As you may have seen, I was lucky enough to play King of Fighters XII a little early.  Fighting fans, including myself, have been anxiously awaiting this game for quite a while.  Personally, I was looking forward to the smoother gameplay like that of more recent KoF installments, and silky, hand-drawn graphics.  My heart was pounding as my PS3 booted the game up, but I was left scratching my head after a few hours of playing time.  Hit the link for the full article.

The first thing that had me raising my eyebrow was the boot-up sequence.  I had to stare at the logo of every single company that contributed to this game.  Usually, you can just jam on the Start button to skip the propaganda, but you're stuck waiting for KoF to load.

After that, my friends and I entered the two-player Team mode.  I knew the roster was going to be on the light side, but I was still disappointed.  K', Mai, Blue Mary, and Kula are absent, but Raiden, Duo Lon, and Chin  made the final cut?  Really?

For my first game, I chose Iori, Ryo, and Ash.  I was told that Iori's "flame" powers had been taken away, but I expected him to still have most of his moves in tact.  Nope.  No Oniyaki, no Kototsuki.  I'm not always against change, but this seems like change for the worse.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

After being bitten by the rabid opossum, Ryo was never the same...

And then there's Ryo.  He was one of the most well designed KoF characters, but now he looks like he's after Akuma's Satsui no Hadou powers.  Seriously, he looks like a bad rip-off of Street Fighter's demonesque fighter.  What the hell is going on?

Pants: size 30 W     Shirt: size XXL

In a more general perspective, almost all the characters look dysmorphic.  They don't have the super-deformed look that's all too popular amongst Japanese pop-culture, but more of a bizarre take on American comic-book art, especially the cartoons based on DC characters.  Muscles are overly-beefy, and the torsos make the characters look top heavy.  I'm surprised they can stand back up after taking an anti-air hit to the face.

I'll definitely admit, though, the character sprites (without taking their designs into consideration), as well as the backgrounds, look fantastic.  SNK's PR team made sure everyone knew that everything was still hand-drawn, but the graphics look even better than I had hoped for.  On a standard-def TV, I could barely tell that the sprites were designed using pixel graphics, rather than vector techniques.  The color palette is vast, and the effects are stunning.

There was one strange quirk with the graphics, though.  The stages featured dynamic lighting.  Moving from one part of the stage to another, characters would often have a shadow cast on parts of their bodies.  Sometimes this effect was too drastic, and I had to squint to see the precise character animations.

Remember what I just said about there not being any super-deformed shenanigans?  I take it back due to one exception.  Athena, as my friend pointed out, just doesn't look like she belongs in the game.  Imagine a dwarf-sized Sailor Moon character standing next to Marcus Phoenix.  That's how obtuse Athena's big-head, little-body design is.  Not only that, but she seems to have aged backwards.  She looked like she was, oh, maybe 20 in KoF '98, but she looks like she's a pre-teen in XII.

As far as gameplay is concerned, I'll put it this way.  I knew it would be dumbed down, but I figured it would at least be able to pass the 2D Fighter SATS.  I'll be the first to admit that some KoF titles contained too many moves per character, but this is just silly.  Each fighter has about five moves and a super move.  Taking it this far makes the game feel like something other than a King of Fighters game.

But, hey, it's still pretty fun.  With a few exceptions, such as Kensou, KoF vets shouldn't have too much trouble picking up their favorite characters.  Rush-downs are no longer a viable strategy, but the game is still quickly paced.  The controls are solid and combos are easy to pull off.  Ignoring the KoF name, the game is definitely a good fighter.

So, I'm a bit put off by King of Fighters XII.  The character design is a big deal-breaker for me, but there are other more important issues that hardcore KoF fans may be up-in-arms about, come street date.  Overly simplistic gameplay and (from what I hear) a broken network mode will probably not help this game succeed in an already tough market for 2D fighters and 2D games in general (excluding DLC and handheld titles).     Having gone bankrupt in the not-so-distant past, this is no time for SNK to experiment with their classic formula, let alone dick around with KoF vertical shooters and MMORPGs.  Hopefully I'll grow to love this game, but right now, I'm pretty disappointed, since I planned on this game being beyond excellent.

Yay! Beautiful graphics, fast gameplay, solid controls, "Choose your odor" Engrish

Nay! WTF character design, lackluster roster, dumbed-down move sets

For those of you who really hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: 7/10

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