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In Memory
Sean Pettibone

It’s difficult to comprehend that twelve years have gone by since the first installment in Tekken Tag Tournament came out for the PS2. In between, the fighting game genre has undergone incremental changes, but the basic formula has remained very much true to its roots. The new game adds many features and co-op modes, but Tekken Tag 2 remains at its core, about fighting against opponents in the ring. In this sense, Tekken Tag 2 should be immediately familiar. However, the ability to play with friends either online or in your own home adds to the tournament feel. An impressive array of options presents itself to players before they begin the game, with the usual single-player, arcade and versus modes present. Interestingly, the game’s practice mode is called Fight Lab. Here, you take control of a robotic fighter who is gradually introduced to the basics of the game, which makes it a good place to start if you haven’t played previous games. There’s a cool story mode that goes along with these practice sessions, which makes it a little less tedious.  You can choose to play through many of the offline modes solo with either a single player or with a tag team to beat them all. Additional modes include Pair Play, where you can play with 4 players at the same time offline. Arcade is a traditional mode where you fight a series of opponents until you reach a boss. There’s also Ghost mode, which presents an unending series of opponents. Players looking for a challenge can try Survival where you face off against opponents using only a single life bar to see how long you can last. These various modes offer plenty of depth and strategy, and most players will find these modes add to the game’s replay value significantly. However, these are only the beginning of the choices you get to make in Tekken Tag 2.

Choosing which characters to use in battle is probably the most important choice you’ll make in the game. The roster consists of many long running characters that have remained popular over the years. At the menu select screen, you’ll find old favorites including Jin, King, Heihachi, Martial Law, Paul Phoenix, Brian Fury and most of the standard bearers in addition to some of the newer characters like Bob and Anna introduced in the past few years. There are a few oddities which help to fill out the roster. There are over 50 total characters in the game, which provides plenty of variety and depth. Each of the characters brings a unique set of moves and combos to the arena which allows players to pick and choose the one that fits their fighting style the best. You can choose to focus on a single character in most fighting games, but the Tag mode doesn’t let you get away with that, since you need to utilize both characters effectively to beat your opponents.

Once you get in the arena and face off with opponents, you’ll notice that Tekken Tag 2 plays quite similarly to Tekken 5 and 6, but there are a few new additions to keep things fresh. The most interesting of these new twists are Tekken’s ‘bound’ hits that allow you to knock an opponent out of the air and perform a combo to damage them. Other than that, using the standard moves shows a game that remains true to its roots. Most players should be familiar with the standard move sets for their favorite characters by now, but the addition of Tag mode brings new strategies into play. The first thing you need to master is knowing when to swap characters which can be done with the press of a button. You can wait until your first character’s life bar is almost empty, but doing this puts you in trouble. A better strategy in most cases is to wait until you’re about half-full, then let your character rest and regenerate a bit of health while the other picks up the slack. You don’t need to rely on one character and use your back-up when you’re back is up against the wall. This is an ineffective long-term strategy since you’re always dependent on the main character to do the majority of the work. One of the keys to beating Tekken Tag 2 is knowing when to use the special combo moves. Timing these out is a bit difficult at first, but these powerful moves can inflict a lot of damage and put you in a strong position.

Tekken Tag 2’s new moves include Tag Combos. When you perform one of these, both characters on your team combine to attack your opponent simultaneously, which can produce a fairly significant amount of damage in a furious burst. Using this move drives down your energy meter slightly, but is worth the effort to master. One of the most effective moves you can do is the Tag Throw, where you can throw your rival while you’re switching characters. It’s not as easy to time this right, and it can usually end up leaving the arriving character vulnerable if you miss the timing, but starting your swap-in character with their opponent on the ground is worth the trouble. Players can also perform several other types of moves in the Tag mode including Tag Assault and Tag,Combo both of which are fairly self-explanatory. When you’re nearing the end of your energy bar, you can use a Tag Crash, which is a type of Combo move where you call in your team-mate who will perform a quick attack, which can inflict damage quickly. The trade-off here is that their energy bar is depleted of its recover portion, which increases the damage you can take. Taken together, these moves offer many new layers of strategy in the game that make it feel markedly different than the primarily single-character brawls that have been implemented in previous games. It definitely gives the game a different rhythm that makes it stand apart from other fighters, and one that’s appealing.

Your characters have individual moves and combos, but there are interesting similarities in how they play and respond. While many fighting games have produced quasi-3D stages, Tekken Tag’s remain a bit static and most of the action takes place in 2D planes. You can move out of the way using a quick dodge, but the game mechanics still play mostly in the usual plane. The game emphasizes quick flashy combos and you need to spend a lot of time mastering their timing and nuance. The game flows very well however, and you can usually build momentum quickly once you catch and opponent off-guard. Stringing combos together allows you to cause quite a lot of damage quickly, giving your opponent little time to recover. Playing through multiple rounds increases your ranking, and this leads you to face off against more difficult opponents, which can be a problem since the AI leads them to make the occasionally cheap attack. It makes things a little bit more frustrating than they could have been, but you can usually compensate for these attacks if you anticipate them. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 requires players to master some interesting moves and controls, with the Tags being the pre-eminent style of attack this time around. While it feels different, it also draws many similarities to the more traditional installments in the series, which makes it both accessible and deep.

 - Michael Palisano

Grade: B+