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PS3 | Fighting | Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online

Boxart for Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: Namco/Bandai Games
Release Date: 08/30/2007
Genre: Fighting
Number of Players: 2
ESRB Rating: R/P
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GRAPHICS: 4.00
SOUND: 4.00
CONTROL: 5.00
FUN FACTOR 4.75
AVG USER SCORE 4.4
AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.8

Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

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Review: Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online

Review by Sid Shuman | 08/31/2007 | 11:39:06 AM PST

Vicious Sid thought he had Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection all figured out. Then the lunch time battles against fellow staff members began and he rapidly grew addicted. As if that weren't bad enough, they just added online multiplayer: Sid might as well just go get a PS3 controller grafted to his hands and call it a day. Come along as he reveals all secrets about what makes Tekken 5: DR Online so damn great!

Sometimes things don't work out quite the way you expected.

Take my first review of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, which I gave a good but not glowing review. I was particularly hard on the graphics, which I described as "a bit on the homely side" and looking like "a PS2 game on steroids."

But you know what? Sometimes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've since come to realize that underwhelming graphics or not, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection is one hell of fighting game, and without question the best in the series.

You see, shortly after publishing that review, the GamePro staff began to engage in lunch hour battles. It started out innocently enough, with a few of the GamePro.com web programmers picking up controllers and button-mashing their way to victory. At first I laughed at them. "You guys are playing Tekken?" I teased. Being an old-school Tekken 3/Tekken Tag Tournament veteran myself (I've won a few tournaments in my day), I decided to teach them a thing or two about the game. In other words, to stomp their faces in.

Online or not, it's still the butter smooth Tekken action you know and love

I won. A lot. And that's when the trouble began.

Flash forward to three weeks later. Between eight and ten GamePro editors, GP.com developers, and interns crowded into our tiny game room every single day for a full hour of screaming Tekken matches. Rivalries were born. Legends were created. Dynasties fell. It was intense, it was epic, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had as a gamer. And so, over the course of the next six months, the Tekken lunchroom battles took over the entire GamePro offices. We never missed a day.

That's when I realized that, despite my earlier misgivings about Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, it still had the potential to be insanely fun, especially when you combine it with the heated atmosphere of a cramped game room and the testosterone-fueled egos of diehard gamer geeks. It wasn't "just another Tekken," as so many critics charged. Tekken 5: DR is actually one of the deepest, most balanced, and just plain fun fighting games of all time.

And now it's got an online mode.

PAGE 2: The Stomping Continues...