RSIgamers

My local arcade has been able to get their hands on this highly anticipated fighter, and I’ve been lucky enough to play it a few times. How does it stack up with the rest of the King of Fighters series?

The first thing I noticed was the new sprites, and how detailed and well animated they were.  It’s like watching a Guilty Gear game on steroids.   There’s some really cool touches, like when Robert Garcia does his lightning kick move, he’ll stop, turn around to straighten out his jacket, then deliver the final kick.  I really salute SNK for sticking with 2D, because the end result is an extremely beautiful game that 3D graphics could never hope to match (I’m looking at you Capcom!).

What irks me though, is the excessive amount of shadows they have used for some of the characters.  For example, on Ryo, you can barely see his face, and his eyes are just two glowing blue dots over black, making him look very evil.   Certain stages also have dark areas at the edges, like stadium, and Chinatown market.  While this may be more ‘realistic’, I find the effect a bit distracting at times.

Evil Ryo wants your soul

Special effects such as projectiles and hit sparks are done in 3D, and some of this doesn’t sit well with the high resolution sprites and the art style.  For example, when Kyo does his Orochinagi super, you get a massive big rendered orange blob that rivals the pixellated mess that was Capcom vs SNK 2.  I kinda wish they had gone the Garou: Mark of the Wolves style with this, because the special effects in that game were beautiful, especially the super flash.

Your puny green fire can’t beat my badly cellshaded flames!

For such a 2D fighting game that’s this well animated, the game runs deceptively fast.  This is due to the large size of the characters compared to the playing field.   Because the characters are closer on screen, jumping is extremely fast.  The camera does pan out slightly when the two characters are far apart, but if you compare the starting locations in KOF2002 and KOFXII, you can see that there is much less room.

Some moves execute much slower, jumps are much faster, turbo short jump is gone and so on.  SNK have also followed Capcom’s lead with SF3 and SF4, and have made throwing a command (now A+C).  Characters such as Sie Kensou and Iori also has a brand new moveset (and outfit), with Iori after losing his powers to Ash Crimson in KOFXI.

Otherwise, characters such as Benimaru, Ryo, Robert (with moving fireball and dragon punch) and Kim are mostly the same as their older incarnations, and probably a good characters to start with as you’re getting used to the game.  Here are some of the changes for the characters that I used:

Benimaru has most of his moves from ‘98 back, with the exception of his command throw.

Kyo has lost his punch chains and R.E.D kick in favour of the ground fireball, but gets his rising kick move from 95′ back.  His df + D also trips the opponent now.

Clark has lost all of his moves except his backbreaker and flash elbow, but gets the ‘tap P rapidly’ vulcan punch from 95′ back.

Terry still has Burn Knuckle, Crack Shoot, and Power Wave.  Rising tackle is the charge motion version.  He no longer has the Buster Wolf super.

Ryo plays like his 98′ version.

Here is a screenshot of KOF2002.   Notice how small the characters are on the screen?

Because of all the new frames of animation, some moves and normals seem to take forever to come out, and once they do, seem to stay out for quite some time, making it feel a bit clunky when compared to the speed of movement and jumping.  I don’t think the  fluid animation suits the frantic style and pace of KOF games very well.

There’s also new features such as Critical Counter, which is a separate bar that fills up as you attack your opponent.  Once it’s full, you can activate it by hitting your opponent with a C or D attack, and if successful, you are able to follow it up with a custom combo ala SF Alpha 2 style.  There’s also something similar to SF4’s focus attacks, which can be executed using back + CD.

The game also has no story mode or final boss, as SNK have stated.  They will probably work in more characters and conclude the Ash saga in the next game.

When you do play this game, don’t go in expecting anything like the previous KOFs.   Throw away your expectations, because KOFXII is a totally new game, and new start for the series, and it will take some time to get used to.  I’m not sure how well the KOF community will adopt this game, because of how different it is to what we’ve come to know from KOF.  We’ve seen in the past where KOF XI or Neowave are played for a few months and are then replaced by more profitable KOF98 or KOF2002 machines, but KOF fans will eventually have to get used to the system, as future games will continue to use these new sprites and system.  It will be interesting to see how the system and characters evolve in the future games.