Once I wised up and appreciated the critical importance of swapping out damaged fighters at the earliest sensible opportunity, my luck improved. It took me a while to get used to this Tekken Tag Tournament convention I’d grown embarrassingly complacent in the tagging department over the years, which led to plenty of losses here early on. Unlike games in Capcom’s versus series, matches in Street Fighter X Tekken end when a single fighter from a team is downed. When they’re toe-to-toe with the Street Fighter clan, I found warriors such as Yoshimitsu and Bob more than able to dish out the KOs. Throw distances have also been shortened up, a move that seems to benefit Namco’s brawlers.

Instead, they can sidestep these attacks (sticking to the 2D plane), and close the gap. Tekken doesn’t have much in the way of projectile attacks, but its characters don’t needlessly suffer when matched against Capcom’s Hadouken-happy opponents. I went into the game thinking I’d stick with my tried and true favorites from Street Fighter, but I quickly warmed to Tekken’s roster. One of the most interesting things about Street Fighter X Tekken is how Capcom mined elements from both series and repurposed them to create something that feels different. Aside from their fundamental “beat up dudes until they get knocked out” concepts, Street Fighter and Tekken couldn’t be more different.