Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Review

It's great to see Namco Bandai use Fight Lab to really own the oddball comedy that's always been present in the series. It's a trend that continues on into character customization, which features a staggering number of visual tweaks for your roster. Almost everything that you do in TTT2 yields coin that can be used to purchase alternative outfits, hairstyles, and accessories. Characters can be altered so much that they become impossible to visually connect to their canonical appearances, the modifications ranging from the conventional to the patently absurd. I turned my favorite character, Dragunov, into a rifle-wielding, black-clad Spetznaz, but I could have just as easily decked him out in knight's armor, with a sunflower as a weapon and a spinning emergency light as a hat. There's a real joy in seeing all the bizarre outfits that your opponents sport - I’ll challenge anyone not to laugh the first time they encounter a fighting kangaroo piloted by a tiny alien on its head.

What gives me pause, however, is the sexual humor, which is often misogynistic and unilaterally objectifying. Take the supernatural breast-jiggling animations. Or the gratuitous panty shots and hyper-sexual outfits (including bikini and thong DLC). Or the workplace sexual harassment that Combot's master, Violet, doles out offhand. It's an approach that does no favors for the genre's reputation as a boy's club, and it's really beginning to wear on me. The reception for Duke Nukem Forever showed that gamers have begun to outgrow the schlock of gaming's formative years. I have to wonder when the same standards will be applied to the fighting genre.

The rest of the package is a little feature-light, particularly for solo play. Arcade Mode headlines the offline choices, but it’s short and bare-bones. And there’s no confusing the artificial intelligence with a real player, what with its irregular rhythms and uncanny predictive abilities. You’re apt to get through Arcade by exploiting a small handful of moves that the computer doesn’t seem to quite understand how to block. There’s also a survival mode and “Ghost Battle”, which pits you against player simulations, but neither feel very distinguished from the Arcade Mode. Absent are the quirky diversions found in previous Tekkens, like bowling or volleyball. When it comes to online, there isn’t really anything to do beyond the vanilla matches, though there’s at least support for teams, and a replay feature. The use of Practice Mode as a waiting lobby is also a welcome feature, though I’d have liked to see the command list brought in with it. Lastly, TTT2 also purports to have an online stat tracking service a-la Call of Duty Elite, but much like Elite, it wasn’t ready at the time of release, and still seems to be a work-in-progress.

As nitpicky as it might sound, it’s also important to note TTT2’s problematic menu. While the main menu has been cleaned up considerably from Tekken 6, a lot of basic requirements have been missed. There’s no “back” option once you pick anything in the character select screen; make a wrong choice at any time during the process and you’ll have to go all the way back to the main menu. Losing a match in Arcade Mode means being bumped back to character select, even if you just wanted to keep the same team. There’s also no easy way to rematch your one-off opponents online. In the customization mode, the buying and equipping of items are separated, so you’ll have to go in and out of a variety of menus to switch between the two. It’s inexplicable that TTT2 drops the ball with such simple, expected features, even if it only results in some marginal inconvenience.

Still, Tekken Tag Tournament 2’s foundation remains quite strong, and fans of the series should rest assured that this is its best offering yet. There’s a huge stable of interesting characters to pick from, and most play quite unique. The combat is as complex and nuanced as ever, but still remains well-balanced. The music is a catchy blend of techno and dance that suits the proceedings perfectly, and you’re able to substitute in your own tracks for anything that doesn’t fit your fancy. Stages are deep, multi-leveled, and richly colored. Animations are as smooth as silk, the characters’ wild and disparate moves flowing together seamlessly.

You’ll really come to appreciate that last bit when you start to acclimate yourself to Tekken Tag Tournament 2’s fighting system. Like in any worthwhile competitive activity, it’s possible to catch fire, sensing your opponents’ thought processes and countering their moves like a grand master. When you’re confidently transitioning from move to move, battering your opponent against a wall or heaving him bodily through the air, TTT2 feels supremely satisfying.

For you, at least.