The Street Fighter series, which has been the most world renown fighting game for ages, has been sitting at the top of the mountain as ‘King’. Many have tried to take down the long standing champion and many have failed. One game that has wrestled with the titan and is still (somewhat) standing is… of course I’m talking about The King Of Fighters series with the latest entry being King Of Fighters 12 for the Xbox360 and PS3. Can this game hold its own against Blazblue and Street Fighter 4? Well, just keep reading mofo’s.
Story – There is none. None at all. There is no story mode. All you do is fight locally with a friend or online multilayer. Yup. Why was that a good idea? I don’t know… but yea, SNK chose to keep this game just a bare bones fighting game without any “story mode” accompaniment and just dump players into just fighting.
Gameplay – This is a good part and a bad part. Each character has what is called a “surprise counter” which leads to the attacker being stunned while the defender can just whale on them. Yup, kicks all levels of ass. Somehow the developers managed to omit adding too many gameplay modes. Just online, versus… and a few variations of these two. You can play “One-on-one” or the classic “Three-on-three” which has your subsequent characters cheering for you while you fight.This can actually be seen as a really REALLY bad limitation as other fighters incorporate these idle characters in more creative ways.Veteran players will notice that each character has been stripped of many of their”Super arts” and only can pull off either one or two of these moves…WHY??? Thankfully, The combo’s all come out easily and aren’t to complicated to pull off, so just about everyone has a fair shot at enjoying this one.
Visuals – This part is astounding. Each sprite looks crisp and clean. All of them are high resolution and blend in well with their backgrounds without standing out too much. Backgrounds are beautifully rendered. Your back-up characters cheering for you and smiling when you land a blow and booing when your attacked looks, (and always has looked), cool. When special attacks land, such as Kyo’s fire spin thingy, the person who’s on the receiving end gets hit with burns and sizzles! Sparks and explosions everywhere! This attention to detail is very much appreciated by fans who notice these strides. Every single smack, slap,and fall has been detailed. Dirt flies up, sweat flies, and hair sways and it all looks kick ass. Having smoke machines, sparklers, and billboards displaying match statistics such as who wins, who’s fighting all in between just adds a certain level of flair which shows that the developers went the extra mile here.
Bottom-line
Pro’s – Looks very sexy. Plays good. Andy’s back bitches!! Hell yea!!
Con’s – Feels more like KOF 99 because of the the things that have been stripped. Only 20 characters,which is less than half of the average. No story mode. Doesn’t really do anything new. Not much to find in the way of re-play value.
C-
