Tekken Tag Tournament 2

OK - to be clear this review is based on 6 hours and 100 bouts (offline and on) with TTT2. As I write World Tekken Federation is effectively featureless so this is purely about the game.

First impression on firing up the game and popping into arcade mode with Asuka is that this is Tekken 6 - the menu looks like Tekken 6, the stages and fighters look..well much much better than Tekken 6, and the movesets for solo play are exactly Tekken 6. Sadly when I got to the end of Arcade on Normal pretty easily the Boss was like Tekken 6 insofar as they were a cheating Mofo with the ability to destroy you in a single combo and in one case a single move!

Moving on I see if Bob can't help me out and bring on the Tag Team - obviously this is where the new mechanics come in to play. Team fighting is fun, even as a solo player, but each half of your team has a smaller life bar that one player would (duh - stay with me) - this is where my first niggle comes in. Some of the damage possible in TTT2 is massive, fantastic when you are dealing it out but not so when you are on the reviving end of losing half a life bar with a single hit. Another issue I have (and this is probably one avoided by the more skilled players) is that escape from walls is difficult, you can move to the side but in a tiny and slow bunny hop or leisurely walk (in other words this is no eight way run) - this means wall traps mean one thing and one thing only - game over!

Heading to other modes such as Combot and there is an increasing difficult and fun set of challenges that teach you the fundaments of the game. I headed to training mode and found one of the better training modes I have used - very easy to bring moves and combos up on screen, see them in motion then practice them yourself, with these new moves I head into Ghost mode where I play a variety of fighting styles based on real players at various levels of difficulty then - uggh - the music starts annoying me - so I go to the music director and swap it out then add the theme to killzone 3 to my main menu (to inspire me!). Getting the picture? It is feature packed behind those Tekken 6 menus.

Finally online and I most of what I expect from a modern fighter is there if a little sparse. For the player and ranked matches you choose your fighter(s) first then wait in a training room for an opponent to interrupt you (interrupt you doing nothing!) - obviously ripping off Street Fighter and letting you fight proper CPU games rather than hitting a passive dummy would have been better. Once you fight a real person there is no rematch option - either go back to loneliness or leave altogether. Another niggle is that leaving altogether is the only way to change fighters, so finding a level match, staying for several bouts and mixing up the characters is no option (in player mode - obviously I expect blind play in ranked). Hopefully the team options will bring some refinement when they are brought online. There are fightrooms but last night these were all 1 bar americans - no ta!

Conclusion - 8/10 - if you are expecting the rules of Tekken re-written for a modern age then you will be disappointed. I was expecting ground-breaking and all I got was a fantastic, fun fighter - so I am not too upset :)

Starting off; my first impressions of the game was slightly odd, my usual characters (Lili and Asuka) feel slightly different than usual. However after a while i found that the new game mechanics have actually improved the fighting experience. This includes the fighting speed / pace, intesity, the whole experience in general feels vastly superior compared to the old Tekkens such as number 6. Infact i playing 6 after playing tag for a while you learn that its alot slower pace.

Starting on the general game. Now everyone enjoys their music. I can see that Tekken Tag 2 decided to take the approach of using Dubstep & Mixes.
The music completely suits the fighting pace that the game has and even give you your fighting hype during the match. I personally think this is a good move for the game as some individuals may disagree with me; however i think its sutiable 'fighting' type music.

A few deserved to be mentioned such as "IT'S NOT A TUNA" on Bountiful Sea & of course the Boss fight's "What you will see" on Heavenly and Fallen Garden. As well as "Tekstep Fountain" on Fontana di Trevi. I also must say the Main menu and character select songs are good and also worth mentioning. There are many other good ones but i must move on.

Character Customisation.
Now this is a major up compared to previous titles; exploiting the shop with your well earned gold is not a problem if you play alot of VS with your friends online, completed the character tournament feature but Nothing beats ghost mode when it comes to praticing and improving your skills as well as getting a few rewards in the process via gold panel fights and Luckly Boxes.

With the shop you have a huge range of Outfits which seem to have certainly boomed up in Tekken Tag 2. I contemplated where should i start due to this insane amount of clothes so in the end my target is to buy them haha.
Looking at the Laws I'm sure many of you notice that he's basically Bruce Lee in a video game. I also noticed there is a huge amount of customisation for him as well involving getting he's Outfits, additional weapons like the golden & standard nunchucks sutiable for both the Laws. You can make your own fightable Bruce Lee basically!

I started off with customising Lili making her look incredibly sexy. I must say the customisation is almost endless to an extent. Sometimes more is bad however i must say more is good in this situation!

Looking more at the Fight Lab.
Now for players who are thinking why is the new character "Combot" so useless with only a total of 17 moves / combos. You must do the fight lab and unlock various of other skills from other charatcers. Now this is an interesting character. You can customise this character to the max! giving him the the randomness of Alisa, the cartwheel of Lili, the power from Hworrang to send players flying and many more!
However you need to complete some quite chalenging 5 stages which could be annoying for certain segments of the gaming audience. Completeing these will teach you how to use combot and fighting techquines in this basically a tutorial for new players as well. This character could be the best character (not that i agree with my self) but COULD. Its basically a Mokijin without random randoming each round. its your personallised one! which actually sticks to what move set you have inputted into it.

Now talking about Gameplay!
I'm sure you can see Tekken is still the same as it is back in 1994. Along the way with minor tweeks entered and visually improved however the gameplay is basically still the same! However Tag 2 is a major improvement over the first Tag as well as the orginal 1V1 in previous tekkens. Fighting has never been harder than before now since the Tag feature was added and for them to release the orginal tag as "Tekken Hybrid" is a good feature for us. But You can tell there is minor graphical difference compared to Tekken 6. So thats why we have Tekken Tag 2 now!

