Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was just released in arcades over here in Japan on September 14th, and we got a chance to play it first-hand! Anyone who has played the original Tekken Tag will instantly feel at home, since the core gameplay remains the same, but there's a few tweaks here and there to build on the experience of the original and keep things exciting!
Tekken Tag 2 expands on the tag mechanics found in the original game by allowing for extended tag combos and other combined moves using both your fighters. Tag-combos can now be done simultaneously with both characters participating in the combo at the same time, not one after the other. Trust me when I say these moves aren't only devastating to your life bar but your moral, too! Tag-throws, combined throws using specific character combinations, have also returned, but in Tekken Tag 2 if you can get the timing right you can actually counter the tag-throws. Not only that, you can also instantly roll your tag-throw counter into a tag-combo, which hurts...a lot. However, the coolest new tag feature added has got to be the stage-tag. If you are playing on a stage in which you can knock your opponent off one level and they fall to the next one, you can tag-out out to your other character and pummel your opponent as they are landing on the next stage, for maximum damage!
While Tekken Tag 2 is based off of a modified version of Tekken 6, in my opinion it feels much faster, and the characters feel lighter, than in that game. However, it does retain Tekken 6's "Bound" hits system, in which you can hit an airborne opponent to the ground and then stun them, so you can extend your combos.
Tekken Tag 2 also has an extensive character customization system. It lets you outfit your fighters in pretty much anything you can imagine, including items that are normally meant for different fighters. Your customized character is then saved to your BaNa Pass card (BaNa is short for Bandai Namco, the game's developers and publishers), and the next time you play, just swipe your card and presto-chango, your customized fighters are ready to go! You can also download a digital version of the BaNa Pass to your cell phone (at least here in Japan, where cellphones do EVERYTHING), and by just magically waving your phone in front of the arcade you get the same effect as if you had swiped the physical card. The BaNa Pass system is also used to track your total number of matches played, and your win/loss ratio as well.
Tekken Tag 2 also uses an always-on online system, so that no matter what arcade machine you are playing on, you are always connected to the Tekken Tag 2 servers. The reason for this is that the servers magically capture “ghost” and win/loss data from any player using the BaNa Pass system; then, taking that information, the servers create a Top-20 list of fighters that the game will randomly throw at you as you play. What's really cool is that because of the always-on online system, these “ghost” fighters respond just like the real thing. The servers record every single little thing these fighters do, even how they would react in certain situations and to certain attacks/patterns. It's kinda creepy, but it's also pretty cool.
All in all, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a great fighting game, and as a fan of the original I am glad to see it return. Look for a demo of the game to be packaged with the November release of Tekken Hybrid, exclusively for the PS3. The full console port of the arcade version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is supposed to come out sometime next year.
Submitted By: Aaron McKeever (Employee)
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