Tekken Dark Resurrection

July 28,2006 - As the years have passed, gamers have had more and more to look forward to in the realm of handheld fighting games. Where we once had to scratch our fighting itch with vastly inferior games like the Game Boy's Hokuto no Ken/Fist of the North Star and the litany of awful Game Boy/Game Gear ports of the Mortal Kombat games, the NeoGeo Pocket Color came along and gave us some viable (if glitchy) fighting games that we could really enjoy on the go. Games like The King of Fighters R-2 and SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millennium (which was, ironically, far better than SNK's second SvC game, Chaos, that came years later) led the charge, and really set the stage for great things when the Game Boy Advance came along in 2001. Though the GBA's two missing buttons hurt ports of the Street Fighter series, the gameplay engines themselves ported beautifully, and, along with great showings for The King of Fighters EX2 and Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition, showed off a bright future for handheld fighters.

When the PSP first came along last year with Darkstalkers Chronicle, it really shot itself in the foot with its extremely substandard D-Pad. It took all of one more release, however, in Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, for Capcom to give gamers the means to properly equip their PSPs for fighting games. Not only did this make fighting games very playable on the PSP, it also retroactively made Darkstalkers a great addition to a fighting gamer's PSP library. With that, the floodgates are open for a stream of fighting games to hit the PSP, and the next one on tap is none other than Tekken: Dark Resurrection.

Ported from the arcade's Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, this game is unusual in the sense that it's a full-scale arcade release that went straight to a handheld, without making a stop on a game console first. The only remotely comparable situation would be 3DO's bizarre exclusivity of Super Street Fighter II Turbo over a decade ago. With that in mind, it has some pretty high quality demands to meet, being the only version available of a very popular franchise's current tournament-played release.

Unfortunately, it's both unfair and unrealistic to expect Dark Resurrection to live up to the would-be quality of a console release, so tournament players will still be left holding out hope for a PS2 version. However, for what it is, PSP's Dark Resurrection is an amazing game in its own right, and Tekken players should definitely be happy with how their fighter of choice has been represented on the go.

Just like the rest of the series to this point, Dark Resurrection uses a four-button control layout, with each button representing each of a person's limbs. This system, though less efficient than that of Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive, is extremely intuitive, making it very easy to perform any basic move in the game simply after having seen it performed by another player. Unfortunately, Dark Resurrection exposes another problem with the PSP, and one that isn't as fixable as the D-Pad was; the face buttons are too small to accommodate many of Tekken's more complex moves, particularly for players with large hands. Smaller-handed gamers might not have this issue, but it is still noteworthy nonetheless.

To put it simply, Tekken: Dark Resurrection has everything that made the PS2's Tekken 5 great, along with a host of new content that will keep you coming back for more. One of the gripes in the Tekken 5 review last year was the lack of win/loss records – that has been fixed. Also fixed is the small number of items available with which to customize your characters. The new items range from the outright bizarre (such as the prince from Katamari Damashii that can latch onto Lili's head during matches) to the just plain cool (Marduk's “Kimbo Slice” beard), and really make it easy to truly personalize your character.

As with Tekken 5, items and other extras are purchased with Fight Money, now simply called “Gold”, that you earn for winning matches in the game's numerous modes. Unlike Tekken 5, however, you have a new mode at your disposal called “Tekken Dojo”, which is taken straight out of Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution's Quest Mode. You take your personal player data from arcade to arcade, with each one being the home for players of varying skill levels, and venture out on your quest to dominate them all. Being that many of these arcade players are based on real pros, the AI is actually pretty good in Dark Resurrection, even hitting you with combos you'd see in actual tournaments. As with Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, these advanced AI players can really help/force you to step up your own game, and make a good addition particularly to a handheld fighting game that will inevitably suffer from sparse ad hoc competition.

In addition to these advanced AI fighters, Tekken players equipped with WiFi can also upload ghosts of their own playing style via wireless infrastructure, and download ghosts of other players. This is a nice way to make up for the unsurprising lack of infrastructure online play, and adds a ridiculous amount of replay value to a game that was already quite complete.

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