
You can constantly change the appearance of your characters with little accessories and costume pieces. And the game's habit of constantly giving you money - and stuff on which to spend that money - makes leisurely arcade fighting fans that much more at home. It all helps make Tekken Tag 2 friendly and accessible to beginners in a unique way.

And slapping the "story mode" into Fight Lab encourages everyone - beginner or vet - to play through the lessons. But Namco makes sure that everyone has plenty of tools. Tekken's particular brand of fighting is not easy, and learning is time-consuming to say the least. Like most, it lets you perfect your button-presses against a dummy, but you can also learn defense Tekken Tag 2 lets you input a bunch of commands in for your dummy, then fight back against it. Tekken Tag 2's practice mode is easily the finest in the genre. Everything I mentioned above, from Bounds to team throws to launchers, can become second nature after Fight Lab, and you get a humorous tale backing it.Īnd if you want further experience, you can go to Practice Mode. Tekken Tag 2 lacks that depth.īut the tutorial mode does teach you all the basics, and the decision to pair it with Tekken Tag 2's story will help keep newcomers immersed, even as they're redoing lesson after lesson.

While Tekken's stories, typical anime stuff, never actually make sense, they've always been rather enjoyable.

The nonsensical story lacks the narrative depth of prior Tekken games, and that's a bit disappointing. Tekken Tag 2 includes an in-depth tutorial mode known as Fight Lab, and newcomers won't find an easier way to learn a fighting game. You can learn everything in the game's wealth of tutorial modes, too.
