A week or two back, Xbox Live’s gallery leaked a screenshot that showed M. Bison and Ling Xiaoyu’s portraits as tag partners, which sparked some new hype for me and Garv – some of our favourite fights being between Ryu and Bison, and Xiaoyu being a childhood favourite of mine from playing Tekken 3.

Anyway, this week rolled around and Capcom suddenly announced that they would be unveiling 6 new characters, as well as 2 “secret” announcements – and now, here’s what they announced on Tuesday morning:

Street Fighter

Juri – Introduced in Super Street Fighter IV, this is her first time participating in another title – C. Viper having beaten her to a spot in Marvel vs Capcom 3. Bringing her Feng Shui Engine powered fighting style into SFxT, I’m looking forward to seeing what little changes or new moves they’ve implemented into her style. She’ll also make a fine partner to Bison – evil purple auras for the win!

Vega – One of Street Fighter’s more iconic villains, Vega’s claw weapon is infamous – as well as his unpredictable fighting style. Good to see him included as he’s a personal favourite of mine, and I’m glad to see his Bloody High Claw move makes a return from Street Fighter IV. I’m personally going to team him up with Poison for one hell of a crazy team.

Balrog – Not totally unexpected, what with him and Vega completing the set of classic Street Fighter villains – and a perfect rival for Tekken‘s boxer, Steve. Balrog is one of Street Fighter’s heavyweight characters, and with projectile-free move-set I’m sure he’ll fit nicely into the mix with all the Tekken melee fighters joining the fray.

Tekken

Xiaoyu – No surprises here, with the leak and all – but a welcome addition for me all the same. Xiaoyu is a quick-hitting character with the capability to create long attack chains. She’s looking good and seems to be having a bit of a rivalry with Juri going on, as well as her old friendship with Jin – more on that in a minute.

Law – With Street Fighter’s Fei Long and Tekken‘s Law both being very obvious homages to Bruce Lee, I was wondering how Capcom would handle them. Would they both be included for some epic Bruce Lee fight-offs? Would they pick only one? Or would they ignore both. Well, we’ve now got Tekken‘s Bruce Lee in the game, and I must say he is looking very similar to Fei Long in terms of fighting style (which isn’t a surprise, of course). I do hope this doesn’t mean that Fei Long is out of the game as I’m a big fan, but I doubt they’ll actually include both. Either way, Law is looking awesome, and I can just stick a “Fei Long” name sticker on my screen.

Paul – Competing for most hair gel with Guile comes the hard-hitting American from Tekken – who I can also see being confused with Ken Masters by a certain overweight warrior. He’s seen tagging with Law and reminds me a lot of Ryu now he’s rendered in Capcom’s style – albeit without the projectiles. His super punch move (I forget its official name, it’s been a while since I was into Tekken) has been shown in his super art, but otherwise I’ll be very interested to see what tricks he has up his sleeve to turn the tide on his projectile using rivals.

While there were only 6 characters “announced”, the latest in the series of full CG trailers has also been released, featuring M Bison and Jin squaring up to one another, while Juri and Xiaoyu also fight. Both Jin and M Bison have been hinted at already in the past, but this pretty much confirms the two of them (unless Capcom are insane), so that’s looking good. Check out the trailer below – looks like Devil Jin will be making an appearance in this game, too.

Last but not least, at the end of the gameplay trailer (featuring the 6 officially announced fighters, shown below), there’s a short section about the Vita version. At the end of that, there can clearly be seen the silhouettes of Pac-Man, and what appears to be the terrible old box-art version of Megaman. I seriously hope this is Vita exclusive, as I’m no fan of these characters that are neither part of Street Fighter or Tekken – with the Sony exclusive characters already pushing me into going for the Xbox 360 version to avoid Cole, Kuro and Toro. And if that really is Box-Art Megaman… I have no idea if Capcom are actually trying to troll Megaman fans (or perhaps they actually are insane).

All in all, it’s been a good announcement and it’s got me excited for Street Fighter X Tekken all over again. A nice batch of characters, and hopefully Capcom will keep the info coming over the next few weeks.

