Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Review

NOT

Wait Times
One thing that really got on my nerves, was some of the wait times. To give you an idea, it took me roughly 5 seconds to select an alternate costume for a fight. The wait time triples if you happen to select a saved tag selection, which is just too long. Additionally, I found the online matchmaking to be quite slow. While I would sometimes get in a match quickly, other times I would wait several minutes before finding anyone. Hopefully it will get better down the road, because it can get boring waiting around.

Training Mode?
For a while now, fighting games have been trying to help newcomers get better. These are usually in the form of a training or trail mode, which typically teach gamers the core mechanics in a simple way. While Tekken Tag Tournament 2 features this mode, fight lab isn’t going to help you get much, if any better.

To put it simply, fight lab is broken up into five parts, which focus on a different gameplay element. These range from blocking to tagging, so they’re pretty diverse. However, the main problem is that they’re pretty annoying. Every stage shackles you to play a very precise way. One of the stages teaches you to attack high, mid and low. Come the end of the stage, you have to attack the right spot correctly or you take a hit. Messing up too many times will result in a failure and force you to retry till you get it right.

After you finish this mode, you might think you’re ready to rock, though that’s not the case. This is because every character has different attacks and timing, so what you learned might not apply to everyone. Considering there isn’t a training mode for every character, you simply have to figure things out for yourself.

Brutal AI
I don’t know about anyone else, but I tend to enjoy playing offline more than online. If this sounds like you, then be warned that the AI are no push over. Depending on the games difficulty and who you’re fighting, don’t be surprised if the AI juggles your life away or blows you away with an insane combo. In my adventure though ghost mode, I found it increasingly common to see the AI punish me for any and all mistakes. Come match 400, it started to feel no different than an online match. Sure the AI could be exploited, but cheap tactics will stop working as you continue to win matches.

“Clone” Characters
Despite having 48 different characters to choose from, a number of them are copies of another. Most of these characters were just alternate costumes, till someone decided to give them their own slot. Not only does it waste space on the character selection screen, it allows people to use the same character twice. At first it might not sound bad, but It can be devastating to less skillful gamers, since they’re easier to do combos with. On the other hand, once you figure out how to deal with these people, they should be easy pickings.

VERDICT

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will certainly appeal to both fans and newcomers alike. With a vast selection of characters and the ability to customize your look, you can easily find yourself playing for 50+ hours. When you factor in all the DLC (except the online pass) will be free, you’re really getting a good deal. However if you’re not that skilled, expect to make a commitment or constantly lose.