Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is kind of a big deal. Initially appearing in Japanese arcades late last year, the game has been very popular in that scene, due to its appeal to both old and new fans of the series. “Veterans of the series who had been around for a long time and played all the Tekkens really seemed to enjoy it,” says Katsuhiro Harada, Game Director of the Tekken Project, and a member of the Tekken project for 17 years now. “And then on the other end of the spectrum there were the very new players who were good at memorising things and learning quickly and they seemed to really enjoy the game system as well.”
The initial arcade release is just the first step, of course. Letting it loose in the arcade wild gives the team valuable insight into how people are playing the game, any potential balance issues and what the fans would like to see. In the case of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (TTT2), the game has already seen an arcade upgrade, subtitled ‘Unlimited’. This, according to Harada, was designed to cater to “the more casual group who started with Tekken 5 or 6. A lot of these players said they could only really use one character, say Lili or a character like that, and there wasn’t a second character that was easily learnt. So we added the 'Solo' gameplay system; one-on-one. You could still pick two-on-two like before, or also you could do one-on-two. Since we implemented that we noticed that a lot more people across a variety of different player groups and styles really seemed to be enjoying the game a lot more.”
Tekken Tag: New Moon.
It’s this ‘Unlimited’ version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 that’s coming to homes around the world in September. TTT2 is still very much a Tekken 6 sibling, and if you have any experience with that game you’ll find plenty of familiar faces, and that most of your strategies translate well. However, the addition of the tag system brings so much more to the table, much like the original Tekken Tag Tournament did after Tekken 3, that this is indeed a deep game with longevity for both casual and long-time fans alike. Strategy-wise it’s a far cry from any other solo or team-based fighting game, as players really have to manage their resources. If one character dies, the team dies, which makes safe tagging a premium skill. Whilst the old-school ‘Tag Cancel’ is gone, TTT2 gives us a more strategic ‘Tag Crash’ – it costs you your recoverable life and your ‘Netsu’ (time-limited damage increase), but it gives you a near-invulnerable tag in.
In terms of damage, the more power to hurt you have, the more chance you have of stopping another player bringing in their other character. Juggles are as insane as ever, with tag-buffered launchers returning from Tag Classic. On top of this, players also have ‘Tag Assault’, which is a combination of the Bound system in Tekken 6 (slam an opponent into the ground during a juggle and they’ll bounce up and you can keep juggling) and the Tag Launch (your team member can come in and get in a string after the Bound). Sounds pretty complex, but it’s all pretty intuitive once you get going, and it won’t take long before you start doing juggles that include multiple tags, bounds, walls, wall breaks and any combination thereof.
The battle arenas in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 are similar to Tekken 6, with walled stages of various sizes and shapes – some with breakable walls – and a few infinite stages as well. TTT2 also sees the addition of tiered stages: smash your opponent over a balcony, and your team-mate is waiting at the bottom to continue the carnage. Damage scaling does kick in, but the possibility for insane juggles is virtually endless with all these variables. Players can look forward to new stages as well – there’s a Snoop Dogg one as part of the pre-order bonus content, and the team has promised more to come.
As far as the port from the arcade game is concerned, the gameplay is clean and true though the presentation may be a shade clunkier. There were definite moments of slowdown during hectic action in the code we played, but it didn’t inhibit gameplay and will hopefully be polished out of the final release. Playing through the game in Arcade mode it’s clear that this is a true representation of the game so many Tekken fans have been pouring money into at the arcades.
Of course, outside the gameplay systems, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for PS3 and 360 isn’t a simple arcade port – there are quite a few extras thrown in. DLC characters and stages have already been announced, with the novel addition of them all being free.
“We haven’t announced all of the DLC characters yet,” Harada tells us. “Regarding the characters we have announced so far, some of them are similar to existing characters, for example Jaycee and Michelle. This was actually done on purpose because obviously you can play solo with Jaycee, but if you were going to take her and try to find a partner, well you would have to re-learn strategy and techniques and such and it’d be very difficult. You couldn’t just pick Kuma and use him right away. Although on the other hand if you played Kuma, Panda is available; or if you use the Capoeira fighters you have them easily available, so we wanted to have similar pairings for other characters as well. They do have unique moves themselves, but their overall strategy - you don’t have to relearn how to use the character.”
The ultimate tag pair?
“There is some fan service obviously - bringing back some of these characters that people have been asking for,” Harada continues, “but we really wanted to get more people enjoying the tag system by providing easy-to-learn pairings. But that’s not all of it - it’s not that you just buy the game and play through it and you get the endings and it’s finished. We want people to enjoy the game for a long time. So after release if three or four weeks later a new character appears or something, that’s something to look forward to and everyone can enjoy it for quite a while and people will want to draw their friends in as well. It’s another tool to help people enjoy the game and stay excited about it for longer.”
The DLC bonuses don’t stop there though, with assurances that there is plenty still to come. “There are some characters that we haven’t announced that are quite unique," Harada says. "There are even some that I’m very confident people won’t guess, so there are definitely some surprises left. There are also stages, a few new ones that we’ve been announcing that have been geared towards pleasing various fan groups in different countries by giving them a stage in their country. But again, there are still some that we haven’t announced yet.”
This is all great news for the casual Tekken player – the player who wants to enjoy the game and learn their own character, but isn’t too keen to obsess about frame data and memorising duckable strings of other characters. In fact, ‘Rage’, the damage-increasing power-up from Tekken 6 was often seen in highly competitive circles as something of a ‘scrub clutch’ – an unfair equaliser that could hurt the more attacking, talented player more than it could ever help him. Harada-san holds a very different view on this.
“So actually Rage was quite popular if you look at the Tekken audience overall,” he tells us. “Some said maybe they felt they would lose to an opponent of lesser skill. But when you look at it overall, that just means that because of Rage sometimes accidents will occur if the player isn’t careful enough... Most of the people who play Tekken, say 70%, are part of that intermediate group – they know how to play the game a bit but not necessarily at tournament level. They enjoy it because they feel if they play enough, they’ll still have a chance of beating someone who’s better than them occasionally. And that really leads to them sticking with the game much longer. It’s funny that people who are big fans of the series and have been with it for a long time have that opinion because if they remember back to Tekkens 1, 2 and 3 the game was much more rough in that aspect. And that’s kind of what makes Tekken Tekken.”
One final question mark that remains is online. Not everyone has an arcade nearby or can drag friends over for competition in person. Online play is obviously the solution for those looking for competition. Tekken 6 was disappointing in this area, even though Tekken 5 had been more than passable.
“It’s funny you mention that because we just got back from an event in San Diego where we showed off the online code for the first time,” Harada says. “We had some of the more well-known players in the community come and check it out and they were all very positive about what they experienced. We took the code from Soulcalibur V and improved on that. We haven’t really announced much about the online modes but I guess we could say that most of what you were able to do in Soulcalibur V, which was very well received, was taken and implemented for Tag 2. And then on top of that we have the team function as in Tekken-Net on arcade, which we’ve kind of taken and adapted to consoles. We are still working on that and implementing it in the game, and we will have more details shortly.”
All told, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is shaping up to be a more than worthy new addition to the series. It looks to present compelling gameplay for both new and existing fans, has a roster of more than 50 fighters, throws in a healthy wad of additional content to be delivered free, and promises quality online play.
Are you looking forward to Tekken Tag Tournament 2? Tell us why in the comments.
Bryce McDonough is an Australian freelance writer and hardcore Tekken fan. You can follow the antics of IGN AU on Facebook and Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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