- Leon

When I was younger, I dabbled in fighting games. First was Mortal Kombat on the Mega Drive – the attraction of the special moves and the gore getting me hooked for hours at a time. When the PlayStation came around, I then found myself in love with the cast of Tekken – I’d never seen a fighting game with such graphics, on a 3D plane, well, on a home console that is. The demo of Tekken 3 was included with the PS1, and me and my sister would play it for ages – even though we could only select Eddy and Xiaoyu – but we were young and penniless, and played what we could.

I remember receiving Tekken 3 for Christmas one year, and spending the whole day repeatedly beating Arcade mode with various characters to unlock the rest of the roster. I found myself growing attached to the cast – Jin being my favourite, alongside Xiaoyu, Heihachi, Yoshimitsu and Julia. I later moved on to Tekken Tag Tournament, but found myself converted to Capcom’s style of fighting with Capcom vs SNK 2, and never turned back. While I loved Tekken’s cast, Capcom opened up a world of a more controlled, less button-mashing style of fighting, complete with stunning super moves to top it all off. I was hooked, and since then, I’ve accumulated a collection of Capcom fighters – from the earliest Street Fighter titles, Street Fighter Alpha, Marvel vs Capcom 2,  and more recently Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 3.

With Mortal Kombat 9, Netherrealm Studios have revived my love for Mortal Kombat – taking the best parts of the series I used to love and bringing it into the modern-day with Street Fighter-style updates. It was great seeing my old favourites brought up to Capcom’s standards – but sadly Tekken 6 offered me nothing similar – I only found myself remembering why I love 2D fighters so much, feeling far too unsatisfying and unresponsive compared to Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat. It was a shame, since the cast looked great – I was just an outsider to the Tekken style now, and I doubt I’ll ever go back.

But then came the news of Street Fighter X Tekken. A game combining the cast of the two games – however I didn’t really see how good this idea was to begin with – the impending release of Marvel vs Capcom 3 overshadowing it for me at the time. It’s only now that I see it’s true potential – finally bringing my childhood favourites kicking and screaming into an engine that I love. While Tekken purists may hate me for saying so – this could be the best game that the cast of Tekken have been in for a long time, and I can’t wait.

So what do we know? Well, so far SFxT (as it will now be referred to) has an officially announced roster of 18 characters – 9 from each side. Announced first were Ryu, Chun-Li, Kazuya and Nina – first showed in the game’s announcement at 2010′s Comic-con. Since then, Capcom have been trickling out new characters over time - Ken, Guile, Abel, Cammy and Sagat on the side of Street Fighter, and King, Bob, Julia Chang, Hwoarang, Steve Fox and Yoshimitsu. Interestingly, Poison was announced on the Street Fighter side – not strictly from SF, but actually Final Fight, the same universe as Street Fighter – from which Guy and Cody recently emerged in Super Street Fighter IV.

Interestingly, it looks like the Final Fight characters won’t end there. The most recent trailer featured Poison and Hugo, as well as Mike Haggar (who was more of a brief appearance, so maybe not one of the roster), battling against King and Marduk. The end of the clip made me grin from ear to ear – as who should gatecrash, but Guy and Cody themselves. Assuming Hugo, Guy and Cody are in – those are some great additions to the roster. As for Haggar – well, let’s just say I would expect Zangief to be in this game before him, seeing as this isn’t Capcom vs Tekken. But we’ll have to wait and see. Oh, but we should be seeing a lot more characters yet – Yoshinori Ono stated that the 18 characters so far are only “near the halfway point” of the roster.

As for the gameplay – it’s 2-on-2 combat that resembles that of Street Fighter IV – which is no bad thing, that’s for sure. However, I’m actually inclined to say it looks even better. The game utilises the Super gauge from SFIV (renamed the Cross Gauge), along with the EX moves that are activated in the same way. Incorporating Tekken’s style, the game will allow players to chain up larger attack combos than usual for a SF title, and also has an emphasis on character juggling – which ties into the tag-system for chaining up combos.

