Tekken: Dark Resurrection
It's honest-to-goodness fighting on a portable, and it's awesome.
Published: August 7, 2006
Plenty of other goodies were added to distract from things that required diagonal presses to get anywhere; Time Attack and Survival Modes are self-explanatory, but the real guilty pleasure is the return of Tekken Tag Tournament's Tekken Bowl mode, which is just a simple three-press system of hurling a bowling ball down a lane via a character of your choosing.
There's not much to explain, really; you position the character, tap X once, then tap it again to determine spin with a meter that bounces back and forth in metronome fashion, and then once more to determine the power. If you happen to tap it when the meter is full, you can "overpower" and send your bowler down the lane still attached to the ball, causing a delightful foul.
You've probably noticed that, despite all the talk of the add-on modes and extra goodies poured into the game, I've spent no time talking about the main gameplay. That's mainly due to the fact that it's, well, Tekken. There hasn't been a significant advance to the core game since Tekken 3 introduced the sidestep, and that's certainly not changing with Dark Resurrection. One could argue that because nearly every character that's ever appeared in the games over the years is represented here (including quasi-clones like Christie and Eddy or Kuma and Panda), there's a better cross-section of the different fighting styles in the game right off the bat, but that's really it.
Without question, though, the biggest talk of the PSP port will come from just how damned beautiful it is. Namco's mastery of PlayStation hardware -- even newer stuff -- is readily apparent. That the game arrives with zero compromises to the level of visuals that have become a staple of the series says plenty about their ability to squeeze juice out of the diminutive PSP's guts.
There's the fact that the characters, rich with detail and fantastic textures (especially jeans of all things), and with a modest amount of polygonal detail all load up in seconds and boast 60fps fights (though the cutscenes before and after matches are at 30 frames). And then there are the little details; the rolling hills in the background that ripple with wind or jets of thick smoke and heat waves pouring out of a foundry or neon-lit rooftop backdrops. The game is gorgeous, and represents exactly what the PSP can do perhaps better than any game to date.
Tekken's familiar mix of high-energy techno mixes (28 of them in all, and playable at any time in the game's Theatre Mode, along with the pristine CG clips and aided by a dancing Kuma or Panda), syrupy smacks and punches, and little gunts and yelps are all here. They all have a bit of that low-fi sound to them, but that's more of Tekken's aural style rather than a slight on things. About the only part of the game that's still seriously lacking is the painfully slow readings of the storyline bits. The pronunciation and pacing will put you in a coma, but hey, at least the artwork looks hawt on the PSP screen, eh?
Seriously, if you're a fan of Tekken this is the easiest PSP purchase you'll ever made. It's loaded with PSP-only extras, looks stunning, offers online play that works as a decent halfway offering between live play and simple AI, and is executed with the kind of technical flair that few PSP games can even approach, let alone match. Seriously, the load times alone are a testament to the fact that PSP games are anything but clunky, though I certainly won't shy away from mentioning how damned annoying that d-pad is.
Namco's prowess here is undeniable; there are some basic hardware limitations that unfortunately mar an otherwise flawless console experience, but even those issues are lessened by the sheer amount of stuff there is to do here. If ever there was a solid PSP purchase, this is it, folks.