Enter the Iron Fist Tournament. (Tekken Tag Tournament (PS2))

Member Name: butters

Product:	Tekken Tag Tournament (PS2)
Date:	26/04/06 (489 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great beat 'em up game altogether.

Disadvantages: Slow. And not mini dinosaur character from the 3rd game called Gon.

The Tekken series has had a lot of success on the PSone and Ps2. This game was actually a launch title for the PS2. For those that don't know, the Tekken series is a series of fighting games made by Namco. It's slow paced, and with no weapons, there's a vast array of characters. On easy mode you'll be able to button mash your way through to unlocking all of the characters, though on harder mode you will need to master characters movesets and use a vary array of them to take down your opponent.
Tekken Tag changes things because instead of one character, you have 2, and can tag each character in or out whenever you want, provided you are not grounded. It's a decent change to the series and one I haven't seen a fighting game do before. If nothing else, it makes this fighting game unique to the others out there.


Modes.
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As usual you get the arcade mode where you pick your characters and have to battle against other characters. There are 8 stages and you can choose yourself how difficult you want the game to be, how many rounds you must beat your opponents at, and the time limit of each round. The aim is to beat your opponents to either KO them before the end of the round (knock them out), or knock their health lower than you have yours.
There are other, more challenging modes like Team Battle (beat as many characters as you can with 4 of your characters), Time Attack (no pausing, just timed battles to see how long you can last). There is also Survival Mode, which is similar to Time Attack. These modes are certainly more challenging than the arcade mode and should theoretically provide you with a lot more you do. However, that isn't the case because there are no advantages to doing these modes. In arcade mode you unlock characters, though in these modes you unlock very little. Though they are good, there really needs to be more incentive to get good and last as long as you can.

Also available is a bowling mini game, a one vs one (classic Tekken) and 2 player mode. 2 player mode of course is always fun, because it is when you have your friends round that beat em up games really shine. It is when you are against human opponents that you will be most competitive.


Characters.
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There are a lot of characters in the game, though you start out with a lot (20). As said above, it would be better if you could unlock different characters in different modes so you start out with fewer characters. It would certainly make the game last longer. The characters, overall are good though. Unfortunately Gon is missing from Tekken 3 though you will find a good range of characters here including Nina, Jin, Paul and Yoshimitsu. As with previous fighting games, this one is easy to pick up but hard to master as each character has a large amount of moves, all which have varying difficulty to both pull off, or even to just remember the right combination of buttons.
With so many characters you will easily find your favourites.

The fighting is a little slow paced and if you've played some faster paced games like soul Calibur it may take getting used to but the slow pace lets you know exactly what you are doing. It is still challenging though ,regardless of the slower pace.

My Overall Opinion.
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I love the game. Since it was a launch title, you can not expect the graphics to be good-and they are certainly nothing to scream about but I do still think that they are good enough for it not to bother you when you are playing. In fact, I would go to the extent to say that they are pretty good in the cut scenes. I don't see them often though because I do not think that the storyline is deep enough for me to have to watch them-it certainly isn't for gamers that that require a movie like storyline. It has not weapons and if you really are looking for a fast fighting game I would recommend Soul Calibur. What it does offer though is a reasonably good graphiced fighting game with some excellent (and appalling) characters for you to mess about with. I do also think that there are some pretty good modes for you to try out and although unlocking the characters (and therefore completing the game as far as I am concerned) is easy, it is a game you will sway in and out of because you can pick it up and fight straight away. I picked up the game last week (from my cupboard) after not playing it for a year and remembered all of the best combos that would get me a victory in the iron fist tournament. The music is pretty fitting (good-no RnB) and the multiplayer will keep you occupied giving the game a reasonable lifespan.
I haven't mentioned too much about the tag system either-apart from you can tag whenever you want (unless an attack is being done on you and that if one character gets knocked out, the match is over. It works incredibly well because you can choose you two favourite fighters to battle with now and the tag does provide some god attacks. DO a grab attack (such as throw) whilst pressing the tag button at the same time and you can throw or flip the opponent etc. and then you automatically run off screen and when that character is on the floor, the tag comes in and your character will jump in and jump on of kick the floored character. This is a great new system that works. It is more of a novelty though so I am glad subsequent Tekken games did not have this, or it would lose its appeal. Overall it's a good game that won't last you long in single player due to the ease of unlocking characters, though will last you along time if you can find a couple of Tekken loving mates.

Extra Information.
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1 or 2 players. Multitap lets you have up to four players.
413kb minimum on PS2 memory card.
Available on Amazon for £2.50 pre owned.

Summary: A great game with some flaws.