So what new mechanics will we be seeing introduced into the game? Here’s a rundown of some of the cool features we’ll be looking forward to:

Super Charge

Where Street Fighter IV introduced EX attacks, SFxT has the “Super Charge”. The general idea of this is that each character has one special move that they can charge into various stages. For Ryu, it’s a Hadoken. If you charge the move a little, to Level 2, it will become the EX Hadoken – dealing more damage with a nice flame effect. Charge it the whole way to Level 3, and Ryu will unleash a Shinku Hadoken. Best of all, going to the effort of charging these moves means they don’t consume any of your Cross Gauge to perform. That’s if you can pull them off, of course…

Tag Supers

This is something that Capcom have been a bit quiet about lately, but we’ve seen a few bits here and there. Perhaps one of the best things you could implement in a Tag title – the Tag Super utilises both characters to pull off a special attack that does a huge amount of damage to your opponent. An example of this is the Ryu/Ken tag, which has Ryu throw an opponent to the floor, then punch them into Ken’s spinning kick ultra as he launches the poor soul into the air. These moves are looking to be the most powerful combinations in the game – and I expect they will cost the entire Cross Gauge, as single-character Supers cost 2 bars.

Cross Assault

The last feature I want to talk about is one of the newest that has been revealed – the Cross Assault. While tagging in fighting games is not a new concept, SFxT looks to emphasise it more than most. The idea of Cross Assault is that you can actually fight with both characters at the same time.

Of course, it’s impossible to completely control both characters at once (unless they both followed the same inputs, which would be a bit of a cop-out), so how it works is this: when activated (the pre-requisites are a little unclear on the exact method at the moment), the health bars of both of your characters merge into one, and both characters are on-screen at the same time. You control one at a time, and can switch between the two by returning the control-stick to a neutral position. While this mode is active, your super bar drains, and the Cross Assault ends. This looks like brilliant fun, and could be a whole new level of gameplay to master.

And that’s about all I have to say for now. Although I hope you’d agree – it’s plenty to be excited about. It’s going to be a long wait, however – the game’s not due till March 2012. But here’s hoping we’ll be seeing more at Eurogamer.

- Leon

Last week saw Capcom’s Captivate expo where the infamous japanese developer/publisher announced some earth shattering new info that got every Capcom fan either squealing in excitement or fainting at the very thought of how epic these announcements are.

Even though there is a lot to talk about in regards to what was announced, I am going to focus my attention to the Fighters. Capcom are infamous for their 2D fighters and what has been announced is pretty epic in my opinion, so in the usual fashion sit back and check out what is coming out this year.

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition.

This has been in the pipeline for god knows how long but it is finally coming to home consoles after what seems like months of waiting. The arcade edition is going to be DLC for those of us who own Super Street Fighter IV. For those of us who don’t then you have 2 choices, either get SSFIV and download the DLC or buy the stand alone disc that is coming out as well.

So what is the arcade edition going to bring us? Well four new characters to start with. Yun, Yang, Evil Ryu and Oni. Also a new rebalanced fighting system to make battles more fair and fun and a replay mode. This is truly going to be epic, and to finally get my hands on Evil Ryu will be a joy. Also for those who don’t want to download the DLC you can still fight against people who have the DLC online…awesome

Street Fighter X Tekken

This is another game that I seriously can not wait for and a lot was reveled about it at Captivate. First off ten characters have now been confirmed. Five from Street Fighter and Five from Tekken. On the Street Fighter side we have Ryu, Ken, Chun-li, Guile and Able and for the Tekken side we have, Kazuya, Nina, King, Marduc and Bob. Some interesting selections but I hope more will be announced soon.

For once in my gaming journalism life I am going to let the videos do the rest of the talking, so enjoy these epic video.

Garv

Original Rumour: Capcom Vs Namco, a game putting various characters from the Capcom and Namco games and pitting them against each other. Much like Marvel Vs Capcom.  There will be two games being made one by Capcom with the Street Fighter IV engine and one by Namco with the Tekken 6 engine.

This rumour got me very excited indeed. The very thought of a game with the slight chance of a battle between Dante and Nightmare from Soul Caliber made me feel a bit giddy. I then thought about it after my initial thoughts and I didn’t think there would be enough variety of characters in the Namco side of things, where as Capcom pretty much had the superior characters.

Then the announcement finally came on Saturday at Comic Con, that the game is in fact going to be Tekken Vs Street Fighter.

