Against tougher opponents – particularly human ones – there’s a level of skill involved in simply staying standing long enough to rain your own blows down. Tekken is kinder to button mashers than, say, Virtual Fighter 5, but only to a point. Using the D-Pad or analogue stick you can target blows to high, middle or low areas, block mid and low attacks, duck or jump.īeyond this, each character has a lengthy list of combos, which can be strung together into arguably the most brutal attack chains of any fighting game. Two face buttons unleash fist-based attacks, another two unleash kicks, and a combination can be used to grab and throw your opponent. However you play, the action is classic Tekken. With two or more players you can enjoy the standard two-player versus mode plus a two-on-two Pair Play mode and a tournament-style 16-player Team Battle mode. Offline, lone players get their basic Arcade mode, a Ghost mode where you can level up playing against a selection of simulated players, a practice mode and a Fight Lab mode, which we’ll come to later. Online, you get a choice of ranked matches and player matches, filtering options by player level and connection status. The various modes are split into two main offline and online menus.

It’s so polished and so packed with features that our biggest bone of contention – the lack of a coherent single-player story mode – pales into insignificance. It’s also an incredibly generous package, with a whopping 50-strong roster of fighters, more stages than we’ve been able to count, an extensive range of different online and offline modes and all the collectibles and customisation features you’d expect from a modern fighting game. While it’s not as magnificent a comeback as Streetfighter IV, it’s an excellent reminder of everything that made Tekken so fantastic in the first place. Well, with Tekken Tag Tournament 2 the good old days are back again. It’s not so much that Tekken went bad, but more that the world has moved on. For those of us with fond memories of post-pub Tekken 3 matches going on into the early hours, or evenings spent with Marshall Law and Nina Williams in Tekken 2, this situation has been all the more depressing. Even the PS2 years weren’t that brilliant, with the decent Tekken 5 making up for a disappointing Tekken 4 and a slightly lacklustre Tekken Tag Tournament. While Capcom’s fighting games have triumphed in this console generation, with Streetfighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 3 winning favour with fans, Tekken’s only recent outings have been the underwhelming Tekken 6, the Capcom made Streetfighter X Tekken and an okay but dated HD port of Tekken 5.

Available on Xbox 360 (reviewed), PlayStation 3

Tekken tag team