Review: King of Fighters XII

First of all let me apologise for the lateness of this review.  I’ve had to play, think, write, replay and think more before finally deciding what I’d actually say about King of Fighters XII here on OneLastContinue.  I’d previously been anticipating the arrival of this game on European shores as you can see from my previous coverage but as it’s my job to be honest it seems SNK Playmore have unleashed this title long before they should have.  Let me explain.

Xbox 360 has never truly been known for having quality brawlers on the platform, perhaps with the sole exception of Street Fighter IV.  Of course there are those out there who love a little bit of Tekken or Soul Calibur but those fighters were born in the dawn of the 3D era as opposed to the days of 2D brawlers like Street Fighter II when (wo)men were (wo)men and multiplayer was something you experienced at your local arcade.

SNK arrived on the scene in 1994 with the first installment of their long running series The King of Fighters; a game which tied together the two narratives of other SNK titles Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting into one cohesive entity.  Confused as to why this is relevant?  Well I can explain that also.  All three series’ were considered hardcore in their difficulty as well as less accessible as the near omnipotent Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.  Where SFII had a cast of twelve in its original form, of which eight were selectable, the King of Fighters series has many times that amount with KoF XI having more than forty to choose from.  This meant that there were innumerable possibilities with regards to matchmaking and therefore the opportunity for a new challenge existed every new round.  Why then did SNK only opt to include twenty two characters this time around, and with several of the long time favourites such as Mai Shiranui noticeably absent in this edition you have to wonder what exactly the development team were thinking.  Visuals, that’s what.

While the visuals of the series have always held a certain charm for diehard fans they’ve never truly stood up against the Samurai Shodowns, Smash Brothers or the Virtua Fighters of the genre.  In this latest iteration the graphics sure are beautifully redrawn, in fact they’re redrawn to ‘high definition’ standards, and by that I mean just highly detailed sprites, and thus you get some glorious imagery on hand.  The sprites also take up a greater portion of the screen than previous years and whilst it’s a great leap from the re-using of sprites they’ve essentially used for the past fifteen years it feels like when you compare the care and detail of the visuals to the rest of the package you might feel slightly cheated.  Also, with regards to the re-use of existing sprites over the years I’m not sure this implies that in future King of Fighters titles we’re going to see the KoFXII versions reused again but who knows, maybe it’ll allow them to focus more effectively on the rest of the package.

Also, whilst visually the backdrops have been given the same care and love as the characters there are only six stages to choose from and yeah, it feels slightly cheaper than Street Fighter IV; especially when one of those stages is just a night time version with added, albeit attractive, fireworks exploding in the sky.  There are some really nice effects going on giving the illusion of a third dimension but the limitations it must be noted were set by the development team as opposed to the hardware itself.  I have to admonish the team here for failing to grasp that a fully featured title should have enough content to warrant a premium price point.

My favourite brawlers in this entry of the fifteen year strong saga were Athena Asamiya, Kyo Kusanagi and Joe Higashi. All were forces of nature in the lightly dusted Arcade mode, I can tell you as experimenting with finding the most powerful mix was certianly a priority.  After toying with characters such as Mature, the effeminate Ash Crimson, Leona, Shen and Benimaru I figured that the best mix would be to aim for power and speed.  Whilst there is a great balance in terms of fighting styles it can be hard to choose three characters that you feel comfortable enough with from the roster, especially when the controls aren’t exactly complex, or intuitive, for this style of game.  Punch, kick, stronger punch and stronger kick.  Four actions, all of which are basic in execution but it’s that King of Fighters mentality that makes the system easier to balance than having eight different actions with a further eight sub-actions mapped to each button.  It allowed SNK Playmore to focus on streamlining player interaction to pull off m0ves, especially with the inclusion of a control scheme that allows the user to tilt the left control stick and then press buttons to pull off easy special moves.  It seems a little strange but trust me, it does make the game a lot more fluid to play.

With the move to high definition gaming you’d think that SNK Playmore would most definitely be able to push the envelope with regards to presentation.  Not so it seems.  With a layout evocative of King of Fighters: Orochi Saga on PSP the menus are just text rectangles which are plain to the eye and uninspired.  To be honest more care was placed in the packaging design though I will say one thing for the UI, the character select screen is well laid out, the music is audibly crisp and enjoyable to the ear and … that’s about it.

The online portion of the title had me attempting to find a bout for around an hour with no success due to a complete lack of an online community for King of Fighters on Xbox 360.  I didn manage to get constantly placed in the same room as Snoopy4321 for several bouts and I recorded some of this footage to show you exactly what (s)he were doing in every fight.  Needless to say I feel that I can’t fairly judge what doesn’t exist and in this case I’ll just say that when they choose to fix a feature, and a core one at that, I’ll re-assess the virtues of taking on Snoopy4321 once more.

What SNK Playmore have done is taken a formula which sells consistently well to a loyal group of players in Japanese arcades and translated it to the letter with only two new characters and poor netcode to show for their efforts.  With no end-boss, or motivation other than taking place in the competition gamers will find very few reasons to play through the Arcade mode more than twice.  At most.  It may play faster than the critically acclaimed Street Fighter IV but don’t let speed fool you into thinking that there’s much in the way of depth here.  A survival mode would have gone a long way to offering fans an incentive to keep playing but for now?  I’ll leave this on the shelf and if another patch comes my way in the future, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph I’ll have another look.

Pluses
+ Absolutely beautiful backdrops and highly detailed sprites.
+ Single player matches CAN be rewarding depending on player skill.  Two player local fights are also fun.
+ It can be fun, it just gets old real quickly though.

Minuses
- Absolutely poor presentation with regards to menus and ‘cut scenes’.
- Extremely poor netcode which means your matches will always lag, even when patched.
- No end boss?  Why?
- No Mai Shiranui.

A copy of the game was provided to us for review purposes and the game is available now on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 worldwide.

ESRB Rating: Teen
PEGI Rating: 12+
Players: 2
Completed: Won the King of Fighters tournament. Several times, experimented with online play.

Verdict: If SNK Playmore had put a couple more months into developing this title, and implementing decent, honest to God, netcode then maybe, just maybe this would be worth the asking price.  Unless you can pick it up for a bargain price there really is not enough value in the single player mode to justify a purchase.  Wait for KoFXIII or Super Street Fighter IV instead and if you REALLY want a King of Fighters style fighter get Capcom Vs. SNK 2 from a second hand retailer, it’s the best!