Official Announcement: Street Fighter X Tekken will be a game that pits the characters from the worlds most popular fighting games. Tekken and Street Fighter. Two games will be made, Street Fighter X Tekken, a 2D fighting game, which Capcom will develop on the Street Fighter IV engine, and Tekken X Street Fighter a 3D fighting game, which will be developed by Namco on the Tekken 6 engine. Not much is known about Tekken X Street Fighter yet. But Street Fighter X Tekken will feature tag battles and re-worked move sets for the Tekken characters to fit in with the Street Fighter theme. I imagine that Tekken X Street Fighter will feature much of the same on its 3D fighting plain.

Ok, granted this is not what we thought it was going to be, but I have been thinking long and hard about this concept, and the more and more I think about it, the more and more excited I get. A game focussing on only characters from two of the best fighting games out there and then putting them together into 2 titles sounds pretty awesome. Besides the exception of Yoshimitsu, having a VS fighting game with just fisticuffs appeals to me more some how. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of Marvel Vs Capcom 3, for its sheer rediculousness. But to have a serious verses fighting game hasn’t really been made.

With all these thoughts my mind has been coming up with some dream battles again. The difference this time is that these battles are really likely to happen. Note, they are 1 on 1 battles, I will take tag battles into account in a later post. So without further a do, here is my top 3 match-ups.

I had to put my favorite characters from each game first. I always liked Youshimitsu becuase he was the only Tekken character with a sword, and Bison is cool because his psycho crusher is awesome and he is just deliciously evil. thinking about it these two would probably make up my dream tag team. But for now I will say this,who will win? Psycho Power or pointy sword?

Put simply, this would be an awesome wrestling match, even though I could never really use King, able was really cool to use in SF IV. So I am confident that this will be an awesome match up if someone uses King and I can kick their butt.

The fight of the old timers. I was torn whether to have Akuma or Gouken in this matchup, but I decided, Akuma. Why? Well put pure and simply, this battle would be about pure strength and power. Also both these old fogies have a wealth of fighting experience and awesome pointy hair.

I think it is safe to say, I am pretty excited about this fighting game. Now when’s it coming out? I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

Garv.

P.S. Oh, amost forgot, I found some footage of the demo shown at comic-con, showing ryu, Kazuya, Chun-li and Nina Willaims. Enjoy!

Not to be confused with this...

Now just to let you know, this is not to be confused with the Namco X Capcom RPG title back on the last gen consoles, these are strictly fighting games. Now Capcom Vs Namco will be developed by Capcom on the Street Fighter IV engine while Namco Vs Capcom will be developed by Namco on the Tekken 6 engine. Now the first game sounds good, I love 2D fighters now, it’s a fact. But having a some street fighter character play on a 3D surface, could be a little weird. I have a nasty suspicion that in some ways it won’t translate well, or I could be really wrong and this will be the fighting game of the century. Only time will tell.

I got this information from both Kotaku.com and Gameinformer.com. The rumour itself looks pretty strong as it has been hinted that a trailer for both games will be at Comic-Con in San Diego California this weekend. So stay tuned to Plus XP for more info as I get it.

In light of this pretty epic fighting mash-up. Here are some epic battles which I hope to play if this all takes off.

This would be an epic battle. The most demonic creature in the Soul Calibur series, Nightmare. Versus the demon slayer himself Dante, from Devil May Cry. This would be an epic sword fight resulting in huge demon powers and possible some epic sword skills from both sides.

M.Bison fighting in the Capcom corner, against Kazuya Mishima in the Namco corner. This would be a huge fight over nothing but power alone. You know in the playground back in primary school where you thought you were the cooler and most popular kid? Well think that, but with evil and powerful instead of cool and popular then you will get a vague idea of how cool this match-up would be.

The fight that will probably never happen. Seeing as Spawn was only in Soul Calibur II and Namco lost the writes to ever use him again. Jedah Dohma from Darkstalkers only appeared in Capcom Fighting Jam and again, was never to be seen again…well apart from Darkstalkers. Anyway this match up would be a proper epic Demon fight with all sorts of crazy powers, and it would probably just make me nerdgasm just a tiny bit.

So if this rumour is true, then we may be in for an epic fighting game. I guess we will get some sort of confirmation at Comic-con this weekend.

