« King of Fighters XII first impressions »
DangmugKing of Fighters XII should be widely available in your local Gamestop despite the official July 28th launch date. Is it worth running out and grabbing a copy right this minute? You might want to wait. Read on...
I have been playing the X-Box 360 release of KoFXII since last night and in many ways the game is fantastic. The new sprites are beautiful, especially when in motion. Offline versus matches are really fun. I am still exploring the new additions to the classic gameplay, but so far it's been very rewarding. With the good comes a little bit of bad though. Most of my online matches have been nearly unplayable. What I mean by that is severe input lag--even on the character select screen. I would say that on average there is a ~15 frame lag on during my online matches. To contrast with other fighting games I play online I'm almost always able to find 4 or 5 bar matches in SFIV and in BlazBlue it's rare that I ever encounter any perceptible lag. In regards to the problems people have been experiencing the KoFXII facebook page issued this statement:
"King of Fighters XII: We understand that there have been some concerns raised about performance during online play. A patch for the both platforms is being worked on which should help with those gamers experiencing issues.
While I don't have an exact date for the Xbox 360 version, the PS3 patch should be available by the street date July 28, 2009."
The game doesn't feature much of a story except for a generic newscast type cut scenes that play between the five matches that make up arcade mode. Aside from that all that is left is versus and practice. The focus in KoFXII is obviously the offline and online versus modes and the latter isn't much use right now. Hopefully a patch will come out and I can give this game the review it deserves, but until then it's offline only for me, and unless I have a friend over, there's just not that much to do.
Reader Comments (10)
I'm glad we lvie in an age of DLC so we can have games patched. Hopefully they took a page out of ARC System Works book and implement some killer netcode cause I was love to test my skills online with this game. :)
Haunts, I'm hoping it's some kind of tiny bug that's causing the problems and not their overall netcode because this game is too awesome to be limited to local only. I really want to see KoF grow and get the recognition that it deserves in the fighting game community.
Pretty spot on except the game only has 5 stages (one is a color swap). That is not a huge deal for some but it is for me, as the game becomes visually repetitive and musically annoying as well as a result. The stages dont even have variations between rounds like previous King of Fighters games. I have very mixed feelings about this game as it stands and I kind of feel like I spent $60 on a beta.
a lot of people seem to be echoing your complaints.
as an snk fan myself, i feel that kof12 was rather rushed and released prematurely. it doesn't quite have the feeling of finesse you get from snk's top tier games (garou, samsho5s) but at the same time it isn't really that bad of a game- it just needs some improvements. improvements that hopefully snk playmore will deliver on.
Yeah, it's not like it's an awful game, but compared to the presentation and solid launch of both SFIV and BB this game just feels really rushed. I was really afraid this would happen. I just keep getting the feeling that someone put pressure on the developers to rush the product out and ride the recent fighting game wave. The quality of the sprites and gameplay just don't mesh with the sparse stage selection, weak single player mode and shoddy online experience.
I really hate to keep comparing it to other fighting games, but whenever I walk up to my 360 I'm choosing either BB or SFIV because I know both games really deliver a solid, diverse, reliable gaming experience.
Custom gauge and guard attack break the game. GGPO.
I wish the presentation and online were on par with BB and even SF4. But the actual game? An absolute blast. I really hope SNK-P is able to continue with this game and make it that much better over the years. Here's to hoping that KoFXII Black for winter proves true.
You must have good netcode to succeed in the western market.
Any word on the patch, I would like a review from a trusted source before I decide if I should grab it.
KrsJin;
Lets hope KoFXII Black is a free upgrade to make up for this disaster, otherwise I'm not touching it.
Rounder:
There are patches out for both systems, with some very minor improvements but net play is still rubbish.
After playing this and KoF98 on GGPO, my complaints are pretty much the same as yours. like this game isnt horrible offline at all. its just lacking a lot that makes KoF stand out from SF. Netcoding must be fixed and hopefully SNKP will do so, because Ignition truely loves the fans and listens to them. Hell thats how i got my copy =P i won it