[360/PS3] King of Fighters XII Review

[DoctorFinger]

King of Fighters XII Review

Title - King of Fighters XII
Platform - Xbox 360. Also available for: Playstation 3.
Developer - SNK Playmore
Publisher - Ignition Entertainment
ESRB Rating - T (Teen)
MSRP - $59.95
Editor - Michael "DoctorFinger" Chauvet

What's Hot: Quick, fast paced fighting action. Well balanced characters with a wide variety of styles and abilities.

What's Not: Spotty online play. No story or characterization whatsoever. Limited game modes and extras

The 2D fighter is going through another renaissance this past year. Street Fighter IV, Mortal Kombat vs DCU, BlazBlue, Marvel vs Capcom 2 and of course the subject of this review: King of Fighters XII.

While never as ubiquitous as its contemporary Street Fighter SNK's venerable fighting franchise has stuck around this long for a reason. A big roster of fun-to-play fighters anchor a fairly deep and balanced fighting system. Frequent updates and sequels to the game allowed it to evolve faster than its most famous competitor, and many aficionados consider it to be the thinking man's fighting franchise. So how does this newest iteration stack up?

Immediately after booting up the game for the first time I started noticing how stripped down everything was. Normally something like a blandly generic menu wouldn't bother me, but it became clear that it was endemic of a greater issue with the game. Next I noticed the roster, or to be precise, the lack of much of it. I'm not an expert on KoF games, but the ones I've played in the past had ridiculously expansive rosters. In this case we get 22 fighters, a number which would be great for any other franchise, seems tiny by the standards of the series.

I hopped into Arcade mode and chose the three person team I'd take into the tournament. In this case the tournament consisted of a 5 round time trial. I ended up beating arcade mode on the standard difficulty with no continues in just over 12 minutes. At which point I went back to the main menu. No story (other than a newscast supposedly covering the tournament), no boss battle, no extras to unlock. About the only thing you can do in the game which you can't in the arcade is fight online and save replays of your favorite battles.

What about the actual fighting? Well in that the game really shines. Even with the less than ideal for fighting games Xbox 360 controller all of the characters are a dream to control. Special moves are generally easy to pull off, with a few intentional exceptions, and the fights themselves are paced well and entertaining. There are a host of different feints, counters, reflects and super specials you can pull off, making for some very strategic fights.

The framerate (while playing offline) is rock solid, and it has to be. Some of the moves have very short windows of opportunity, and you need to be able to hit them at just the right time. Generally if you've played a Street Fighter style game, you'll be familiar with how the special moves are executed. Even with a 4 button layout I found myself relying less on the special moves and more on just trying to hit the basic combos. The learning curve also leaves something to be desired. The "Normal" mode is a bit too easy even for me, while on the more advanced levels the computer is pretty devastating. A difficulty level somewhere in the middle would have been appreciated.

The newly drawn 2D graphics are very easy on the eye. While not as flashy as SF4 character models, KoF12 manages to pack a whole lot into each fighter and background. The audio is a disappointment, as there really is nothing to talk about. Music is generic to the point of disappearing into nothingness. Sounds effects are solid but repetitive. What little voice work the game has is oddly stilted, like a Japanese speaker with minimal exposure to English trying to hide their accent and failing.

Online play is fairly hit or miss. Sometimes it's as smooth as can be, sometimes it grinds to a complete halt. Even after a quickie patch to try and alleviate the problem, I still found myself in slow-mo matches. When the connections speeds are up to snuff, the online play is enjoyable. But it's a crap shoot as to which sort of match you'll get.

Ultimately as much fun as the actual fighting parts of the game are, the elements surrounding it are so bare bones they detract from the experience. It's like they slapped the arcade game onto a disc and that was the end of it. It's just not enough to sustain a full retail release in 2009.

Score: (3.5 out of 5 Cogs)


Michael says, "King of Fighters XII is an entertaining and engrossing fighting game but its lack of any sort of extras - alternate game modes, unlockable characters and costumes, a story, boss battles - becomes glaring in a home console release. It makes a great arcade game, but that lack of content hurts the home release. A few more bells and whistles and it would have been awesome. Still a fun fighting game despite the lack of extras.

[total]

Damn...I was really looking forward to this. I guess I will just wait until it hits $20.00.

[H.Bogard]

Uh... gameplay mechanics? Impressions of local VS plays? Loading times? Frame rates?

With all due respect, sir... I kind of (acutally, I REALLY) find this review lacking. I'm not new to the KOF series, and all the questions I'd be approaching the sequel's review with are left unanswered here.

[ThievesAmongUs]

Originally Posted by H.Bogard

Uh... gameplay mechanics? Impressions of local VS plays? Loading times? Frame rates?

With all due respect, sir... I kind of (acutally, I REALLY) find this review lacking. I'm not new to the KOF series, and all the questions I'd be approaching the sequel's review with are left unanswered here.

I'm also concerned with why SNK cut the roster down to just 22 characters, instead of the usual 30+ (no Mai ? Shame on you SNK). Plus for 60 $, I'd be expecting a lot more than what I'm seeing here; 20 or 30 $ for this sure, but 60 $ ? However, my biggest nitpick is the lack of though that went into some of the characters, allot of them just down feel interesting to play.

[DoctorFinger]

Whoops. Looks like a paragraph in the middle got lost in the posting. It's in now, though.

[ElektroDragon]

So BlazBlue is a lot better, or what?

