The Tekken series has largely revolved around the King of the Iron Fist Tournament, and the Mishima Corporation. As the series progressed, power has changed hands, different champions have arisen, people have had illegitimate children to demons, various family feuds have taken place, and so on. While Tekken Tag Tournament takes not of the events that took place in the preceding three games, it acts as a side story, to an extent. You see, Tekken Tag Tournament virtually has no plot of its own, and what little plot does take place has virtually no effect on the canonic plot. The only story parts of the game come after finishing arcade mode, and these short cutscenes are largely obscure, some making absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Tekken will always be about fighting, regardless of whether it is revealed that Yoshimitsu is Jin's brother's half uncle's mail order bride. Tekken's fighting style remains largely unchanged, and that can be considered to be slightly problematic. The fighting system is now about 6 years old, and is beginning to show its age. Tekken is still a button masher, which may turn away the slightly more hardcore fighting game fans who have had their fill of the series. Tekken Tag Tournament adds a few new tricks to the Tekken mix, namely the Tag mode. You and a friend (or the CPU) each choose two fighters. During the battle, hitting any one of the shoulder buttons will switch between your two combatants. Certain fighters work better with each other, some even have special tag moves. In essence, the strategy required in a battle is increased. Another addition to Tekken Tag, purely for the home release and in the same vein as Tekken Ball, is Tekken Bowl. Each side chooses two fighters to participate in a bowling tournament. The game follows the standard bowling rules, but adds a few little features of its own, such as Heihachi shaped pins. Certain fighters have slight advantages when it comes to bowling, especially the mechanised characters (who have all sorts of visual aids). Also included are the standardised One on One mode (no tag), Survival, One on One Survival, and so on. Tekken Tag Tournament suffers a few problems, the major problem being its PAL conversion, and being a fighting game, it is very noticeable. It may be better than the conversion seen in Tekken 3, as there are no borders, but any fan of the arcade game may have a little difficulty swallowing the 20% speed loss which is present. Another problem is the relatively brief and repetitive single player game - it's just not a challenge, yet you have to go through the game close to 30 times to unlock everything, which is quite a task.
The trip from the arcades to home for Tekken Tag Tournament has resulted in some serious graphical upgrades. The blocky player models, jagged polygons and pixellated textures are now a thing of the past. The characters have been completely rebuilt, using more polygons than ever before. In fact, one of the developers at Namco pointed out that there are more polygons in Jin's left pectoral than there were in his entire previous model. The reconstruction allows for more detail in the models, as well as new animations, particularly the new facial animations which enable the fighters to show expression. There have been a few new backgrounds added to the mix, and the pre-existing ones have seen a fair bit of a makeover. The backgrounds feature some pretty intricate environmental detail, especially in the beach-ish level, and the city level. One major problem with the backgrounds is a visible seam which separates the foreground and background. This is mainly due to the way the foreground and background tend to rotate on completely different planes to each other. For example, you spin kick an opponent, and the camera changes angles, the background will lag slightly in terms of speed in comparison to the foreground. It also won't rotate as far, making things look relatively obscure.
Tekken Tag Tournament is rather lacking in the aural department. Not many fighting games have been renowned for great sound, but it doesn't mean that sub par sound on the whole can be excused. The music and voice work in Tekken Tag Tournament sounds quite washed out. There is a wide variety of music in the game, starting at decent techno, and ending at stuff that sounds like a mentally underdeveloped child banging its head on a xylophone. Other than the washed out sounding announcer, there is no voice work present in the game. Sound effects consist only of the sounds of fists and feet crashing against flesh. Very limited.
Tekken Tag Tournament is a satisfactory fighting experience, despite its small, yet easily noticeable flaws. Fighting fans may still be slightly amiss to the button mashing mechanics and cheap characters featured in the game, and anyone looking for a deep, involving single player experience must steer clear, but fans of the series and anyone looking for a cheap brawler should take a look at the game. It's a fairly attractive proposition at only $49.95AUD.
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