Garv

Now this was only my second ever expo, and compared to Eurogamer, this was pretty different, it was also a lot quieter for one thing. As this was an Amusement and Gaming Expo, the split between actual arcade video games and coin operated amusements was about a 60/40 split, with the coin operated amusements taking the 60 % portion of the Expo floor. Which wasn’t too bad, but from a games journalism point of view wasn’t that great. Most of the gaming machines that were present at the expo I had seen before in the likes of the Trocadero and the bowling ally where I used to play arcade game back in Wiltshire.

But fear not readers, as there were some gems buried in what was a rather mixed bag of an expo. So without further ado, I shall reveal to you my highlights of the EAG Expo 2010.

Terminator Salvation: Arcade Edition.

Imagine Rambo arcade, mixed with some House Of The Dead. Once you have thought long and hard about what that interesting concoction of the FPS arcade genre would be like, throw in the story line and post apocalyptic scenery of the film Terminator Salvation, and you have what is surprisingly a pretty good game.

You are John Connor. You are heading the resistance, an army of humans who are trying to defend earth from the recent onslaught of the machines. The war against human and machine has raged on for some while now and it is time for you to make a stand. Armed with your plastic assault rifle it is time to kick some robot butt.

This arcade title is great for two reasons. 1) it’s the classic point and shoot mechanic we are used to in an arcade game - as I said before, the game play is reminiscent of Rambo arcade, in that you are constantly machine gunning enemies down, after doing so you are then faced with House Of The Dead like boss battles where you have to hit weak spots on a gargantuan machine beast in order to defeat it. It is truly a great mix and one hell of a stress killer. Reason number 2) The innovative way of using the plastic assault rifle. We are all used to arcade games where we either have to lift our foot off a pedal to reload or shoot away from the screen. In order to reload on Terminator Salvation however, you must hit a chunky button on the bottom of the magazine on the gun. Very simple but good thinking. There is also a nice red button for you to push on the side of the gun to unleash some grenade fury, everyone loves to push the little red button on the side of the gun.

So for me Terminator Salvation, is a good arcade game and defiantly one to look out for, especially if you have always dreamed about killing legions and legions of T-1000 mechaniods with an assault rifle.

Cooking Mama Arcade.

I can hear the groans already, the gamers dropping to their knees screaming “Why God? WHY!?” as they read the title of this section of the article. But can I just ask you gamers out there one question? When was the last time you saw a DS game have an Arcade machine port?

Yes the original DS version of Cooking Mama is probably going to make its way to an arcade near you soon. I had a go at it and to me, it’s not the greatest arcade game in the world, you have a chunky stylus to make your culinary delights with, and like in the DS game you have to progress through a number of mini games to create a marvelous meal. If you do well in these mini games you will have a happy Mama and some nice virtual nosh to tuck into, if however you do badly in these mini games you will then have a ticked off Mama and a meal fit for the next plague infested vermin you happen to come across.

So as you can see, the game play is not on par with good old Terminator up there, but the transition from DS game to Arcade machine is very well executed. Maybe the recent outing Cooking Mama had on the Wii was partly responsible for the idea in the first place, but with this game you still get the good clean cooking fun your used to from your handheld.

Tank Tank Tank!

This has to be the game of the show in my opinion - battletank games have always been rated highly for me. There is nothing like squaring off against your friends in a tank and blowing each other up to smithereens. So when Namco and Bandai took the idea of Battletanks and improved it tenfold I could not help but smile at this stroke of genius.

The game mode MarkBOSS and myself played was a 2 on 2 battle royale; where we were thrown into a suburban environment and left to blow the other team sky-high. All buildings that are inconveniently in your path are destructible, which is extremely satisfying. As you play, Mario Kart-esque question mark boxes fall from the sky. Once collected, you gain a new weapon, whether it is a huge laser gun, flurry of rockets, mini gun or nuclear bomb is totally set at random. I believe there are more weapon variants also but I didn’t pick them up.

What I thought was pretty good was how responsive the seat movement was. If you play extreme driving games at the arcade you are usually thrown about as the seat basically has a fit when you slide round corners, etc. But Tank Tank Tank! is in an element of its own, each weapon you use makes the chair respond differently. Normal tank fire makes the chair jolt slowly, where using the mini gun you are almost shaking so much you teeth my rattle out of your mouth. This is such a great little detail that it rounds the game off nicely.

