The End is Nigh: Tekken 6

By Martin Gaston

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: Tekken 6, and how to finish a fighting game.

Azazael – the final stage boss of Tekken 6 – is a bit duff.

He’s not the only one, of course – rubbish bosses seem to be endemic to all fighting games. Just snatch a glance of Seth, the billion forms of Rugal, I-No or Gill. Yuck. Tekken 6 seems to pride itself (even more than the average fighter) on having some sort of overarching narrative, which is why you’re forced to watch so many tame Lars Alexandersson cutscenes as you trek through the tedious scenario mode (more on that here).

To help set the scene: Azazael is some ancient towering, 3-person-tall crystallised monster thing. He’s been summoned into existence because of Jin’s (formerly Kazuya’s, I think) Devil Gene, the mystical genetic doodad which allows him to sprout wings and shoot lasers from his eyes by pressing two buttons. Azazael’s presumably nefarious in intent, because everyone in the sixth bout of the Iron First tournament seems to end up smooshing his face into the stony floor of his temple at some point. He also has a temple – blatantly evil.

His purpose is to end a single-player slog with an epic battle against seemingly impossible odds. That’s nice enough, of course; effective, traditional and generally entertaining. It’s served the movies well for decades. But despite Namco’s best efforts to drag the 15-minutes-at-best game out into hours and hours of exposition, Tekken 6 is not a movie, and the way the developers have encapsulated the ‘epic battle’ and ‘impossible odds’ quota is to make the purple bruiser cheaper than a copy of The Office on DVD during an HMV sale.

He can, amongst other things, block high, medium and low at the same time, fire lasers, summon stalagmites, roll up into a ball then fling himself at you, conjure up irritating magical bats, crash into the ground with a hefty wallop and club you with his giant crystal arms. What’s most frustrating, though, is how he takes liberal advantage of a downed opponent’s moments of vulnerability when knocked to the floor, chaining all his grotty attacks together into a combo that can suck off a good third of your health bar. Don’t expect to be able to do the same, either: like all end bosses, he also takes less damage from your attacks.

Confusingly, Azazael is not even particularly troublesome to beat. The easiest way I’ve found is just to jump in and kick him in the head from time to time whilst blocking and waiting for his recognisable double punch attack – which leaves him wide open for a solid counter. Repeat until dead.

This isn’t Tekken, though. By tinkering with the otherwise balanced roster to create a boss artificially boosted in offensive capabilities, all Namco have done is created a final event that’s little more than looping through the same banal cycles of defending and countering. It completely misses the mark of a grand finale. And whilst defeat is guaranteed to instil frustration in the player, victory delivers no sense of satisfaction or achievement. It’s all messed up.

It could easily be pointed out that I’m approaching it from the wrong angle, and that Tekken 6 is not meant to be played in single-player at all: it’s not even supposed to be played on a home console. That’s a fair evaluation. Tekken 6 is, of course, a competitive versus game by design, and in that mode it positively bedazzles – put two ardent fighting fans in the same room and they’ll almost definitely give it a go after exhausting Street Fighter IV.

But, at the same time, it’s always been a staple Tekken tradition to plough through the single-player modes to watch the then-impressive CGI endings – who in their (now) twenties doesn’t have fond memories of doing that in Tekken 2 or 3? There’s also a whole market of casual Tekken players who never much cared for versus, wheeling the game out every now and then for a stress-relieving kick about and the occasional tussle with a mate. As a quid-engulfing source of arcade frustration, Azazael is indubitably perfect. He doesn’t translate well to consoles.

At the same time, fighting games do need something, though, to throw at players as one final last-ditch attempt to stop them from seeing the CGI movie and the end credits – otherwise you just end up with the lame duck attempt of KOF XII. And we can’t have that.

I don’t have the answer. But I know Azazael isn’t it.