Tekken
Tag Tournament:
Tekken Tag Tournament
serves as an upgrade to Tekken 3, adding a few new moves along the way.
Fighters that had appeared in Tekken 2 but were missing from Tekken 3 have been
brought back as well, and most of them have lots of new moves to help balance
them with the more powerful Tekken 3 fighters. Finally, the game is now fought
in the same tag-team style as Capcom's versus series of fighters, so you can
switch between two different characters at any time. Much like Street Fighter
EX3 and Dead or Alive 2, you can have up to four players, with each player
controlling a different fighter in the tag battle. However, unlike most other
tag-battle fighters, Tekken Tag rounds end after only one of the two fighters
have been defeated, rather than letting the battle continue as a one-on-two
affair. An option that let you configure this would have been nice. Aside from
the standard tag-battle arcade mode, there is also a one-on-one mode, that
makes Tekken Tag Tournament more like the previous Tekken games, as well as the
standard team battle (though it is now a tag-team battle), time attack, and
survival modes. Unlockable modes include a theater mode, where you can watch
all of the game's endings; a gallery mode, which lets you pause the game at any
time and snap a screenshot of the action that is saved to your memory card for
later viewing; and Tekken bowl mode, a bowling minigame that lets you hit the
lanes and toss glimmer globes at Heihachi-headed bowling pins. Each character
has a different bowling style that affects speed and control. The character
endings, with the exception of the game's final boss, are rendered using the
game engine. This presumably saved time during the game's development. As a
result, they're short, mostly meaningless, and decidedly less than impressive.
By comparison, the prerendered intro and the final boss' prerendered ending are
simply incredible pieces of footage. In Japan, the TV commercial for the game
is simply an abridged version of the game's new intro movie. Very striking
stuff.
Graphically, the game has taken a very large leap, and the
arcade version of the game looks downright ugly by comparison. The characters
are very, very smooth, and the backgrounds are amazing and filled with lots of
movement, from helicopters to crowds of spectators. Some stages are well lit,
showing off some really excellent lens-flare techniques. There are also some
nice little touches, such as grass being crushed down by falling fighters then
slowly springing up afterward. However, the game suffers from one particular
problem that has in fact been seen throughout the series, but with the power of
the PlayStation 2 behind it, you'd expect it to be a thing of the past. The
problem is the same one that showed up in Street Fighter EX3. While the
backdrops of the fights and the ground on which you fight look great
separately, they don't mesh very well. The result is two different types of
scrolling, making it look as if the battle is occurring on a small, circular
spinning platform surrounded by a nearly stationary background. It's easy to
miss while you're actually playing, but it sticks out like a sore thumb on
watching the game closely. However, the game has been cleaned up a lot when
compared to the Japanese release. The characters are smooth, the backgrounds
and floors appear more refective and vibrant, and the game just has a significantly
more polished look to it. The game uses much of the same animation and
motion-capture data from Tekken 3. Sure, the characters look pretty incredible,
but with the identical animation quality, even as good as that animation was,
the game looks and feels a little on the stale side. The soundtrack is full of
techno and vocoder robot voices that will either endear you to the soundtrack
or drive you up the wall
How much you enjoy the game will directly relate to one factor: If you played so much Tekken 2 and 3 that you couldn't possibly play another match, Tekken Tag doesn't offer enough new features to draw you back in. But if you've stayed away from the Tekken series for a long time, Tekken Tag is a very warm homecoming, delivering the same solid gameplay that Tekken fans crave in large doses. Still, you won't be able to stop yourself from wondering what Namco could have done with the game if it had been designed on the PS2 (or comparable arcade hardware) from the start. Guess we'll all have to wait for Tekken 4 to find that out.
How much you enjoy the game will directly relate to one factor: If you played so much Tekken 2 and 3 that you couldn't possibly play another match, Tekken Tag doesn't offer enough new features to draw you back in. But if you've stayed away from the Tekken series for a long time, Tekken Tag is a very warm homecoming, delivering the same solid gameplay that Tekken fans crave in large doses. Still, you won't be able to stop yourself from wondering what Namco could have done with the game if it had been designed on the PS2 (or comparable arcade hardware) from the start. Guess we'll all have to wait for Tekken 4 to find that out.
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