So if your local arcade gains a copy of Tank Tank Tank! I suggest you jump straight on and destroy your friends. I believe there is a single player campaign mode also, if you just wanna kill some time in the arcade by yourself in a lunch break.

Other Worthy Mentions

Vulcan . M

The first arcade game that uses a replica turret mounted Minigun, which is fully mechanical. The turret whirls around at a rate of knots (ten revolutions a second so I am told) and a stream of bullet cases gets sucked into the machine. A very pretty looking arcade game, the game play however, I though was somewhat confusing story line wise, whether it had a story line really I’m not sure. Shooting world war planes and missiles out of the sky makes sense, but when a space ship comes out of no where in what seems to be a realistic World War scenario, it kinda feels a bit disjointed. But other than that a brilliant idea and a very pretty piece of machinery.

The First Ever Coin Op Candy Floss Machine

I had to mention it. Ivan Campbell, the director of Candy Floss Irland stopped me while I was walking round, to show me his coin operated candy floss machine. Didn’t seem that impressive to begin with but its the only one in the world and make damn tasty candy floss within a minute. Also plays some funky music while you wait. I also got some free Candy Floss. WIN!

The EAG expo was a good outing. I thoroughly enjoyed all the arcade games on offer (even if I had played most of them before. and yes Rambo arcade was there, so I had to use both 1p and 2p guns to se how long I would last using both) and it was a great day out. Will do it again next year to see if there are even more new arcade games to hit in 2011.

Garv.

Earlier in the year, my family turned to what some Xbox fanboys might call ‘the dark side’ and got a PlayStation 3. Now my mum surprisingly love arcade shooters such as Time Crisis (+5 cool points there) and she went and got Time Crisis 4 for the new shiny Japanese console. While my first reaction was some thing along the lines of ‘How damn cool is that!?’ I then took a step back and thought, is this such a great idea? But me being me, I don’t like to judge books by their covers. So grab a cuppa and take a seat as I will tell you about my time with the PS3 port of Time Crisis 4.

This version of the 4^th Time Crisis title doesn’t stray too much from the original arcade machine outing, in that you have the same cheesy over-the-top American storyline and characters that the original arcade game had; this is your typical Time Crisis game, whatever platform you choose to play it on. The low-down story wise is some terrorists have launched a biological weapon, known as ‘Terror Bite’. In a nut shell this weapon is just a load of genetically engineered bugs that will chew through any human being alive, So in true arcade style shooter fashion, your mission is to shoot your way through the game to stop these terrorists.

This is classic Time Crisis really, the PlayStation 3 version however is missing the pedal, which the Time Crisis series is really famous for, being one of those things that makes the Time Crisis series differ from your average arcade shooter.

Speaking of hardware, I have to outline the huge FAIL Namco have done here with the PlayStation 3 port of the game. Now I don’t know if it’s my family getting a gargantuan sized TV, or Namco themselves not taking into account that people like to buy gargantuan TVs (bet you can see where I am kinda going here) but when you buy Time Crisis 4 for your PS3 you will have a nice day-glow orange light gun controller and two receivers for the gun, which are joined together by some wiring. The idea being you have to put each receiver on each end of the TV. The problem I had with it though is that the main HD TV I was playing it on is a whopping 55 inches, meaning the receiver could not reach each corner because the wire joining them together wasn’t long enough. It was still playable…till about half way through my play time. There is a bit in the game where you have to turn, by aiming the gun to the left or right hand side of the screen. I physically couldn’t move and was getting a lead pummeling from both sides, while I just stood there and watched a ceiling-mounted water sprinkler trying to put out a non-existent fire… awesome.

This isn't a shot of my actual TV, but you get the idea...

Hardware fails aside, something still lacks here, and I really cannot put my finger on it, I mean the gameplay is still the same-ish (minus the pedal, it’s just a lot of moving the gun about). Maybe it’s because you have to be in a room the size of a small town hall to really play it; or at least dismantle all your furniture in the living room. Die Hard Trilogy on the PSone never had this much trouble.

To be frank I am disappointed. I wanna pick up a game and play it. Not pick up a game and have to assemble it like Ikea furniture before I get a chance to play, there is a time and a place for assembling things, and playing a video game isn’t that time or place. So take it from me, hitting the arcade and playing Time Crisis 4 is a lot less frustrating.

