Friday, July 24, 2009

The Great Fight Hype




Well, apparently Gamestop is up to some serious shenanigans, because they managed to completely botch the release of King of Fighters XII.

They dropped the game on a Friday, four days early. And never bothered to tell anyone about it.

When walking into Gamestop on a whim earlier today, I managed to walk out with a copy of the game - which was scheduled for shipping next week. Odd. And most of the press online from other players who managed to get the game early isn't good. With this action Gamestop managed to wipe out whatever hype was building for this game (admittedly not much, since we're all playing SF and BlazBlue) ruining whatever small chance it had at retail in the first place. Usually I hate hype. I hate the fact we have to wait for something that's obviously done, just so we anticipate it more. But having hype killed for such a niche game doomed it.

I'm not going to write a full review, but I will make a few points here. But before I do, a word of warning: I played this game while visiting Japan, so I will be able to compare it to the actual arcade release...

1.) The sprites are beautiful, huge, and animate well. Problem being, they scaled the roster back to offset the demands of next-gen development and having to redo all the sprites by hand. Only 22 characters this time around. The backgrounds are vibrant and lively, although (like characters), there really aren't many of them (6-7).

2.) Online lags HORRIBLY. I tried playing one match, and could barely get through. Ignition has plans to address this and will be patching the game upon its previously expected release date, next Tuesday. So I will save my opinions until then.

3.) Special move inputs, like most SNK games, are overcomplicated and difficult to do even with a TE Fightstick. Now I may not be a fighting game expert, but I'm far from a noob, and if I have serious problems pulling off more than one super in the game, they're most likely too difficult. Terry's Power Geyser (21416P) is especially difficult for me to pull off.

4.) After BlazBlue, fighters tend to feel similar, and there isn't a tag system like in other KoF games. Why no tag system? I think it has to do with the loading - which, by the way, is TERRIBLE if you don't install the game.

5.) No SNK Boss Syndrome....but that's not a good thing - because there IS no boss! The Arcade mode is simply five Time Attack matches. W...T....EFF?!~

6.) Blatant DLC grab. In so many words they've confirmed the roster is expanding, but you're gonna pay for it. Excluding Mai was deliberate so they could offer her up for DLC.

All that said, the game isn't TERRIBLE, it just stinks horribly when compared against SFIV and BlazBlue. The fact they're charging the full $60 for what amounts to a game with a budget set of features (but good production values, at least from a visual standpoint) really hurts. And the promise of DLC wrecking game balance hurts more. And lack of Mai on the default roster hurts the most...