It's like challenging someone at the arcade, with all the thrills of clutch victories and perfectly timed counterattacks. The issue is thrown into sharp relief when you finally manage to get into a lag-free match. In a game where juggles and whiff punishments are everything, you never want to lose a match feeling that you could have turned it around were it not for lag. Even when playing against people in your local region, and even with the stereoscopic 3D effect automatically turned off for online battles, lag manages to stutter into bouts more often than not, typically at the worst possible moments. Of all the issues with online play, the lag during matches is the worst. And while I would have been over the moon with any kind of online experience for a handheld Tekken two years ago, compared to Capcom's launch effort in Super Street Fighter IV 3D, the network multiplayer in Tekken 3D Prime - a game that shipped nearly a year later - leaves much to be desired. The Versus mode is where you will spend the most time, fighting against someone else locally (multi-card only) or online. Costume selection is limited to two outfits with color variations, and Tekken 6's item customizations are nowhere to be found.
TEKKEN ADVANCE CHANGE BUTTON MOVIE
It fails to mark your place if you exit the movie mode and it lacks any form of chapter selection.Īside from its Quick Battle matches and the movie, Tekken 3D provides a Versus mode, a Practice mode, a Special Survival mode and 765 Tekken Cards with 3D images you can unlock and trade via Street Pass. Blood Vengeance is a pleasant enough film, much better than the travesty that was Tekken: The Motion Picture, but the video player is garbage. I'm thrilled to see Namco Bandai try something unconventional like including a full-length film with a 3DS game, but without a story mode revealing the backgrounds and motivations of those 40 characters, there is little incentive to try out the fighters you're unfamiliar with. If you want a Story mode, you will have to settle for the pack-in 3D movie Tekken: Blood Vengeance. There's a Quick Battle mode in which you can choose from one of 40 characters - an impressive count, all unlocked at the beginning - and jump into ten consecutive matches against the CPU, but there are no cutscenes or twist endings to reward you before the credits roll. The complaints begin on the menu screen, when your search for the requisite Arcade/Story mode turns up nothing. I was able to pull off combos and juggles with ease after a half-hour of adjustment.
I consider it a miracle that despite the 3DS's layout, my hands adapted to my preferred style of Tekken play, with my thumb on the directional pad and my index/middle fingers on the tiny ABXY buttons. %Gallery-130929%Well, everything except for the controls. You win!" - are just as great as the Tekken 6 I've played on consoles and in arcades, everything else is lacking.
Because while the core game - the parts in between "Round One, Fight!" and "K.O. That is why Namco Bandai and Arika's Tekken 3D Prime Edition will disappoint both new and casual Tekken fans.
TEKKEN ADVANCE CHANGE BUTTON PORTABLE
Those releases don't stop at just emulating the big screen experience they raise the bar for what all portable titles can accomplish, online and off. Capcom 3 set the standard for fighting games you can play on the go. The last time Namco brought Tekken to a Nintendo handheld, it produced 2002's Tekken Advance, which received praise from reviewers at the time but in hindsight was a poor facsimile of the console and arcade experience - like the Kid Cuisine version of spaghetti and meatballs, fortified with essential vitamins and minerals, but, c'mon son, that ain't a proper meal.Īnother Tekken Advance (that is to say another handheld port that's far from arcade perfect) wouldn't stand today, not when releases like Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Ultimate Marvel vs. We've raised our expectations for portable fighting games in the last decade, especially in the past year.