August 16th, 2009 by hylian1

Review by Cronomag

If you had the choice between two meals, which would you choose? Filet mignon or a 1/4 lb burger? Keep that in mind while you read this review for the King of Fighters XII. Ah, yes! King of Fighters is back, and SNK Playmore hopes that this year’s KOF will garner many fighting game fans. Can it accomplish this?

Story: There isn’t much of one. There is a fighting tournament and your combatants have to win the whole thing. That’s about it. It would have been nice if this game had a main antagonist like in previous KOF games, but for some odd reason, SNK decided not to have one in this game. It shouldn’t be a big deal, most fighting game fans don’t play these games for the story anyways.

Graphics: Wow! What were you thinking SNK. The character sprites are noticeably pixelated. In this day and age of high powered gaming consoles, there’s just no excuse for this. You might have to sit back at least ten feet from your tv set if you don’t want to notice the low rez characters. The background visuals are better drawn, but most of them look boring. Only two backgrounds stand out as memorable, the one with the fat ladies sitting at a cafe near the ocean, and the other is the one with the fire background. The other stages are meh! There are also some anime cut scenes that are, again, well drawn but boring. They could have showed some fighting cut scenes, instead all they show is a news report.

Sound: Most of the music in this game is good, it has a metal\rock vibe to it. The grunts, hits, yells, from each character also sound decent. The only issue I have with the sound is that the fight announcer sounds way louder than the rest of the game. This should be no problem, as I’m sure you can change this in the settings options. But come on? Should the fighting announcer be louder than the rest of the game by default?

Gameplay: You have to pick three characters from the available twenty-two. Before each match you can choose the order in which your characters will fight. This is helpful when for instance, you know how one of your characters will matchup with the opponent’s character. The combos seem easy to learn. You wont have any problem in performing three to six hit combos. Longer combos are possible, you just have to spend some time with the game in order to learn them. Special moves and super moves are also in the game, and are generally easy to pull off, provided you are using an arcade stick or the madcatz SFIV gamepad. The regular xbox 360 controller just doesn’t cut it when it comes to fighting games. The game is most enjoyable when playing against someone else in local play. I had no problem when I played online, the game ran smoothly. However, there have been several reports about the game being laggy online to the point where it became unplayable. I guess I just got lucky.

Content: As stated before, this game lacks a main villain. In past KOF games, there was always a final boss that had to be defeated. He was often made so hard and cheap that it often took all three of your characters to take him down. In this game, your final adversaries are three random characters. In past games there were way more characters available. The most notable absence from the game KOF fans will tell you, is Mai. She is an Asian lady who has a huge cleavage, wears a skimpy outfit, and uses fans as weapons. Instead you get Ash, a dude who looks like a chick, oy vey! KOF XII also lacks in stages, there are only six. This game has a practice mode, but in order to pick another character you have to exit to the main menu and pick practice mode again. What a hassle. There is no survival mode! SNK, how can you omit survival mode from your best fighting game franchise. Hopefully you can add this in some future dlc, for free of course. Time attack has been incorporated into the Arcade mode. Every time a match ends, you will be shown the time it took you to beat your opponents. You will then be given an option to restart the level to get a better time if you wish.

So there you have it. This game isn’t terrible. Like a 1/4 lb hamburger, you’ll enjoy it. It has its faults, and SNK will hopefully learn enough from them before KOF XIII. If you are a hardcore KOF fan, then I would recommend this game, but only after a price drop. If you are looking for a good fighting game, get the filet mignon. Get SFV or Blazblue. These are the games that KOF should aspire to be like. Those are 9-10 caliber games. KOF XII? A 7.