Hands-On Tekken Hybrid And Its Taste Of Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Releasing alongside The King of Fighters XIII, Tekken Hybrid also comes out this week. While Namco Bandai released a few other "hybrid discs" (Blu-ray movies and a PS3 game bundled together), Tekken Hybrid is the first of its kind for North America. Tekken: Blood Vengeance is the flick and its a CG movie starring Alisa and Xiaoyu that gets a little DBZ-ish at the end. Namco included English and Japanese voice options for the movie.

After watching the film, I played Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue, but first I had to install it. Both games have to be installed before you can play them. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue has four characters all tied to Tekken: Blood Vengeance – Alisa, Devil Jin, Devil Kazuya, and Xiaoyu. Essentially, this is a demo of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 with a limited selection of characters to play as and fight with. After a few rounds you’ll see an ending screen that changes depending on what characters you choose. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue is barebones without a training mode or an in-game move list. If you want to train for the arcades switch on two player mode and print out a list of moves. Even though this is a demo, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue has a set of trophies (but no platinum) to collect.

Tekken Tag Tournament HD is a full game, albeit a PlayStation 2 port. Namco Bandai didn’t change much from the PS2 release. In fact, it looks similar to running Tekken Tag Tournament on a backwards compatible PS3. The main difference is Tekken Tag Tournament HD starts with everything – characters, costumes, and Tekken Bowl mode – unlocked from the beginning. The only thing players need to earn (if they care to do so) are trophies and Tekken Tag Tournament HD has a platinum one. While it’s a decade old, Tekken Tag Tournament HD is still fun to play since it has different mechanics from the other Tekken titles. What’s missing is some kind of online multiplayer mode or at least ghost data trading a la Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. Yeah, Tekken Tag Tournament HD is a port, but a port of a fighting game without online multiplayer is a missed opportunity.

So, I went back to playing Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue firing laser beams with Devil Jin and chainsawing Devil Kazuya with Alisa.