The Mog Blog

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was a great game at the arcades.

Then Namco Bandai decided to spice it up by making an update that allows players to choose between a tag team or a solo entry.

Then Namco Bandai wants to bring that to consoles.

Then Namco Bandai wants to add Snoop Dogg into the game as a background character in a stage.

Yes. That’s a thing.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a new entry into the Tekken series. Following up from both Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 6, there will be a lot of familiar things for fans in this one. Though I’m pretty sure most of the combos that I relied on back in Tekken 6 may not do the most damage in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, the transition and learning curve of the new mechanics certainly didn’t take long.

Tagging is the name of the game here. You can swap out characters if you’re getting smacked around too much. This can also be done offensively by allowing you to extend your combos after a launcher move or a juggle combo.

Aside from that, all of the characters from Tekken 6 are here and Namco Bandai has been slowly letting loose some more characters that are console exclusive. Kunimitsu makes her return back from the original Tekken Tag Tournament along with Angel, Devil Kazuya’s counterpart. They also revealed Michelle and Ancient Ogre, however they were not playable at the E3 show floor.

To help promote Tekken Tag Tournament 2, they brought in Snoop Dogg to not only feature a music video featuring many of the Tekken pro players, but will also feature him in his own bonus background stage where he’ll be chilling in a throne with his music playing in the background.

While the game plays great and fantastic, there was something I noticed as I was playing each match. The graphical quality of the game has taken a hit. This may be due to the fact that now there are four fully featured characters stored in memory as opposed to Tekken 6.

There was also a small demo of the Fight Lab. Bringing back Combat from Tekken 4, he is used as a tool to help players learn more about the game. Though, there are a few questionable parts such as segments that require you to mash buttons. You can also raise your Combot by giving him moves from existing characters. I did not get too much of a chance to try out this mode, simply because I just wanted to fight against other people. Well, that, and I didn’t want to hog up a kiosk just for this.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has seen a lot of promotional attempts at E3. Banners are all over the place and busies can be seen driving up and down the streets near the convention center. In the end, I hope Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ends up doing very well amongst the fighting game fans, and will hopefully pick up more players along the way.