It’s still got all the perfectly solid fighting mechanics that you’ve come to know and love since the series’ inception in 1994. Of course, once you get into the fighting itself, you’ll realize that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is still Tekken. However, it is too demanding to serve as a proper newbie-friendly experience. For those who already have experience with fighters, it’s a solid way to learn a few of Tekken’s intricacies. Can’t regularly figure out the timing of the Bind into Team Assault? Too bad, you’re going to keep attempting it until you do. Problem is, Fight Lab teaches via the “trial by fire” method. Fighting games are constantly struggling to bring new players into the fold, and a step-by-step set of interactive instructions could be a great way to do that.

Theoretically, a tutorial to teach newcomers how to get their martial arts on is a great idea. Hell, one of the chapter bosses is a fat Ryu from Street Fighter. What’s more, it does it in a charming and often absurd manner, with levels filled with Power Ranger-looking combatants that toss pizzas and turn your head into a pig. Each level of the Fight Lab mini-campaign is designed to teach the player how to pull off some of the Tag 2-specific fighting maneuvers like Binds or Tag Assaults. Acting as a tutorial of sorts (and a replacement to the traditional Story Mode), Fight Lab drops you into the role of the Combot, a creation of Violet Industries that can learn any Tekken fighter’s techniques and use them in training exercises. Players new to the Tekken universe will want to make their way directly to the Fight Lab to learn the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 basics. There’s a slight problem, though: It doesn’t make any of that terribly easy. It wants you to spend countless hours mastering its timing, tooling around with its dozen of characters, and making it your own.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2, however, attempts to be different. And most of them don’t particularly care if you are into their particular brand of brawling. Chances are, you’ve likely been turned off by a fighting game in the past what with the thousands of combos to memorize, strategies to learn, and teams to experiment with.

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