Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection

"Tekken: Dark Resurrection is a perfect arcade port, which is a horrible thing for a console game."

Tekken has always been one of the top fighting games out there. While not as popular as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, there are many die-hard fans of this series preferring its bone crushing combos over fatalities any day. However, the biggest draw to this game has always been two-fold: one, its ability to draw a crowd in an arcade and two, its awesome mini-games and character endings in the console version. With Tekken: Dark Resurrection for a bargain price you get neither of these things.

Dark Resurrection isn't an entirely new game, being more of an add-on to Tekken 5. Anyone who remembers the arcade days of Street Fighter or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 knows what I'm referring to; this is essentially Tekken 5 with a few new characters and stages, little more. However, this isn't a bad thing, Tekken 5 was a great game and it looked incredible to boot. In this aspect Dark Resurrection does not disappoint. It looks exactly like the arcade game, running smoothly and capturing every bone jarring hit in some great detail, especially in HD.

For anyone who cares about such piddling matters this game follows the same story all of the previous games have laid out before it, following the Tekken tournament and the exploits of those fighters involved in it. I would get more into the story but there is little point in it, as you wouldn't realize there is one if you played this game. Other than a beautiful opening cutscene and some character banter before and after matches, there is no story to be found. There are only three endings and these are for the new characters: Sergei Dragonuv, Lili and the returning, even though he was supposedly dead, Armor King. This seems to imply that the developers thought that anyone who would be interested in this game either owned or had played Tekken 5 enough to not need other endings. Why they made this decision, we will never know but it hurts this game an immense amount. You also do not get these endings for beating the game; you must accrue points for winning matches and then purchase them from a gallery where you will be prompted to download it from the Internet.

This is another odd aspect of Tekken: Dark Resurrection. It complains if you don't have an Ethernet cable plugged when you start it up, but there is no online play. You only need the Internet for purposes of downloading the game, the three endings and then some pictures of characters and stages. I realize that they were merely concerned with porting the arcade release and they cut out these things to save size on the download, but why do they have it nag about not having an online cable plugged in when the game itself has no true online functionality?

This is odd in and of itself because there is little incentive to play this game beyond beating up on the CPU. In this day and age, we have moved away from arcades for most of our video gaming, leaving the Internet to be the gathering place for gamers. This is why services like X-Box live are so successful. For a game like this, that is a perfect arcade port, it seems odd to even bother purchasing it when you can't play it online versus other competitors. Some games, like Virtua Fighter 4, have no online play but they have game modes that give you something to do in the game beyond just plain fighting.

The fighting is incredibly well done in this game though. With a huge number of characters to choose from and all of the fighters have a wide variety of moves and combos that can be used to reduce your opponent to a fine pulp in no time, this game does not disappoint once the fighting begins. Tekken is very much a series that is easy to learn but hard to master and this game continues that fine tradition. Almost anyone can pick up a controller and start beating up enemies on the easier difficulties. It only takes the most marginal practice to do well on the medium difficulty, unlike some other fighting games. But to even tempt some of the harder enemies or difficulties it is going to take plenty of learning to do well.

Unfortunately for those who have little experience with the series, this game lacks an actual practice mode. So to practice you will need to first fight super easy enemies and try to learn your moves and then you must fight the guys who are handing you your head on a silver platter and learn how to handle them. This is a real nuisance that could have been solved with one simple mode.

While the controls work just fine for the most part, I found myself having a very tough time pulling off ten hit combos and some of the more complex moves with the console controller. This was especially true when fighting the final boss who spams fireballs an ungodly amount of the time. I found myself unable to consistently sidestep when I needed to due to using a controller instead of an arcade stick. Some of the problems, like needing to hit two buttons at once, can be offset by assigning button combinations to the L and R triggers, enabling you to pull of throws and two button maneuvers with a simple press of L1, for example.

Graphically this game is beautiful. The fighters all move smooth as could be and the backgrounds are wonderfully detailed. Its nice pulling off insane moves with a pack of wolves moving through the background and to not experience one iota of slowdown. In all my time of playing, no matter how intense the combat got the game ran as smooth as could be. I hadn't expected this and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it ran.

The sound fares a slight bit worse however. While there is little to complain about, there is also near nothing to praise about it. The game feels eerily silent most of the time, with the background music to many stages being very low or non-existent in some areas. So while it is entertaining listening to the fighters getting beaten on or the chatter between fights, there is an odd feeling minimalism about the sound design in this game.

Much like the aforementioned Virtua Fighter series, Tekken has picked up the ranking and point system to customize your character. When you first play the game you will have the ability to make a player profile. Once you do this, the game will track you wins and losses as well the points you earn for beating up enemies. The point system is fun for a while though. As you beat enemies you gain points that can be used to purchase costume add-ons for your fighters of choice. These are fun and it is interesting how you can turn Kazuya into a Yakuza looking thug (anyone else ever notice that Kazuya is an anagram for Yakuza? Learn something new every day) or Christine into some belly dancer looking fighter with a scimitar.

Win enough matches and you will be able to fight in a ranking match, where if you win you will go up in rank. As your rank increases, the difficulty of the “Ghosts” you fight will get harder. These ghosts are regular CPU opponents, but their fighters have very customized appearances, wearing many of the costume add-ons' that you can unlock. They are designed to simulate fighting another player, using advanced strategies and combos that most of the regular enemies wouldn't use on your difficulty level. While not overly hard, as you increase in rank they will begin beating you senseless if you don't learn how to use your character. This is a blessing and a curse in that it is nice to see your enemies get smarter, but since there is no practice mode you will likely start fighting Ghosts that are too hard for you sooner or later.

While the Ghost fighters were a nice idea, what the developers have done here is essentially a shadow of a Tekken game. It doesn't feel like a console entry in the series, what with it having no mini-games, no practice mode or even endings for the majority of the characters. But at the same time, you lose out on the unpredictability of fighting complete strangers like you would in the arcade. This game sits in a category all of its own and while it's a solid game there is no substance to it. Hitting stuff repeatedly can only get you so far after all. This was understood previously, that is why many fighting games nowadays feature a variety of modes to keep our interest, even if they are sub-par at times (I'm looking at you Motor Kombat). Overall this game isn't worth the $20 bucks you spend on it unless you already own Tekken 5. It's a poor starting point into the latest era of the Tekken series for anyone else.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/07