Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection (PS3)

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UPDATE: Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection has been replaced by Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online and is no longer available. Owners of Dark Resurrection can download the online portion of the game for £3.49 through PSN, or buy the full game for £14.99. This is an updated review which includes comment on the online portion of the game. For the original review of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection see page two.

Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online

Finally, we can now enjoy Tekken 5 online.

Lag is such a horrible thing. It's the destroyer of dreams. One dream, where I was playing classic 2D beat-em-up Street Fighter 2 online against some of the best warriors in the world, has already succumbed to its nothingness. And now another dream, where I'm playing 3D beat-em-up Tekken online, has joined the club.

I know, it's impossible to get true lag-free play. I understand that. It's just disappointing to see Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online, a downloadable PSN game I've been anxiously awaiting for ages, succumb to it.

At best you'll get playable matches, where there's little delay between when you press a button and your character performs a move. At worst, there can be about a half-a-second delay. Of course the quality of everyone's connection, and game experience, is different, I understand that. But for me the lag in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online makes it difficult for me to play as well as I do offline, and is therefore frustrating.

So, for example, if I can see my opponent attempt to hit me with a low attack, my low block will be too late to do anything. Or, when I hit my opponent into the air in an attempt to juggle them with a combo, I'll miss my next hit. The game is playable, for sure. But it will be very annoying for experienced players.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tekken (where have you been?), Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online is a downloadable patch for Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. It's got 30 characters, including Dragonuv and Lili, the two new characters that were added for the Dark Resurrection arcade update, 19 stages, full 1080p HD visuals and a ghost, arcade and versus mode. It's pretty much the complete version of Tekken available right now.

You can now battle for kudos on the Tekken leaderboards

The online play works like this - you connect to a game room filled with up to eight players - like winner stays on in an arcade (remember those?). Your skill level determines the skill level of the room and your opponents, so you won't be pummelled by players miles better than you. Once you've connected to a game room you'll have to wait your turn, like putting 50p down on the cabinet, and watch the other matches in a spectator mode. When it is your turn, it's set up just like any multiplayer game.

You've got various options, including searching for a game room or creating one for you and your friends only. If you can't be bothered with that you can select opti match so the game automatically searches for an appropriate room for us. Once you get a game on, it's standard online fare - with battle points up for grabs and ranked leaderboards to climb.

Of course, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection should have come with online play enabled already. At £3.49 though it's perhaps not too much of an inconvenience. If you haven't got the offline version of the game and fancy some Tekken action now you can play it online, the full game will set you back £14.99, which to us is perfectly reasonable.

Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online isn't as good looking as Virtua Fighter 5, but it does have online play, which the PS3 version of VF5 lacks. So if you're a PS3 owner looking for some online beat-em-up action, Tekken 5: DR Online should do a good enough job - if you can tolerate the lag that is.

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