-Garvaos

Tekken has been a series that I’ve always had mixed feelings about – when I was younger I remember getting Tekken 3 on the PS1 for Christmas one year, and being hooked for hours on end – the colourful cast and varied move sets keeping me entertained – Ling Xiaoyu, Jin Kazama, Heihachi Mishima and Hwoarang being among my personal favourites. It really gave me a sense of variation, whilst being easy to learn. At the time, it was my favourite fighter of all, and I also got hold of copies of Tekken Tag Tournament (which I loved for its wide roster) and Tekken 5.

However, over the years I lost interest in the series – while I still appreciate the cast of characters, something felt missing in Tekken 5, and something about it just didn’t make the cut for me – perhaps it was the new characters such as Raven making me feel somewhat alienated, or maybe it had just been too long since I had been hooked to the series, but after a bit of play I barely touched it again. As an adult, I now find myself a big fan of the Street Fighter titles and Capcom’s VS series’, which feel a lot more technical and somewhat more complex than the other fighters out there. However, with an open mind I have been looking into the latest in the series, and even had a go at it at the recent Eurogamer expo.

The new title is the first to leave the Playstation brand consoles, this time being released on both PS3 and Xbox 360, which is unsurprising seeing the Xbox’s recent successes this generation. The title is set after Tekken 5 and Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection, focusing on a power struggle between Jin, Kazuya and all of the other characters involved – as always this leads to everyone fighting each other, giving the arcade title a bit of background story.

From what I played, I tested Xiaoyu and Kazuya, in the versus mode against a human opponent. The game felt very much like other Tekken titles, although a few new things have been added. These features include a new “Rage” ability, which can be activated once a player’s life has depleted below a certain level, which adds a new way to turn the tide of battle, and a few touches to the engine; such as the ability to stun an opponent by smashing them with a heavy attack. Although these features are nice touches, when I played I couldn’t help but feel that the characters felt a bit different to control – whereas Xiaoyu was a character I have always been comfortable with, I found that the moves wouldn’t always perform as easily as I’m used to, although I couldn’t work out the exact reason for this – perhaps the button timing has been tweaked, or I’m simply out of practise. However, the characters all seemed to retain their signature moves, such as Eddie Gordo’s capoeira attacks, and King’s wrestling moves.

As well as the regular cast of characters, the title introduces six new characters, but they seem a bit mixed. Firstly, there’s Leo – a German female who looks like she wants to be Jin, donning similar red gloves and dressing like a boy. Secondly we have Lars, a new son of Heihachi (so Kazuya’s half brother) who looks cool, and should pack some nice abilities with his bloodline. Alisa serves as Tekken 6′s cute-but-deadly character, a robot in disguise with a range of nasty mechanical moves, while Zafina takes the place of the games femme-fatale, the scantily clad warrior in the vein of Nina Williams. Spaniard Miguel looks like a disco drop-out with puffy hair, who could either be quite cool, or tacky as hell. And lastly we have Bob, who seems to be the all-too-common “fat fighter” (no, not like Little Britain), looking like a cross between Street Fighter’s Ken and Rufus. As I said – a mixed bag, but it looks like there’s at least a couple of worthwhile additions in there.

Much like the predecessors, Tekken 6 is a graphical overhaul but is very much in the same vein as the past titles. Alongside the regular Arcade and Versus modes, as well as a new “Scenario Campaign” which takes place of the old Tekken Force and Devil Within modes, set in a free environment which can be walked around in a more “Streets of Rage” style – this looks improved from the previous versions, although I haven’t been able to play it – but hopefully it will feel a bit deeper than Devil Within was.

All in all, Tekken 6 seems to be more or less what would be expected – a new Tekken game with updated graphics, the odd tweak and the regular cast with a few additions. Personally I found the combat felt a little different to control, but no doubt this would become normal after some practice - as far as I could tell the actual controls were more or less the same, only it took me a few attempts until the move I was trying to do actually worked. Tekken 6 didn’t blow me away with anything in particular, but will no doubt be enjoyed by fans of the earlier titles. I think I’ll stick with Street Fighter until this goes down in price, but I believe everyone has a fighter title that suits them best; Tekken just isn’t mine any more. I’m sure many people will enjoy this game, all in all – it does what it says on the tin, only now there are two tin designs – either the one marked “Playstation 3″ or the all-new “Xbox 360″ version.

