After being thoroughly disappointed with Dead or Alive 4, I decided to check out Tekken 6 since it seemed most similar to Dead or Alive. Tekken 6 has a Scenario Campaign Mode which plays like a beat-em-up. It's laughably bad. The combat system poorly translates into a brawler. It is also plagued by an atrocious camera and a completely worthless lock-on system which goes out of its way to make your life needlessly complicated. Once you engage the enemies your movement becomes incredibly limited. Being swarmed without the ability to maneuver out of a hopeless lock down is a frustrating and regular occurrence. The campaign follows the horribly written story of Lars and Alisa who go around the map and pretty much beat up everyone they encounter, friend or foe. Fight first, ask questions later sort of stuff. You can play as either character, but each behaves awfully when being controlled by the game. They frequently go somewhere off-camera to fight one guy while 20 other guys are all on top of you pounding you into the pavement. Sometimes the AI will just stand right next to you and watch the pummeling.
The campaign employs sort of an RPG system. Enemies drop items upon their demise (clothes, weapons) that you can equip all of which give different bonuses. This works pretty well and is essential in clearing certain stages. The bad thing is that the clothes are awfully designed and just don't go with one another well at all making your characters look like circus runaways (Alisa especially).
The real meat of the game is the arcade version which is, naturally, a proper fighting game. Sadly, it's nothing to write home about and sports some questionable design choices. The combat system itself is sound, but there are some quips I couldn't get over. There's no dedicated block button. You block by not doing anything, I simply don't find this natural at all. Also, all moves are mapped to the face buttons. A and B control the feet, X and Y the arms. The problem arises when you want to do some special moves which require pressing two buttons at once. Unless you have the thumb of a gorilla, this is going to be a bit of an issue. It's inconvenient and doesn't always register. It's also asinine considering that LT, RT, LB and RB are not used for ANYTHING.
The game is rather imbalanced. In Arena, all opponents are total pushovers until you get to the last boss, Azazel, which is impossible. A similar thing happens in Arcade Battle and Survival. First 3-4 battles are a piece of cake, then the difficulty instantly ramps up.
Despite all these issues, Tekken 6 is still capable of providing some enjoyment. Even the campaign - although I haven't been able to identify the source of this enjoyment as of writing this review. Quite possibly, I never will. Tekken 6 simply comes off as a game in which seemingly nothing has been thoroughly thought out.