My experiences of this game is quite sturdy! The Tournament feature is a nice one (Arcade Mode) as always it will gradually increase the differculty of the fights. But this game is wants you to farming in ghost mode if you want to aquire many money, which is a slight repeative downside however this game is a fighting game right? I'm sure some of you have actually complaned about how strange Tekken 6's Story Mode felt in the 3D 3rd person enviroment. Of course i enjoyed the story however the gameplay wasn't great. You will usually need to have a friend to play Tekken.

Talking about playing with a friend the Online mode its actually pretty smooth to play on. But still nothing beats playing side to side offline. Talking about the tag feature it's great to use in battle, it will take some pratice to use in a very effective form however its certainly great for keeping recovery hit points down.

When you tag out the player you are not using will recover hit points until its recovery bar is completely full (this obviously doesn't mean it could recover to full health) i think this sort of even-out Yoshimisu being such an over powered character as its the only character with healing back in Tekken 6. However no charatcer is better than another. I'd say its all up to preference who you pick and if you can put in the time and effort to being good at using him / her. At first i used Law and found him to be very good, however I liked looking at Lili so i picked her up and took a while to get used to using her and after a few hours shes already better than Law.

There also one feature i found pretty interesting which is Pair play :) now unlike before you can actually have 4 people playing at once. Its quite interesting to get fighting styles in sync with your friend vsing your other friends as well. This is also a good edition if your always having a Tekken tournament around your house with friends so you don't have to take turns with swapping the controller. (However some people might not prefer it)

About classic spamming. If your good enough its easy to avoid spamming using simple parries, side steps and counters etc... However i did notice a few moves are very annoying to dodge/avoid such as Law's Dragon Kick, The Boscanovich spam, Steve's smack down etc... This isn't easy to balance out due to the odd over 9000!! plus combos. So you can't really base the game being bad due to spammers. Like i said if you are "Pro" enough they are easy to get around and use your endless 3/4 health taking combo on them :D

Also forgot to mention, MORE CHARACTERS!!
More characters some carrying simlar aspects and generic move sets as to others one being the "Laws" combanation in tag. of course if you prefer using one character and don't quite like the tag feature you can go solo.
(Telling you a nice trick, go solo, Pick Miguel and if the other person isn't also solo you will get a power boost to make up for the lack of man power, Now Miguel is over powered as he is really - hes one of those block then attack charatcers making him a good character - With rage mode a few seconds of hitting the guy 3/4 of he's health is gone and hes gotta switch now. Now this may sound un even but Miguel is pretty slow compared to others like the Laws, Alisa, Anna and Nina etc... But if you can use Miguel and master blocking, parrying and contering grabs you will basically be a tank with the firepower as well)

Back to new characters we have the good old slim bob, which i found to be quite useless compared to the orginal bob as well as he feels slower (logically it should be the other way round) and even has more power than the orginal bob.
Angel - as more aggressive & faster Devil Jin i would say however a little bit limited i think.
Unknown - well this is the boss however its moves are of what downgraded compared to the actual end boss in Arcade.
and Many others which you will see when you get the game. If you are new to Tekken you will need to do alot of experimenting with different charatcers to workout which are sutiable for you. As for previous tekken owners i'm sure you all know about generic move sets so its easy to workout which works for which charatcer.
Kuma and Panda are both now seperated characters (Bear and Panda) as in Tekken 6 it was a set costume for one charatcer which i found abit odd.
Just basically more new characters to play around and experiment with!
(P.S - i did noticed Alisa has a higher time gap between moves compared to Tekken 6) Still a good character however i think it is because of evening out the characters in other words nerfing her.

Overall this game is highly recommened, i've decided to write a review due to the fact I played it for 200 hours now (not including the other several hours in Euro Gamer - London) since it came out, and considering i play it regularly its worth my money as a game (No good not playing a game which you bought and found your self not playing it in the next week) I must say you will need a friend to play with, its definatly more fun that way.

I might have missed a few points however thank you for reading my review.
Please keep in mind that this is a fighting game, presented in 3D however its gameplay is basically 2D fighting in a 3D enviroment. If you haven't ever played tekken please check youtube for videos before deciding. For exisiting Tekken players, i hope this review has been of any use to you and again thanks for reading!

*EDIT* i noticed i did forgot to mention that the character endings are good to look at, some of which are very funny. great CGI used worth your time viewing, Lee's one is just epic end of. To unlock them you select the character you want to get the ending of first in Arcade Mode. however you can unlock them all at random in Ghost mode via Gold Panels. Read more ›

I have been a fan of Tekken ever since I started playing video games - and I think this is probably the best game in the series! There are some new tag mechanics in the game, which allow for extensive combo's making this a difficult game for people who are new to fighters, but the game's fight lab mode will help get newcomers started.

The games roster is brilliant with well over 50 playable characters - nearly every character who has been in a Tekken game before, with promises of more characters to be offered as FREE DLC later down the line.

My only complaint is that the games customisation mode seems to taken one step forward and two steps back - while we can now use colour wheels to edit the colours of the pieces we wish to, each character only has one or two unique costumes, but this is only a minor complaint and can be overlooked due to the sheer amount of modes and characters - and as a first for the series - and excellent online mode where lag is rarely experienced. Muliplayer is where the game truly thrives, sitting with friends and playing either as a team or against each other is great fun!

All in all I highly recommend this game to fans of the fighting genre and to those who just want a fun game to play with their friends on nights in.