Tekken Tag Tournament

"Bone crushing gameplay with too many familiar characters"

Ok, ok. So I'm pretty late for this review, but at least for a late start like myself, I'll try to keep my cool for this 14th review for Tekken Tag Tournament:

Variety of Characters

This Tekken installment has the most characters of all the Tekken installments available. What's more: You can select 2 characters instead of 1 character. Yes. As the name suggests, it's a tag-team battle. Because you're playing ''Tag Team Tekken'' instead of ''One-Man Tekken'', there is a new button called THE TAG BUTTON. With the Tag button comes even more depth for juggles, pin attacks, okizemes, and whatever ideas you can come up with. Since the Tag Button adds new depth to similar characters, you have to learn how to use 2 characters really well so that you can last for more than 2 minutes.

My key complaint on this category is that all the characters are pretty much too similar and that they are definitely portovers from the first 3 Tekken games. Instead of playing as the same characters with newer moves added to the depth, I would like to see a fresh new set of characters with fresh new depth. IMO The Tag Feature is the best new feature of the game, but my opposition to this game lies with the ultimate decision to use all the familiar characters from the first 3 Tekkens.

Mechanics
Like in the previous Tekkens, you have a Joystick that you use to jump, move forward and backward, crouch, side-step, and even dash and/or jump back. You have 4 attack buttons using your left and right side of your character's arms and legs. Like I said before, there is a new button called THE TAG BUTTON. This definitely adds more depth to the all-familiar cast of the game.

Some of the cooler features of Tekken Tag Tournament is that you can recover faster just like in Tekken 3 (Tekken 3 fixed most of the recovery problems but a quick player can still get some sissy hits on you) using hit the ankle as you get up, recover quickly from knockdowns, and such-such. The controls can really be sensitive at times depending on who you are playing as. For example, Heihachi might be able to recover quickly, but Ling Xiaoyu will have poor recovery speed because of her pretty low vitality.

The gameplay is really great. The only exception I would like to spot is that I would like to see Soul Calibur's Octagonial-Running feature on the next Tekken game. Wouldn't you like running around the battlefield freely rather than just leave yourself in one plane of the field?

Graphics

There isn't that much to explain on this one since this one runs on System 12 as with Tekken 3. I would like to point out that some of the familiar characters benefit from the System 12 Architecture (primarily those from Tekken 2 who didn't return to Tekken 3) because they are not that blockey as before. A good example of this would be one of the Time-Release characters. They might look blockey on Tekken 2 but the polygons seems to be even more smooth on TTT. The animation moves at a crisp 60FPS, which has been a tradition on Tekken and the Crises installments.

The only gripe that I would like to point out is that this game should've ran under either System 22 or System 23 instead of System 12. If this game ran under System 23, then maybe this game would move at about twice the framerate of System 12.

Sound

The music leaves a lot to be desired and there are too many familiar voices. No need to explain a lot with this one because this is pretty much the bad feature of the game.

Overall

Tekken Tag Tournament's tag feature adds more depth to the Tekken series but overall I would like to see a fresh new set of characters and depth on the next Tekken. Because of the familiarity of the characters, I would be dying to see Tekken 4 come out sooner or later. You can play this at your local arcade (I give it somewhat a nod) but once you see all the familiar faces in the game, you would be begging for Tekken 4 the sooner the better. It's an average game with OK Replay Value. The only problem is that Namco should begin using a new slate of characters with a new slate of depth because newer slates of depth benefit the players a lot more IMHO.

Don't get me wrong: This is STILL AN OK GAME. The Tag feature is the best feature of the game. The worst feature of the game (next to Sound) is usage of ALL THE CHARACTERS from the first 3 Tekken Installments.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/16/00, Updated 04/07/02