-Leon

Soul Calibur is a series that I’ve never been totally sure about – I’m quite picky when it comes to fighting games, and generally I’m more of a Street Fighter fan. However, I do own a copy of Soul Calibur IV, and when I got it I enjoyed playing it for a while. The combat is easy to pick up, yet it does feel as though there’s an element of mastery that the player can pick up, with blocks, reversals and counters and the like. I also quite enjoy the weapon aspect to the game – giving the creators more room for varied characters such as Ivy with her whip-sword, and Taki with her dual ninja blades.

Tomorrow, we will see the release of Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on PSP (whether or not its release on the same day as Square-Enix’s Dissidia fighter release is a coincidence I am uncertain). The game will feature over 30 characters, including all of the main characters included in Soul Calibur IV(excluding Star Wars/Bonus characters), and in true Soul Calibur fashion includes a new game cameo character – God of War’s Kratos. There is also a brand new character, Dampierre, who looks a little like a cartoon villain with an overly large moustache and top hat.

The gameplay itself looks as fluid as the console counterpart – obviously the game’s graphics have been toned down but it seems they have managed to recreate the game on the handheld platform without losing much in fluidity or quality. It seems the game is faithful to Soul Calibur 4 in terms of its combos and special moves, and it looks as though there are still plenty of attacks for each character.

Kratos himself looks like a very nicely made character – Namco have managed to keep his attitude and attacks true to the God of Wargames, while keeping him suitable for the Soul Calibur gameplay. He looks to have a wide range of moves, and also uses abilities and alternate weapons seen from the series. Although I somewhat feel that Soul Calibur’s use of cameo characters shows an obvious marketing ploy, I am a fan of God of War, and it seems they’ve done Kratos justice.

The character creation mode from the more recent Soul Calibur titles returns in this title, which was personally one of my favourite features. Although some aspects, such as changing muscularity and physical attributes have sadly been left out of this title, the game will allow you to have some control over the size, position and rotation of certain clothing and accessories which could be a very nice addition. With 16 custom character slots, there should be a fair amount of room for creativity – assuming there’s a decent selection of unlockable clothes. With the PSP’s Playstation Network connectivity, I wouldnt be surprised if we might see some DLC to expand upon the wardrobe at a later date.

The game offers a few different modes, but there seems to be one major flaw – the game lacks a standard Arcade mode, which is generally the ‘main’ core of solo gameplay in fighting games. The game offers Quick Match mode, which allows players to choose from a lobby of random virtual opponents, however they are all Custom characters, rather than the standard game characters. The second mode of the game is the Gauntlet, which is like a giant Tutorial mode, consisting of various stages that require you to perform certain actions or techniques. Next we have Trials mode, which consists of Attack and Defence stages that score you depending on your use of combo chains or defensive skills respectively, and also Endless Trial which is somewhat like Survival Mode, perhaps the closest thing to Arcade that the game offers. Lastly we have Training mode, although this seems a bit superfluous with the long Gauntlet mode.

The game does have Versus mode, although sadly there is currently no online capability or 1P vs CPU play. Therefore it is solely for Ad-Hoc – which means you’ll need to know someone else who has the game to use this feature.

The game is also one of the first PSP titles to include the “Data Install” option which allows you to install data from the UMD to your memory stick in order to drastically reduce loading times -  a nice addition.

All in all, the gameplay is looking good – rather than a ‘watered down’ Soul Calibur title, Broken Destinylooks to offer real Soul Calibur gameplay. However, the lack of a basic Arcade mode seems to be such an unnecessary flaw that the title looks to be incomplete – the game has more Tutorial modes than actual gameplay modes. And with all that training, there’s no online play so human competition will be hard to come by unless they release an update at a later time, or you have a lot of friends who happen to love Soul Calibur.

Broken Destiny seems to be a great fighter, yet is let down by its flawed selection of basic game modes. If you’re a big fan of Soul Calibur, I’d recommend you give this a shot – but personally I’ll be opting for Dissidia: Final Fantasy tomorrow.