Tekken Tag Tournament

Tekken Tag Tournament is the fourth game in the series and it differs in a slight, but welcome mannerin that you get two characters to play with per bout. What this means is that you can choose two froma score of characters, with more to appear later on once you’ve accessed them, then participate in theusual fight to the death, but with the twist that when one of your team is about to throw in the towel,a deft flick of the wrist to the right analogue joystick retires the lame one in return for a game one, soyou can pick the one with more energy left. Trouble is, the enemy does this too and the cynical couldargue that it just doubles the length of the game without adding a great deal to the original.

Take your pick from the athletic Nina and Michelle, the muscle-bound Jin, the lion-faced King,schoolgirl Xiaoyu, wedgehead Paul and old-timer Heihachi in several different game types. The arcadeversion pits you against wave after wave of bad guys for you to defeat for those who prefer the classicgame, while the Team Battle lets you pick up to eight people and pitch them against the enemy team’seight. Fighters will get knocked out one at a time as they run out of energy and it will literally comedown to the last man standing to discover who is the winner.

Time Attack is similar to Arcade, but a scorecard is kept on who completed the game the fastest. Bewarned about the cheating you-know-what, going by the name of “Unknown”, on the eighth and finallevel though. I kept smashing the last ounce of strength from his/her/its energy bar but the amount keptcreeping back up again and before I could strike the final blow I was knocked out.

The Survival round finds you continuously bashing people up until you lose, with each subsequentround starting with less energy for you because of the previous poundings taken. Finally, the 1-on-1game allows a straight-forward mode with no tag-team shenanigans.

The graphics are arcade-perfect which is the sort of thing we’ve been mostly looking forward to andthose people complaining about “jaggies” really should go and get a life. How do they spend timelooking for these without getting knocked into next week? The sound is nothing new to get workedup about but the game plays like a dream and you find yourself kicking out new moves depending onthe random button presses actioned.

When the inevitable sequel appears though, it would be nice to see four players in an all-out punchingmatch for a proper two-on-two experience. For now though, if you have an earlier game and aren’t thatkeen on the Tekken series then this won’t change your opinion, but it’s a fair place to start for thosewho haven’t partaken before.

Overall: 3½/5

This review was on Freeloader.com before they closed down.