Tekken 2

"A very important game, but then again it's not that good."

It's impossible to know what Sony would have done without Namco on their side when the Playstation just had been released. Without Namco, the Playstation would have a huge lack of quality racing games before Gran Turismo got released, neither would the popular Ace Combat games been on Playstation and finally Sony wouldn't have had one of the most important series in the early days of the Playstation, the Tekken series.

While it's seems very hard to believe in today, when fighting games almost always are unsuccessful. Unless they got a big name in the title, they won't sell many copies. However back in the early days of the Playstation, fighting games was one of the most important type of games. People really loved that they could beat up their friends in a fair fight without actually getting hurt at all. While Street Fighter 2 was still popular, 2D games was the past and 3D games was the future.

Which is why it was important to fighting game to evolve and don't just be a hit of the early 90's. There are two series who are still popular today and was the two most popular back then, Virtua Fighter for the Sega systems, and Tekken for Sony Playstation. The main difference between this two series is that Virtua Fighter takes much more time to learn than Tekken, while the fights can be much more complicated in Virtua Fighter.

Tekken 2 takes place one year after the first game. When you start the game you will see how Heihachi (The final boss in the first game) is climbing up through a mountain (It might be the same mountain as Kazuya "dropped him" in the previous game). After this little scene, each of the original characters has a own little cut-scene. This intro also introduce two new characters: Jun Kazama who is a Chinese woman who both can use her arms and legs to fight well, and Lei Wulong, another Chinese martial artist who is a Jackie Chan look alike.

Kazuya is instead of Heihachi, the bad guy in this game. Heihachi is playable from the start in this game, and his moves are kinda like the same as Kazuya's moves in the first Tekken. Paul is still the great boxer he was in the first Tekken, but in this game he got a new deadly move that take 3/4 of the enemies health. Jack has been replaced by Jack-2, but he's an exact copy of Jack from the first game, slow but strong as hell. King the wrestler is back, just like Nina, Michelle, Law, and Yoshimitsu. If you have learned how to use the old characters in the first Tekken, then you will do just fine with them in this game, since most of them just has a few more moves.

Just like in the first Tekken, you unlock a new character every time you beat the game with one of the original characters. However in this game, every single character has an own ending cut-scene. This means you are going to play through this game many more times than the original if you want to see all the endings.

Just like in the previous game, most of the unlockable character aren't much more exciting than the weak original cast. The other problems that the first Tekken game had hasn't been removed. The fights are still really slow, especially if you play with one of the slower characters like Jack-2. The control is not either much better than in the original Tekken, since the block almost never works after you have taken one punch.

This game is better than the previous Tekken if you want to play alone and see more endings. However if you are one of those who want to play against your friend in fighting games, then Tekken 2 isn't much better. I know it was fun back in the day when it got released, but today there are much better games to play.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/11/07