When you're looking at videogame genres, perhaps none divides more players or demands more fanboy loyalty then that of the fighting game. Some players swear by the breast jiggling physics of the Dead or Alive series. Some players prefer the hardcore realism of a Virtua Fighter. Some players despise anything that isn't sprite and pixel based set against a flat 2D battling arena. And then there are the Tekken fans. But do more than just Tekken fans have something to look forward to with the newest PS3 release, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection?

Unlike many fighting games (and even the Tekken series itself) Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection (Tekken 5 from here on) doesn't even start out the same as past games in the history of fighting games and even the series itself. Usually, Tekken will give you a handful of characters, and through beating the Arcade Mode with these characters, you're usually able to unlock a good, healthy staple of fighting game characters before everything is said and done. However, with Tekken 5, you're simply given them all right from the beginning – 34 in fact, which is a pretty whopping number for a fighting game. On the plus side, it's great not to have to work for everything, and instantly you can get playing with your favorites. On the downside of things, well, you don't work for anything. I know, it's odd that same thing is both a blessing and a curse, but though it feels great to play as your favorites, it is also even more so to use that character after you've spent a few hours unlocking them.

With 34 characters, chances are you'll find someone you'll like playing as, unless you are one of those really, really picky people. You've got your buff male powerhouses, demon spawns, giant robots, karate experts, boxers, graceful and cute women, strong and dependant women, a panda, a kangaroo, pieces of wood, and other such pugilists to tickle your fancy. A nice thing about the selection of characters is that for fans many of them will be familiar and old friends, but that doesn't mean there aren't new ones to focus on, study, and master. Another thing is that you should be able to find a player to fit your style, whether you like fighting with only women or men or both. You'll also find the strong, muscular bruisers; the quick footed and agile dodgers; characters that prefer wrestling grapples more than hand strikes; and even one character in particular who doesn't use kicks at all except for a few rare instances (he is strictly only a boxer and the usual kick buttons are for dodges and sways).

Controls in Tekken 5 aren't too complicated, which will be good news to hear for the button mashers out there. The only buttons you'll really have to concern yourself with is the directional pad and the face buttons, with the square and triangle buttons being the left and right punch respectively, and the X and circle buttons being the left and right kick respectively. However, simply nailing on buttons won't get you that far, as you'll need to learn to counter and break out of moves, learn how to grapple, find how to pop your enemy up in the air for a chain combo, find out which moves are best for which situation, and find out what moves flow naturally from one to the other. It won't take you much time at all to jump in and win a game or two and find who you like, but it will take quite some time to become a pro and proficient with one.

Given how practice pays off, you'd think it'd be great to have a, I don't know, perhaps a training mode. Well, sadly, there is no training mode whatsoever. There is no way to simply setup a dummy match, go in, and have the computer tell you, "Now, see this D-pad and button press – do that." No, instead with Tekken 5 you'll simply just have to work at it, experiment around, and find what exactly does what (or either find you a guide on some site online).

In a way, the whole game suffers like that, where though it gives you the goods for the most part in the way of unlockables and little extras, it fails to deliver on any substantial gameplay modes. You've got your Arcade Mode which is where you go through a ladder advancing system from weaker enemies to an ultimate boss. You've got the traditional Versus Mode so you can go head to head with a buddy on the same machine. And then you've got a Ghost Battle system which is for what we don't know; it plays like Arcade Mode, only you can pick your challenger after each battle, almost like a career mode advancement system, only it isn't. There aren't also any of the minigames that have been popular with the series, such as a side scrolling beat'em up or anything like bowling either. However, those modes could probably be forgotten had one thing been included – online matches. So if you don't fancy yourself the lonely gamer or have a bunch of friends to come over, don't go into buying this for the online. There is talk that online play might come somewhere down the line, but as of now, you'll have to make and have your most fun by yourself.

Another issue a bit broken is the unlockables. It's great that there are so many things you can unlock, such as movies for characters that would play after you beat the game, as well as other extra wearable items like anime style hair, dizzy birdies, etc. but you have to unlock them with points, which given isn't that hard to do since you can get at least 3000 simply by winning a match, and in some cases you can even do the spinner which can multiply your winnings by two, five, ten times for example. The movies are probably the greatest fault, because after you've amassed enough points to unlock them, you have to go to the store to buy them and then download them to your PS3 hardrive since they weren't already in the file you downloaded for $20 bucks to get the game in the first place.

The graphics aren't perfectly amazing either, unlike those of the Virtua Fighter that just came out for the exact same system, but they are still nice and do have those moments. Characters especially look good, featuring well designed character faces and bodies, showing off the curvaceous and the muscular equally well, plus things like the cloth on characters and hair are animated and look well in the game. The environments you fight in work a little less well than the characters, but they still look pretty good and even downright beautiful in some cases. You'll fight in the frozen wastelands with penguins walking about; a dense forest at night with wolves closing in on you; fighting atop a Japanese mountain garden; fighting in a space station hovering the Earth; and one of the prettiest is an open field with shadows reflected on the tall grass which also blows with the sway of wind – really quite gorgeous in fact. The environments also have some destructibility, such as slamming an opponent against the ground and watching as giant slabs of concrete go bouncing up into the sky to crumble away. Sadly, the sound work doesn't work as well as the visuals, because though the grunts, punches, and kicks all sound fine, things like background music and English voicework is sorely lacking; only the foreign voices seem to work, and those would probably be bad too if I knew how to properly judge the acting of someone speaking in a foreign tongue.

Ultimately, for the $20 bucks you are paying to download it over the PS3 Store network, it is a pretty solid and fun game. It doesn't exactly look as if it fully belongs on the PS3 since it doesn't feature the sort of graphics we'd expect, and though some of the animation is pretty clean, you'll also get the weird, random moments that shouldn't happen, like two people punching each other straight and both bouncing up into the air, or being able to juggle someone by punching them in mid-air (in reality they'd just keep falling). Still, you get quite a lot for your money, what with the characters and unlockables. At $20 dollars it is a solid three star rating, but if online play finally comes around, bump that up to four stars. Fans of Tekken will be happy, but it is still an "on the fence" game for others.

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