When I first heard that Tekken Tag Tournament was finally set to receive the sequel for which fans had been waiting for over a decade, it is an understatement to say that I was “retardedly excited.” I jumped around my living room in glee (sweating so profusely that I had to consult with Dr. Google that my mother’s menopause was not contagious), followed its development intently and pre-ordered it the very minute I saw it advertised in stores. After an exceedingly long wait, today was the day it arrived at last. And after spending the last three hours playing it, my reaction is a resounding “eh.” Don’t get me wrong. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is definitely a solid game and it delivers on everything that was promised: amazing graphics which facilitate intricate character design and vibrant battle locations, gameplay consistent with that of the most recent installments in the Tekken franchise, an unparalleled roster of characters and a tag system which allows for impressive teamwork attacks that leave those of the original game in their dust. What it fails to deliver is the charm that I believe was a key ingredient in Tekken Tag’s success thirteen years ago, which seems to have been lost among all the modern enhancements the game has to boast. The main problem is that the game plays more like Tekken 6 than its own predecessor. On paper, this may seem like a good thing: after all, Tekken 6 is by far the best game in the franchise to date and therefore anything that seeks to emulate it must also be of the highest quality. So then, what’s the problem? I’m so glad you asked. The problem is that the Tekken Tag installments are non-canon games. That is to say, they don’t follow the continuity of the main franchise’s storyline. In the past, the developers used this as an opportunity to make the tone lighter and more fun. Due to this, Tekken Tag Tournament was able to act as a kind of ‘working holiday’ for Tekken fans who just wanted easy entertainment from the characters they’d grown to love and hate. The current iteration, on the other hand, chooses to borrow its ferocity and tone from the games that immediately precede it and this is where I believe it falls short. The most pertinent example of this comes at the end of the Arcade Battle mode. The final stage (or boss fight) is unnecessarily difficult, reminiscent of Tekken 5’s battle against Jinpachi and Tekken 6’s infuriatingly difficult struggle against Azazel. This time, the culprit is fan-favorite Jun Kazama. In these examples, the difficulty made sense in the context of the storyline, but in a game that doesn’t have a storyline, I’m forced to wonder what could be the point in making a final boss so difficult that a seasoned Tekken veteran had to spend more than an hour and upwards of thirty tries in Easy mode just to beat her once. My theory is that game developer Katsuhiro Harada, frustrated with fans’ constant requests to bring Jun back into the series following her apparent murder between Tekken 2 and Tekken 3, decided that the best course of action would be to make us hate her so that we would leave him in peace. While the absence of other cute ideas such as Tekken Bowl from the original Tag game is another disappointment, one saving grace comes in the form of Fight Lab. This is an unusual twist on the training mode where beginner players (or even long-time fans looking for a good time) learn the signature Tekken controls via a series of mini-games rather than in a one-on-one match with a dummy character, as is the standard for most games in the fighting genre. In this mode you play as Combot, a character introduced in Tekken 4 who is able to mimic the entire moveset of any of the characters in the game. The last sign that there is still room for fun and frivolity in the world of Tekken, you will probably enjoy yourself more with Combot than you will in any other mode of the game. In conclusion, while all the technical aspects are out in full force, not even the bright colours can mask the fact that much of the magic behind what made Tekken Tag Tournament so special has dulled in the intervening thirteen years since its release. While I understand that it’s important to keep things fresh in an industry that forces constant evolution, when the release dates between an iconic game and its sequel are more than a decade apart, ‘more of the same’ may be exactly what your audience is seeking. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a solid addition to both the Tekken franchise and the fighting genre that will please newcomers and casual Tekken fans alike. It delivers every item on a Tekken Tag fan’s wish list and gives us more than we had any right to expect. But after having played it, I can’t help but think that we were asking for all the wrong things. As such, I take my share of the responsibility in how the game turned out; after all, it was our orders that the developers were following. The game they created is truly a product of its time, while as a long-term franchise fan, I had hoped that a long-awaited sequel would bring some 1999 into 2012. Having failed at that, it felt lacking.
Very good review of the gameplay. I'm not a fighting game fan, so I've never played a Tekken game, but you definitely went into the type of detail I'd want to read in a review of a game. I do think, though, that you should talk about things like graphics and sound - they're not as important as gameplay, but they do need a mention in a good gaming review.
