King Without A Crown
A decent game in its own right, The King of Fighters XII is nonetheless outclassed by the competition everywhere that counts.
Published: August 10, 2009
The classic feel of a mounting series of attacks, any one of which could punish a player for not reacting properly seems lost. The "SNK-ness," for lack of a better term, doesn't feel like it's there. Maybe I just didn't properly take to these new moves, but I started playing the game like... well, kinda like Street Fighter rather than feeling the thrill of a rushdown as I charged in and laid down the hurt. In fact, I felt like the flow of things was actually shifted to getting out of tussles because of the possibility of being easily countered rather than standing up to an attack and throwing down with a big reversal combo.
I'd love to report on how the online play may have helped change or reinforce old strategies or play styles, but I honestly think I didn't play a single lag-free game in hours of trying. Repeat attempts days later fared the exact same, and I think it's because of a lack of being able to even see the connection status of players until you've drilled down into the matchmaking menus (even then, I'm not so trusting of the reports). Disconnects, long pauses, failed handshakes pre-match all combined to frustrate the hell out of me. I eventually gave up, called a friend with a couple of sticks and we just played locally. I can't tell you how depressing it is to see SNK, once the competition for Capcom and their fighters, being reduced to a shell of its former competitive glory.
What's worse, the more time I spent with the game, the more holes I could poke in the seemingly fresh facade. Those new sprites didn't have the size or the sharpness (especially up close) as, say, some of Arc System Works' latest projects (namely BlazBlue). The backgrounds, while lush and actually bigger than I remember in other KOFs, didn't have the same kind of detail and interactivity that I was hoping for and are severely limited. I guess I assumed from the animation process that the sprites would end up being one of the new benchmarks for 2D animation, and instead it just feels oddly... lacking. It's certainly not bad, but the fluidity and transitions that I was hoping for didn't really come through for me.
The same goes for the audio, though the inclusion of both English/Japanese character voices is certainly a welcome one. The biggest offender is just that there simply isn't enough audio. The half-dozen or so stages in the game loop the same aural accompaniment, heaping even more over-familiarity on a game that already feels rather limited in scope.
That's probably the biggest problem with King of Fighters XII: there's nothing to it. When all its contemporaries are doing smallish story arcs for multiple characters, or offering a ton of unlockables, or are doing online play well, uh, right, the glaring omission of something like Street Fighter IV's incredibly deep per-character tutorials and challenges only adds to the feeling that things were cut either for time or scope reasons. The smaller roster, barebones offering of modes and weak serving of that is there makes this rebirth feel decidedly stillborn. It's possible the increased communication and collaboration between SNK and US publisher Ignition Entertainment could repair some of the more glaring gameplay fumbles and get the online back on track with patches, but to be perfectly honest, I'll have long since burned out on the other releases this year and have zero desire to come back to KOF -- possibly ever again.
