The King of Fighters XII - Joe's Screw Upper!

SNK Playmore’s biggest franchise, The King of Fighters, just had it’s twelfth entry into the main series break street date at GameStops around the country and I made sure that I was able to get myself  a copy! I’ve put many hours into playing the game this afternoon before work, and then once again tonight after dinner with friends. I’ve gotten very use to the game pretty fast, despite that the fact that it really doesn’t play like KOF XI or KOF ‘98, which are the games in the series I’ve played most. Rather, it feels more like Capcom vs SNK 2 in terms of speed along with some of the character move sets being similar.

The game has been anticipated for over two years and SNK Playmore has put a ridiculous amount of effort into the final product and it shows. This game plays well and it’s now artistically the most beautiful fighting game ever created. The game does have it’s flaws in what it lacks, but makes up for it in what it brings to the fray in what myself and others are calling the Year of the Fighting Game.

What’s good?

The graphics are lush and lovely, featuring bright colors and exotic landscapes. There are only five stages in the game but a single stage in KOF XII is more lively and exciting than most fighting games’ entire collection of venues. One of my friends and I joked earlier tonight about one of the stages possibly being inspired by Water 7 in One Piece. The locales even have shadows generate on the character sprites depending on their location in the stage. The character sprites are bigger than ever and are very detailed, to the point that can clearly see their facial expressions and the details on their outfits.

The characters also feature far more animation frames than for any other SNK fighter, and this coupled with the games high-definition colorful graphics makes for some beautiful looking battles. Not only that, the explosions and effects from various actions in this game provide a lot of energy to the fight and in some cases provide some key visual cues for players to react to. The game makes great use of generating key effects for moments like guard attacks, critical counters, sousai cancels, and special attack start ups.

The fighting game mechanics are probably going to be the best in any fighting game. The franchise has taken a step away from executing long chains of combos and has focused more on strategy. Timing is key in this game because executing guard attacks and critical counters can determine the match’s victor.  Guard attacks are performed by pressing back, heavy punch, and heavy kick at the same time. When this happens, a blue flash will appear in front of the character executing the guard attack; this flash represents a period that a colliding enemy attack will be parried. If this happens, their move will be canceled and the guard attacking player will unleash a knock-back attack. What’s also great about this technique is that even if the parry fails, they move will still go off which has helped me beat novice players online.

Critical counters are probably the best part of this game. I’ve never felt such a rush while doing one, and that’s the idea. You’ll fill up a green gauge under your character’s health bar. When it fills up completely, it will begin to drain. You have that window of time to press back and heavy punch or back and heavy kick simultaneously will cause your character to strike with an orange aura around their attack. If the attack lands while the other player’s character is striking, a rainbow flash will emit around both fighters and the other character will fall prey to their knees to take a flurry of your character’s customizable combos of normal attacks, special attacks, and even being able to finish with a super combo move. It can turn a match around and even finish it and it doesn’t happen too much that it breaks the fight; in fact, it happens enough just to cause an adrenaline rush. I have shot myself out of my chair at times when I have initiated a critical counter and I have been good at experimenting, especially with Andy and Kensou.

Actually, that never happened. I play KOF standing up because I can’t sit down in fear of falling off of the edge of my seat.

Overall, the game mechanics are extremely balanced to promote strategy as opposed to memorizing combos. I’m really happy about this because memorizing button presses that are only useful in one game is inadequate and I’d rather focus on timing and predicting the movements of my enemy, kind of like chess. Basically, what I am saying a good fighting game is one that has tactics and mechanics that a smart person can take advantage of to win. Memorizing looping combos is a waste of time and is sonething that idiots will do. (Want to guess what game I am referring to that promotes this behavior?)

KOF XII, addition to featuring guard attacks and critical counters, has many other useful tactics like charging strong attacks(heavy punch and heavy kick pressed together) that can either stun an opponent or break their guard, evasive rolls( forward or backward, light punch, and light kick pressed together) that can help fighters dodge attacks, and sousai cancels that will cancel out attacks of equal strength when they collide at the same time. Air sousais are particularly sweet when two characters do jumping kung-fu kicks that clash at the same time; it’s like a scene from Enter the Dragon or Fist of the North Star.

The game features 22 characters in this roster that are already unlocked and they are all awesome. Every one of them has their own strengths and weakness in categories of strength, speed, durability, striking, projectiles, grapples. anti-air attacks, and dashing attacks. One simple example of this would be anti-air special moves. Just about everyone has them. Some are easy to combo into, especially moves like the rising tackle or the jumping uppercuts; however, they have a period of recovery if they whiff, leaving them vulnerable to the opponent. Some characters don’t leave the ground when they do their anti-air special move, which won’t have as much range and it may be harder to combo into but the benefit is that their recovery time is greater and they probably have some other move that’s easy to combo into when both characters are on the ground. I think for this reason of balance, that some of the special moves of veteran characters were removed. Most characters have either three or four special moves and either one or two super combo attacks.

