Tag Throw and the combo-lengthening Tag Assault present the same kind of risk/reward opportunity, while Rage is more of a potential get-out-of-jail-free card.

The system is counter-balanced in that the swooping fighter loses the health stores that slowly build up when out of the action so time it poorly, or simply attempt to spam the move, and you’re not going to last long.

It’s remarkably useful when used at the right time and can turn the course of a bout from ghastly to splendid. Tag Crash, for example, sees your offscreen fighter dive in with an attack to save a floored partner. This being tag team based, there are a few more options for destruction then there might otherwise be. As with the best 3D fighters, the idea is to work an opening and launch devastating assaults before they close again. That’s not to say that TTT2 isn’t ‘proper’, there’s a brilliant mix of technical systems and high-speed gameplay here that will satisfy fighting game veterans’ thirst for precision and diversity, without being so complex that it turns off newcomers. I suppose they were more interested in the ‘proper’ Tekken games. Why it has taken Namco Bandai nearly 12 years to get back to the crazy is anyone’s guess. Yes, some pairings are more natural than others and you’ll want to work out which duo will be your main, but sometimes you want some light relief unlike other fighting games, the crazy questions and answers provide it. It’s tempting to write off such silly questions as the wonderings of someone with too much time and too few girlfriends, but the ability to experiment and create unlikely pairings is a huge part of the game’s charm. How deadly would Marshall and Forest Law be as a team? Can Anna and Nina Williams get on for long enough to string a few combos together? Can the miniscule Xiaoyu fight alongside the behemoth Jack without getting accidentally stood on? With character customisation, how far can I see up Asuka’s skirt? Who would win: Panda or schoolgirl? With a cast of roughly 50 fighters and a Soul Calibur V-esque customisation system, the TTT2’s developers have the space and freedom to express themselves and provide players with the opportunity to answer some of those age old questions we all want the answer to. The result is controlled chaos, limitless craziness and a far old dollop of camp. Like the first game in the Tekken series’ crazy spin-off sibling, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ( TTT2) is free from the confines of individual story arcs and a need to play up to the kind of players that could write biographies (and obituaries) of every fighter.

Tekken tag tournament 2 combinations