[Tayaya]

Originally Posted by FearTheReaper

(no Mai ? Shame on you SNK)

Oh she'll be here..... SNK knows we love Mai enough to pay extra for her. DLC here we come.

[ThievesAmongUs]

Originally Posted by ElektroDragon

So BlazBlue is a lot better, or what?

Personally, with SF4 now only 20$, I'd go for that.

[Iron Past]

I remember an interview where they said the reason there were less fighters was because everything was hand drawn and it took a long time to create the characters they did. It also made balancing easier, but mostly it was time consuming. Whether or not that's a good enough reason is up to you; personally I'm kind of glad it's not as robust as the other fighters since now I don't feel a compulsion to pick it up and still have BlazBlue and SFIV to mess with.

[pronounconnoun]

This one is a definite maybe for me.

Let's see what it looks like come this holiday season.

[Daytime_Lantern]

Originally Posted by H.Bogard

Uh... gameplay mechanics? Impressions of local VS plays? Loading times? Frame rates?

With all due respect, sir... I kind of (acutally, I REALLY) find this review lacking. I'm not new to the KOF series, and all the questions I'd be approaching the sequel's review with are left unanswered here.

I feel that reviews of fighting game tend to be this way because fighting games are so difficult to penetrate and there are probably only a handful of people in the press that are skilled enough to give a real impression of what high-end play is (and even then, is high end play the only important thing when it comes to fighting games?) A lot of reviews will praise how awesome the critical counter system is but fail to detail or even allude to how these systems change the dynamics of the game's matches.

I can't say much because I am only starting to seriously get into fighting games recently (I have yet to leave training mode of BlazBlue) but I am finding that pretty much all reviews of fighting games I've read just boil down to a list of features and how well the netcode works. The only exception that I've seen so far is Richard Li of 1Up who, I feel, goes out on a limb with analysis of what the gameplay is like for each fighting game.

I feel like it would be useful if the reviewer would include a little bit on where he was coming from (I.E. how long he has been with the series, some indication on how good he was and how good were the people he played with)

[Deadend]

Originally Posted by H.Bogard

Uh... gameplay mechanics? Impressions of local VS plays? Loading times? Frame rates?

With all due respect, sir... I kind of (acutally, I REALLY) find this review lacking. I'm not new to the KOF series, and all the questions I'd be approaching the sequel's review with are left unanswered here.

Dude, reviews are to tell you if it's good or not. If you want to know what the mechanics of a game are, read previews. Doc explained why he thought the game was good but not great.

[DoctorFinger]

Originally Posted by Deadend

Dude, reviews are to tell you if it's good or not. If you want to know what the mechanics of a game are, read previews. Doc explained why he thought the game was good but not great.

But to be fair, the paragraph containing just those things went missing. It's been added in since.

[Klunka]

I used to be waiting on this game. It just looked gorgeous. However then the reports saying this game went largely unplayed in Japanese arcades started to get me nervous. Then BlazBlue hit the scene and got some really great buzz.

Very happy with my decision and I highly recommend BlazBlue to anyone interested. It's amazingly approachable for all kinds of gaming fans and each character differs from the next more than any other fighting game I've ever played.

[H.Bogard]

I just played this for a couple of hours today with a friend. The depth is gone, and the only new apparent addition to the gameplay is the counter system.

No Super devestators
Countering special moves is now officially BROKEN
All characters have lost at LEAST 50-75% of their movelists. Not an exaggeration. Case in point: Kim, Ralf, Chin, Ryo and many more.

Character roster is also seriously lacking. Series favourites like Yashiro, Chris, Blue Mary, K', Heidern and Takuma have been left out in favour of characters nobody gives a flying fuck about; such as that new chick, Duo Lon and Shen.

Looks like they spent all their money on animating pretty sprites. They couldn't add more moves when the moneybank went dry, apparently.

Worst KOF sequel since 2003.

[shodan2020]

Yeah, I wish they hadn't cut the roster so much. 20 is measly compared to the other entries in KOF. I also don't like that the "cut" characters will probably be made available for DLC, which is annoying and they should have cut $10-$15 off the price point if they were gonna have as much DLC as I think they are going to.

However, I'll probably pick this title up later, as I really love KOF. I'll have KOF98UM for the arcade to keep me sated until then.

[Ultima Thulian]

Yea, they really missed an opportunity here. After those god-awful 3D KoF games, I was looking forward to return to form. But it's kinda disappointing, especially considering the main competition (i.e. Blazblue and SFIV). However, I LOVED the fact that there wasn't much of a story. The whole story aspect was really fucking up the series, and frankly, most fighting games as a whole are much much much much much better without a story mode. The "stories" told in fighting games are enough to give me diahhrea. They're horrible.

That being said, it's not horrible, and I love the 2D art. I'd consider buying it if it hit the bargain bin.

[DoctorFinger]

Had they released this as even a $20 XBLA/PSN game, it would have been great. It's not a full fledged retail game IMO.

[Ancalagon]

I cant believe they thought hand drawn sprites were an acceptable trade off for half a game. No deal.

Blaz Blue will get my money, I'll either order it from the US and A or wait for it to come out in Europe.

[H.Bogard]

I remember an SNK/Playmore rep stating in an interview that they were currently the only company in the business that could pull off a full fledged hand-drawn game like this.

Guess ARC showed them, eh? Had it not been for Blazblue, I'd have been one sad 2d fighting enthusiast.