I’ve never seen so much dedication in making the roster of a fighting game so balanced as this that I don’t event think a tier ranking is even necessary for this game. This is wonderful news because tiers need to leave fighting games like quick-time events need to leave action games. It’s much preferable to have all the characters have their strengths and weaknesses balanced out so when matches are fought amongst players, the winner will be determined by who has both the better skill and understanding of the game mechanics and characters. The differences between the each character’s strengths and weakness also lend to different play styles of those who play fighting games, whether you go for speedy attacks, powerful strikes, or grappling moves, their are a variety of characters to fit your strategy well. The problem with some of the past KOF games is creating a team of three fighters that would fit your play style and one of them would be a dude. Thankfully, that is not the case here. In the future, glitches and other forms foul play may be exploited as they are discovered in the game; for now, things are going great.

What’s lacking?

While the design choices of the fighting system are genius and the roster very balanced, the game is missing some things. For one, it’s the smallest roster in any King of Fighters game. While it’s great to have 22 awesome characters available in the game from the get-g0, I and others wish there were more. Characters like K’, Kula Diamond, Mai Shiranui, and Oswald were characters  that I saw requested by many fans. I was also hoping for Rugal to be the game’s final boss. But wait, isn’t he dead? He is indeed dead in the cannon storyline; however, this game doesn’t have a storyline and doesn’t represent the KOF cannon. Therefore, I have no problem with him being back. It’s never explained why Terry Bogard is back sporting his old look, why Ralf and Clark shockingly appear roided up, or why Ash Crimson doesn’t use the flames he stole from Iori in the the last game in his move set, while Iori fights without it. With the story non-existent and inconsistencies unexplained, it was time for someone like Rugal to come back and remind everyone the wrath of SNK Boss Syndrome!

So what did we get for a boss? Nothing, and that’s the biggest disappointment I have with the game. SNK fighting games, especially The king of Fighters, always – ALWAYS – has a ridiculous final boss that is nearly impossible to beat. It may take hours if not days to conquer such menacing opposition. They fight dirty, have ridiculous attacks and priorities, and will always pull out some bullshit destroying move right when you are about to bring them to their knees. It sucks and you yell and swear and probably break your controller, or punch your girlfriend in the face. But you keep trying… and then you eventually beat the boss. Once the dust has settled and the realization of victory has connected with your mind, you feel like the god of fighting games and that is why SNK Boss Syndrome is necessary for The King of Fighters.

Whether it was Rugal, Magaki, or the lovable Igniz; we needed someone. Not having the boss battle made the single player arcade mode seem anti-climatic and the motivation to play arcade mode is not really there, other than to unlock achievements and trophies. In all honesty, arcade mode sucks; it’s just five matches done in a time attack setting and the the credits roll. Not even a character splash screen or animated ending to show what the characters did afterward.

The lack of some kind of storyline in the game hurts the overall experience and there aren’t any other options for the single player experience besides practice mode. What happened to survival mode, or the various character challenges that existed in the PS2 version of KOF XI? Remember when we had to have Robert Garcia deflect all of King’s low and high venom strikes with only the ability to counter with low and high projectiles of his own for 3o seconds and were rewarded by having him unlocked in the game? Okay, well I did it and when I beat that challenge, I felt a badass sense of accomplishment. I really wish challenges like that were in here again.

Final thoughts… for now

So if you really want to experience KOF XII right, then you’d better have some friends who enjoy playing fighting games or have the ability to play others online. Hell, if you don’t have any friends who don’t play fighting games, then ditch them and get new friends that do. Trust me, you won’t miss them when you start playing Garou: Mark of the Wolves with your new compadres.

While lacking a huge roster of characters that more recent KOF games have had, KOF XII has characters that are far more balanced and detailed than ever before. The game depends more on skill and has a well developed set of mechanics that promote match variety, make comebacks possible, and turn good defense into devastating offense. While the single player experience is lacking as well as the story, the fighting system makes for legendary matches between skilled players, and that in itself makes The King of Fighters XII worth getting. It’s hard to say if KOF XII is the best fighting game of the past year when Tekken 6 hasn’t come out in the states yet and I still haven’t played BlazBlue. Even so, after a day of playing this, it already pounds the other competition that includes Street Fighter IV and Soul Calibur IV. Despite such claims, fighting games have more variety this year than in any other this decade in game choices.

I’m sure that later on I will develop new feelings about this game as a I play it more. I don’t know if it will have the potential to exceed the quality that other SNK games like KOF XI and Garou have established, but the potential exists. I for one can’t wait to play this game some more after I take care of the many responsibilities that await me in the near future. I hope by the, the online mode of the game is patched to remove lag so I can fight more people online. Hopefully, this game will be recognized as an incredible and well-balanced fighter that could be one of the games for EVO next year. We shall see. Until then…

Let the year of the fighting game continue!