The King of Fighters XII

The classic 2D fighter, much like the point ‘n’ click adventure of old, has seen something of a revival in the last year. In honour of its 15th Anniversary and its first appearance on this generation of consoles, SNK Playmore has refreshed the King of Fighters series with a new look, revamped gameplay and all-new online features with King of Fighters XII. But with Street Fighter IV leading the charge this year with its knockout comeback, can King of Fighters really keep up?

The core fighting mechanics certainly pack a punch. In contrast to most Street Fighter games (but not unlike Street Fighter III), KOF trades accessibility for greater technical flexibility, offering a deep and rewarding experience for those who stick with the game long enough. Indeed, using a modest four-button setup, King of Fighters allows fast-fingered players to pull off all kinds of combos, knockdowns, fallbreakers, reversals and auto-guards. Perhaps understanding that the barrier of entry may be too high for some, SNK Playmore have taken steps to ease the transition for new players; of particular note is the new “Simple” input-mode, which makes quarter-circle motions a cinch for beginners. It’s a nice feature, but somewhat redundant on the PS3 – the d-pad of the Dual-Shock handles circle motions surprisingly well.

This “dream-match” entry of the series sees the character roster trimmed to just 22 (down from over 30 in KOF XI), but this is ultimately a smart move – character match-ups are well-balanced despite the variety of play-styles possible, and I’m happy to report that there was never a point during play that I felt I had lost a match due to cheap tactics, which is more than I can say for Seth- er, I mean other games. Oddly, while most of the core KOF cast make an appearance in some form, series fan-favourite (and Fatal Fury star) Mai Shiranui is missing from the brawl, presumably being held back for DLC or the inevitable remix.

All of these characters are available from the get-go, and can be used in any of the single-player and multiplayer modes. Speaking of the game structure, this KOF makes another departure from series standards in that it has no story mode, a staple (and often highly-entertaining) feature of the franchise. Instead, those playing alone are offered a three-on-three time-trial mode, a simple versus mode and the requisite practice mode, which disappointingly does not include tutorials. It can be fun to best your previous match times in time-trial, but my time here only served to highlight the frankly idiotic AI of the game. Consider this extreme example: I picked a team comprising of Leona Heidern and two other characters, and proceeded to jump and sweep-kick every single opponent into submission, consequently earning five PS3 trophies in a single run of the “Normal” difficulty setting. Oh dear.

Single-player issues can easily be forgiven in a fighting game if the multiplayer is up to par, and initially, things fair much better here. Online, there’s an impressive selection of modes available; in addition to standard ranked and player matches, a fairly comprehensive clan system is included, which allows clans to challenge one-another for rank points. Even more impressive is the replay feature, allowing players to record matches straight to the console hard-drive, or trade them with other players on the leader-boards and their friend-lists. The potential for sharing battle strategies and combo-sets this way is tantalising, and hopefully we’ll see this feature make it into more games. Unfortunately, from here on is where everything falls apart… online matches are simple unplayable! Plagued by lag, weird bouts of input latency and connection drop-outs, you’ll barely make it through a few matches before giving up altogether. This – tragically – destroys the multiplayer in all but local play.

Much talk has been made of the presentation of KOF XII, and rightly so. As part of the process of bringing the franchise to a new generation, SNK Playmore have finally done away with the pixelated assets of KOF ’96. The re-drawn, HD-scaled sprites look fantastic – chunky, but highly-detailed characters that come to life on each vibrant stage with fluid, believable animation. Additionally, the extra horsepower offered by the Xbox 360 and PS3 is put to good use in complimenting this artwork with an array of graphical effects, including coloured lighting. The main arcade mode in the game has a handful of anime cutscenes, but each of these last barely a couple of seconds and are poorly localised, with the default English track sounding like each word was phonetically sounded out by non-native English speaker. Thankfully, a Japanese audio track is available for purists in the option menu, and cut-scenes can be skipped with a button-press. The audio in general, however, is well-suited to the game, with a couple of catchy rock tunes standing out.