360, which features shorter load times from the get-go.
There’s also some noticeable aliasing to be found on the game’s various stages, from which both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions suffer.
The game’s stages, in fact, can be a little too distracting.
