The King of Fighters XII Review

Firstly I’m not a fan of arcade style fighters, I think Street Fighter 2 almost pushed me over the edge when i was younger, not mention giving me loads of blisters and the possiblity of arthritis in my thumbs.

So King of Fighters IIX is my first experience of the series, and overall I’d say it was a pleasant experience. It may be that i’m older and i’ve got more patience for learning special moves, but the game was really easy to get into, the 3 on 3 style format was refreshing.

Unlike most other beat em-ups KOF lets you pick three characters, you then get to choose the order you want to play them in. One of the great things about this is you can pick a combination of fast/slow/powerful fighters, which keeps the gameplay relatively fresh even after 3 or 4 bouts. The controls are really easy to pick up, the normal high/low punch/kick combos are all there as are

the roll the d-pad style special moves. I found most of the special moves fairly easy to pick up and the repeating control combincations make it easy to master two or three chracters really quickly, making it easy to quickly pick your three best fighters.

The real fun comes with being able to link attacks creating huge combo moves. For example linking command moves, such as a heavy punch plus direction and then moving into a special move or two can take a good 25% of an opponents health away. This type of thing gos down great on xbox Live or whilst playing with a bunch of mates, although the massive combo success rate drops heavily as beer consumption increases.

Graphically the game is very different to anything i’ve played in recent years, KOF still uses all hand drawn sprites, and doesn’t apply any filters to smooth them. It seems weird but I found this  retro style really appealing, again it might be an age thing, but it really bought back those late 80s early 90s arcade memories.

I played the game on the regular difficultly and found it relatively easy, which is saying something. Seasoned beat-em-up players will probably want to crank the difficulty up.

Overall I’ve found it an enjoyable experience, and i genuinely have found the game really addictive. The very accessible control system really makes the game easy and quick to get to grips with. It’s a brilliant addition to the xbox get-together night rotation of games.