

You have a health bar, and some of the mission constraints are very strict. The Fight Lab doesn't hold your hand, either. The lesson helps, but the real importance is getting to use your experience in an actual combat situation right away.

Then you're thrown into a gauntlet of color-coded enemies who will either attack high, low, or try to throw you. There's also a lot of text boxes for the “story” of the Fight Lab that actually give more detail into when and why you need to use certain techniques.įor example, the guarding tutorial starts off with lessons on how to block high and low attacks and escape throws. It's split into multiple chapters, each one focusing on a certain element of gameplay and ending with a boss battle. If you want to get into Tekken but are afraid of the high learning curve, I guarantee you the Fight Lab will help you out. The Fight Lab is one of the best tutorial modes in a fighting game right now. Note: If you're watching Tekken tournaments with commentary, 1 and 2 are Left Punch and Right Punch. Thankfully, the tutorial of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is long, detailed, and has the exact amount of challenge I wanted. I try to watch a lot of footage of people playing the game to get tips and learn the ropes, but I was lost. Watching gameplay for Tekken, especially commentated ones, was a bit daunting at first. Really, seeing that Snoop Dogg has his own stage and wrote a song for the game was a big selling point for me. There's Black Disco Stu, a kangaroo, a bear, a robot maid, and so many other characters that are very far out of the traditional fighting game archetypes.

The first thing that immediately caught my attention when watching Tekken gameplay were the crazy characters. It'll kick your ass at the start, but once you start to understand how the game works, it rewards you every step of the way. This happens to be a game that I found hard to learn, and even more difficult to master. Then, the depth of the game emerges naturally through learning matchups, combos, and your own character's unique abilities. Ideally, the game has mechanics that are intuitive enough to understand instantly, or have a tutorial that's so thorough that new players will understand. Most new fighting games are trying to strike the elusive balance of “easy to learn, difficult to master”. Here's some key links if you want to learn Tekken Tag Tournament 2:
