King of Fighters XII Review

Posted on 20. Dec, 2009 by Johnn0 in Games, News, Reviews

When I first read that SNK were developing another King of Fighters game for the then termed next gen consoles, I was as happy as a redneck with new front teeth. I have very fond memories of playing King of Fighters 98 on my PSOne and with the news that the XII (or twelfth or 12th) entry in the series was going to receive it’s first major graphical overhaul with HD visuals and hand drawn sprites it seemed that there would be a new contender for best fighting game…

King of Fighters the next big brawler?

As it turns out though KoF XII is a bit like a very drunk girlfriend. Let me explain, every guy reading this will know that every now and then your girlfriend will get drunk, whisper sweet – and sometimes dirty – promises in your ear, something like “..if we leave now well do the flying phoenix when we get home..” so you ditch your best friend go home with thoughts of the many things you intend on doing, none of which happen. This is the feeling of disappointment you feel after playing KoF XII for about 10 mins.

It is still a King of Fighters game and as a fan I appreciate that, what I can’t get past is the poor choices made in development. The game is riddled with little irritations that while not game breaking are enough to mention, the worst one being that when you are at the character select screen, there is no way to get back to the main menu, thats right you play the mode that you picked and live with it, how the hell did this slip past the dev team? or the testers? I can only assume that none of the developers have ever changed their minds before…

Next lets move on to the presentation side of things, those touted new hand drawn HD sprites look good in motion when the characters are standing still though, they are detailed but heavily pixelated. The answer to this comes in the form of a filter option which tries to blur the jaggies and it does so to a certain degree but it is not acceptable in my books, sure graphics don’t make a game but when the backgrounds are bright and gorgeously drawn can there be any excuse for the main characters being so badly rendered?

Oh and the fire effects suffer from the same pixelation that the characters have...

The audio side is not great either with the kind of tunes you would expect to hear from an arcade game but put in a few hours with the game and the nostalgic arcade tunes start to drill a hole through your ears. All in all the presentation KoF XII seems a little half-arsed, now don’t get me too wrong here I know the whole game was hand drawn and that must take a hell of a lot of time and dedication but it seems that the dev team got to a point where they decided that they have spent too much time on the presentation, upscaled what they had and moved on to their next half-arsed part of the game, the online multiplayer.

I have only two fighting games to compare the online portion of KoF XII to and they are Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection and MK Vs DC (i sadly haven’t gotten my hands on SFIV yet, but I have been a good boy this year and the Santa at Eastgate promised me I would get it this year), both of which were not overly great when it cam to lag but in most cases where still playable and by playable I mean the chances of getting a whooping by an international player was very high. So how does the newer game stack up the these two not very well, the game is nigh unplayable as the game tends to freeze and inputs ignored, reports from gaming sites in the UK and the USA state that even our broadband endowed cousins are having the same problems. Oh there is a patch, but it is ±700MB in size… and it doesn’t help…

So we, to this point have a game that has questionable presentation, a overly huge patch and semi-broken multiplayer is there anything good here? Surprisingly yes, but not until I go through one more element of bad. The game lacks any major content, there is Arcade mode which is pretty much a time trial mode broken into 5 matches that once completed just ends, no difficulty unlocks, not character unlocks, nada. Arcade mode aside there are only two other modes to mention, online multiplayer and vs mode, that’s it. No special treatment for us gamers we get the basics here and that is it.

And by tournament you mean 5 matches with no ending or reason for completing?

So now some good news, the core fighting system KoF XII is pretty darn good it is not as deep as Virtua Fighter 5 or Tekken 6′s but its not meant to be KoF XII is an arcade fighter and it is a pretty darn good one. SNK have introduced a new mechanic in the game called “Critical Counter”, during the course of the game your counter bar will build up and once filled will allow you to do a counter move that stuns your enemy allowing you to unleash with either a super move or a flurry of attacks. It is a nice addition and adds more strategy to the game.

For those of you unfamiliar with how KoF works, the game lets you pick teams of characters, well 3 characters to be more precise so 90% of your games will be 3 vs 3 format ( there is a 1 vs 1 option in the VS mode), this is great because it forces you to become proficient with more that one player and encourages experimentation. When one player is K.O’d the stage ends and the next character takes the stage while the winner of the round gains a small bit of health. The game is unfortunately only really good when you are playing against another person and trust me it can be very fun wailing on your buddy while trying not to get countered using the new system.

Conclusion

If only everything in KoF was a good as the gameplay can be, SNK would have a winner on their hands, but the final product is a game that feels rushed and shallow and at today’s high standards cannot compete against the well established fighters that not only offer more polish and more content but more satisfaction when playing.