Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Ambitious"

Lots of people tend to group street fighter 4 and tekken 6 into the same category simply because the combat seems to be the same and they look just about the same and it's that same old fantasy fight arena thing. But let me break it down into likes, dislikes, and separation from street fighter 4.

Likes:
-Tons of combos that are fun to master (most characters have at least 4 10-hit-combos that do about 3/4 hp)
-Advanced combat, not really a button-masher
-Everything looks amazing, and it flows really well.

Dislikes:
-A LOT OF TIME IN PRACTICE STAGE trying to nail all the moves
-Overwhelming for anyone new to the series considering there are uncountable combos and special moves for each character even though you will never be able to use most of them in a real fight
-If you are new you are at an extreme disadvantage with any multilayer mode and quite simply the game will be incredibly frustrating in all modes even when playing on easy simply because you will have no idea what you are doing and the game does nothing to help you (aka there are no step by step tutorials or a basic move brief)
-No "ultra combos" which bring stop-motion effects into the fights, which is a bummer if you like street fighter.

Separation from street fighter 4:
-A whole lot more combos are in tekken than there are in street fighter 4, again with focus on the practice stage
-Street fighter really tries to help you nail down basic and advanced combos as well as giving you tutorials, tekken does not.
-Street fighter focuses a lot more on the power of one individual move rather than tekken which focuses on many moves coming together. For example: a single punch in street fighter will do a decent amount of damage, in tekken, one punch will do almost no damage at all. In fact a devastating combo in tekken 6 will only do about 1/6 of the enemies health while that same combo in street fighter would do about 1/3.
-Tekken matches tend to be polar, meaning that if you start out winning, you will probably win, unlike street fighter where there is always a chance of recovery and come-backs


The bottom line is that although they are different, we have two really great games here. So this is what I recommend:

1) If you have never played a game in either of these series before, I would personally start with street fighter since it is amazingly noob-friendly and quite simply, easier.

2) If you have played a game in the tekken series and found that you liked it, then I recommend staying with it and getting tekken 6.
(that goes for street fighter as well)

3) If your like me and you have chronic genetic indecision syndrome, then I do recommend playing both (maybe borrow it from your friend or rent it) so that you can decide which you like better, because they are both great games. I simply bought both :)

So have fun guys, hopefully this was helpful, enjoy the game.