Well, it seems that it's true. 2009 is definitely the comeback year of fighting games. Throughout the year, gamers have beat each other down with games like Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue and King of Fighters XII. Now the King of the Iron Fist, Tekken 6, has finally returned from a long hiatus and for the first time is now available on a system other than the PlayStation.

Tekken 6 has definitely benefited from a long time off. Running at a buttery smooth 60 frames-per-second, the eye-candy is plentiful. A new technological innovation brings motion blur to add more realistic visual flair. It is hard to explain without showing, but Tekken 6 looks much better in motion than any of the screenshots can convey.

The beefy roster of fighters also sports the best characters the series has ever seen. Each fighter gets good mileage out of next-gen hardware, with realistic textures and flowing outfits just adding that little extra amount of care and detail. Every character cringes, winces, and agonizes on each punch making every blow feel that much more believable.

The Tekken series has always been known for good fighting, but it has also always had solid, rocking soundtracks. Tekken 6 continues the tradition with great music and kick ass songs. Each level has its own musical theme and every one belongs on a soundtrack disc. Seriously, if Namco Bandai ever releases the Tekken 6 soundtrack for sale, pick it up as soon as possible. All of the music and voice talent are well made and hand picked for the situation and that just makes it one notch better than the competition.

Tekken 6 is actually a misnomer for the home console release. Tekken 6 actually came out in the arcades a few years ago and then released another iteration dubbed Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion which is similar to the recently announced Super Street Fighter IV. Not that it matters to most gamers, but to those Tekken diehards, the console release expands the fiction around the cursed Mishima bloodline. If you have fallen off the Tekken bandwagon in the past, Tekken 6 catches you up to speed after each release with six animated comics. To make a long story short, Jin Kazama has taken control of his grandfather's corporation, The Mishima Zaibatsu. Jin hosts another fighting tournament and his dysfunctional relatives, Heihachi and Kazuya, are seeking to reclaim their thrones as rightful Kings of the Iron Fist.

To most people that are buying Tekken 6, all that matters is the fighting and Tekken 6 is better than it has ever been. (I will get to that in a minute.) But from what Tekken 6 presents the player when the disc loads, it leads you to believe that the main attraction is the new Scenario Campaign, which is a continuation of Tekken Force started in Tekken 3. The Scenario Campaign is a somewhat shallow brawler in the vain of Final Fight or Double Dragon, complete with crates full of questionably edible contents. While it can be fun and a nice distraction to complete each character's Story Mode and see the ridiculous CG endings that make Tekken so special, each character has to be unlocked in Scenario Campaign. Now, every character is available immediately in the Versus and Arcade Mode, but it is a shame that Tekken 6 makes you play through so much of the lackluster Scenario for so little reward.

For Tekken aficionados, the fighting system got a few new tweaks since the last entry, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, made its way over here. The first change is what is called the "Bound" system. For high level players, an essential tactic in the past has been to juggle your opponent in the air while they are defenseless. Now with the "Bound" system, if an opponent is playing particularly defensive or staying close to the ground, you can perform an attack that will bounce them off of the ground high enough to continue with an air juggle. The other change is the "Rage" system. As a player's health gets dangerously close to zero, "Rage" mode will activate which allows them to deal more damage in a pinch. Rage mode is incredibly useful in sticky situations, but more often than not, you won't get a chance to use it unless an opponent screws up their combo and you get a second wind. The "Rage" activation threshold is so close to death that it seems only practical for frame-counters and tournament level competition.

With most fighting games, it is all about balance. Throwing in more characters for the sake of boosting numbers doesn't create a even, balanced gameplay experience. With Tekken 6, however, the roster is bigger than ever before, with over 40 fighters and very few throwaway characters, and it miraculously manages to offer deep and rewarding gameplay without too many broken, or unfair, characters. Tekken 6 adds six new characters since its last incarnation and all of them fit right in with the series' trademark attitude. A little robot girl named Alissa slices and dices with hidden chainsaws. The deceptively fast, overweight hero, Bob makes quick work of anyone who takes his looks for granted. After his parents were killed, Leo sets out to find who is responsible for their deaths. Miguel has vowed eternal vengeance against Jin Kazama after a misguided Zaibatsu attack that killed his sister on her wedding day. The mysterious newcomer Zafina uses her Middle-Eastern influenced fighting style to confuse her enemies. And finally there's Lars, the impeccably dressed amnesiac that just wants answers about his past.

The meat of the Tekken experience is one-on-one fighting whether that's with a friend at home or online, although it's probably for the best if stays on the couch. Taking Tekken 6 online offers a deep and robust ranking system along with downloadable opponents via ghosts, which are battles against other players' custom characters. There are leaderboards for just about every region and the being able to save and watch replays of other player's matches is a cool diversion, but the atrociously laggy netcode makes Tekken 6 almost unbearable online. Even after a patch that addresses the poor performance, the online play for Tekken 6 is best for people with the highest of internet connections.

Taking a cue from Virtua Fighter, Tekken 6 has brought back custom characters. Ranking up each fighter via ghost battles or Arcade Mode earns money that can be spent on new items, accessories, and clothes. The full wardrobe for each character is pretty deep and the amount of changes that can be made almost makes it look like a different person at times. It is definitely the high point of the single-player experience because ranking up through ghost battles is absolutely addictive and hearing some of the reactions to your character's online appearance is priceless.

As with any other fighting, Tekken 6 offers many different difficulty options tailored for each gamer. Ranging from Easy to Ultra Hard, it isn't always a walk in the park for being the King of this tournament. The fights scale pretty consistently depending on the difficulty selected, except for one. The new Uber-Boss, Azazel, is by far the cheapest boss in recent Tekken history. Azazel is a giant fire-breathing dragon that will make quick work out of most people and because of his sheer size, is almost impossible to beat with certain grapple characters. Other than one cheap boss, the Scenario Mode offers a bit of a challenge, albeit mostly due to frustrating controls, but for the most part, Tekken 6 is highly customizable around your gameplay style and skill.

Occam's razor usually says that the simplest solution is usually the best. The Tekken series has always had simplistic controls, which covered up some of the deepest and most technical fighting around. Each face button corresponds to each limb on the fighter. The (X) and (Y) buttons are for right and left punch, respectively. The same is said about (A) and (B) buttons for kicks. Having approachable controls is what has helped boost the popularity of Tekken in the past. So it is a shame that Tekken 6 has to confuse all of the controls for the Scenario Campaign.

Players can run around freely in a 3-D environment in the Scenario Mode. You can either use the D-pad or the analog stick to move around, but when an enemy approaches, the controls become much more stiff and frustrating. Once you are locked onto an enemy, your fighter will always face them during battle. Cycling through nearby targets with the (RB) button is useful, but there isn't any way to handle the camera. As the camera swings around the environment, so do the directions for the input of commands. Using the analog sticks to fight is useless because it commits to a free-roam input which means you will run away from enemies instead of blocking if you hold the stick back. Pressing up no longer becomes a jump command if the camera (or the enemy) is in a certain position and to make matters worse, any special control setup you use is thrown out of the window and restored to defaults, so that means no quick keys for pressing multiple buttons at the same time!

All gripes with the Scenario Mode aside, Tekken 6 has the most intense and satisfying fighting the series has ever seen. The only problems holding it back are its own presentation and online play. The core-fighting is enough to justify a purchase to any fan of fighting games, but all the extra distractions manage to achieve is to take away enjoyment from why anyone would buy Tekken 6 in the first place.