It doesn’t necessarily help you master the game, but it instils the basic fundamentals and acts as a nice jump-start to the unfamiliar. Essentially serving as a more-robust tutorial, held together with a silly story involving a madman trying to craft the ultimate robot fighter, Fight Lab teaches players movement, attacks, how to perform juggle combos and the Tag mechanics. Outside of core combat, the newest feature is Fight Lab. Some items do add extra stats, but ultimately it’s more of a cosmetic system, though still fun to play around with. Customisation also plays quite a big role in the game, as you can don characters with wild outfits using a similar system to Soul Calibur IV. If you factor in the tag-team elements, finding your ultimate duo can be a seriously deep endeavour. And you’ll certainly be browsing combos for a long time – each character usually has around 80 moves, and many more combinations. It’s an expansive roster, and though some of the characters feel like mere repeats, when you begin to delve into each move set, you realise everyone has their advantages and weaknesses. TT2 comes with 44 fighters, spanning the series’ entire history. Stick with it, though, and you’ll find a robust, satisfying fighting system. TT2 has perhaps the steepest learning curve in the series, as button-mashing is punished with brutal CPU reactions. Swapping fighters lets the benched fighter recover health, meaning strategy is needed to keep both fighters going. Tag matches are interesting, as while two health meters are present, you will still lose the round if one partner is knocked out. Plenty of tag moves are present, accessible through Bound moves after juggling your foe into the air: Grabs see both fighters use grapples on the opponent, Dives send your partner into combat in exchange for unrecovered health and you can even – at the press of a button – just let your partner get a few cheap shots in by holding the tag button. However, the tag mechanics make the fighting rather interesting. TT2 still has many wrinkles which define the series, such as throw-breaks, one-two punches and a focus on juggling combos. Though it will scare off most causal fighter fans, TT2 represents a return to form for the franchise. But Tekken Tag Tournament 2, the sequel to the critically-acclaimed PS2 launch title, hopes to remedy this, coming packed with plenty of fighting-focused modes and an improved online component.

Unfortunately, the latest Tekken soured many, as instalment six focused on a dreadful brawling-based campaign mode and lacked functional online play at launch.

One of the pioneers of the 3D fighting genre, Namco’s Tekken series has been mostly consistent in delivering high quality fighting, bar a couple of middling instalments which disappointed.

Tekken tag tournament 2 combos ps3