pubs
Shepard sent me a copy of KOF: Maximum Impact. It came with Terry’s hat and a “making of” DVD with interviews with Falcoon and with Noise Factory president Keiko Iju. (Yes, one of SNK’s two development studios is run by a woman. Amazing what we learn when they leave the door open a crack.)
Although I had read that both dubs were available, I can’t find a switch for the Japanese one. That’s a shame, as the English voices are kind of… fruity. And you know how good the normal actors are.
The game system needs some work, though that’s been well established. Otherwise, it is darned impressive for what it is.
The last boss, Duke, is an SNK Boss. I was playing on Normal. I had to continue, I think, at least three dozen times. I spent many times longer on he than on the whole game up to him. If he didn’t plain-out cheat, that would be one thing. (Though, what kind of a boss would that make him?) His meter is always maxed-out, meaning he can use at whim moves that drain half the player’s life and which are difficult to block or avoid.
The second time, I set the difficulty to “Coward” and I beat him without getting hit more than a few times. Then again, I DID use Yuri…
Getting hit can be a problem in this game, given A) the chain combos, B) the walls, C) how damned long you stay on the ground when you fall. Against the wrong opponent, just getting nailed once can be fatal. That shouldn’t take much to adjust, though, for the next game.
Speaking of Yuri, the game overtly suggests in a few places that she indeed is destined to be the heir to Kyokugen. One, it… says that she just might be. Two, you can unlock a Tengu mask for her.
Of course, this game doesn’t seem to take place in any established continuity. So who knows how this applies elsewhere.
I notice that the second instruction booklet (the one that comes with the behind-the-scenes DVD) has full character profiles and stories. This is almost impressive. Rather than being forced to search the Internet for the storyline, SNK now provides it in the actual manual. Of course, it is the manual to a bonus disc. We’re getting closer, though. Maybe Maximum Impact 2 or future home ports of the main series will contain the stories right there on the game disc. Then maybe they’ll work them into the game’s story mode.
Someone asked me why, given their ambitions, SNK doesn’t just make a long, branching, story-based fighting game that you can save and return to between battles. I don’t know. I’ve wondered this for a long time. They did make Samurai Spirits RPG — though that’s not quite the same.
So, yes.
This game is daffy (all the more so due to its dub). It needs some work. It also has a bunch of heart. For a first effort, this is grand. On its own merits, it’s charming. It’s fun. Though flawed, all of the problems can be fixed easily. It makes me want to play the sequel.
Ms. Iju talked about some of the things they’re working on for the sequel. They want to focus on improving the facial animation, the special moves, and the character interaction, to help show the personalities of the characters. They want to add a lot of the livelier supporting characters they had to omit this time (like, I’m guessing, Joe and Benimaru). This all fits. They know what they’re doing.
…
Perhaps I should finish editing Tim’s review.
Is it true you can play as the main guy from Metal Slug?
Most ‘off the ground’ problems are solved by mastering quick wake-ups and safe falling. The only problem is all the insane shit you can do off a sweep.
I think it’s never been easier for me to reconcile your mostly positive review with Gamespot’s mild 6.7 and Gabe’s utter dismissal.
It’s a fair 3Dish fighting game that has unfulfilled promise, will appeal mildly to KoF fans, and for non-fans, offers no reason to consider it versus VF4Evo, UDOA, and other state of the art 3d fighters.
I’m not sure that what you say about the sequel will alter that balance anymore than changing it to a good 3dish fighting game that will appeal well to KoF fans, and offers no reason to consider it versus VF4Evo, UDOA, and other state of the art 3d fighters.
Although I agree that from what I hear KoF fans talk about, a grand, epic, intertwining story mode might be just the way to distinguish it from the flock.
I just don’t get the feel from your review that they’re doing much more with the sequel than making KoFMI Platinum Edition.
Marco.
Wrong game. He’s in BattleColiseum.
I imagine that would help. Only occasionally have I been swift enough to spin to my feet before landing. Then, I’ve only been playing it for one day.
That’s not too far from it.
Though I think this should have a little more appeal to non-fans than the 2D games. As Tim has observed, it’s probably not enough to win people over on its own. I can see it working for those who are curious but have found the 2D games kind of inaccessible.
It balances that off by pissing off the Gabes of the world: the kind of people who screamed and swore when SNK started making games for systems other than the NeoGeo. Then again, SNK pisses them off every year anyway by not just repackaging KOF’98 and selling it again. So nothing new there.
That’s more or less what’s going on. The framework is already down. All they’re doing — all they need to do — now is add(ing) to it. Refining it. Fixing the obvious problems.
It’s a really good start. With some (though honestly not a lot of) work they’ll have something maybe around the level of Dead or Alive 2, only with a bunch of characters and much more personality.
As I said earlier, had this game been released for the Dreamcast, it would have been considered a contender alongside Soul Caliur and DoA2. Not a winner, if you had to make a hard either-or choice. It would be visible as an alternative, however, and one more good 3D(ish) fighter for those who want some variety.
It’s starting about five years too late. Hard to really blame SNK for that, though. I get the feeling they’ll catch up soon, with a start like this.
Not that I know anything about KOF series, but this game seems like it’s similar to Lament of Innocence in that it’s trying to work out a decent system for translating the game into 2D before refining it and doing something really interesting with it.
Not dissimilar. Except as a game on its own right, MI is far more successful. I can enjoy it for what it is as well as I am encouraged about what paths it opens.
Lament of Innocence is a much rougher sketch. Igarashi still has a lot of work to do, to turn it into anything substantial.
The KOF storyline isn’t that grand, epic, and intertwining when you think about it though.
The grand and epic part comes mainly from it combining several different series, and the intertwining is mainly between characters created specifically for KOF. Fatal Fury characters attend, but they never seem to tie into the “real” storyline or intermix beyond a few spinoff team appearances. AOF characters attend, but they are there for comic relief. Even several of the KOF-specific characters don’t really tie into much of anything else.
As for distinguishing itself from the flock, SNKP would pretty much be doing what Namco did years ago with Soul Edge. Telling story through weaponmaster mode and even having interactive endings to further things. And when Soul Calibur came around, the official ending for Soul Edge had a bit of character intertwining going on. Too bad Namco chose to abandon that approach later, to the point that the SC2 endings were short what-ifs that sometimes were barely story and weaponmaster mode was some whacked out alternate universe that only shared character graphical designs with the “real” storyline.
What irks me is the amount of people that play it at school say that they play it because it’s really, really fun to play — but people still give it crap reviews. I thought how fun the game was factored into how good the game was, or am I wrong?
SNK’s 3D start was Buriki One, Wild Ambition, and the two SamSho 64 games. Actually a decent start at the time itself. The main problem being that they felt five years too late even then. (That the real HNG64 was no where near as powerful as SNK had claimed might have had some factor as well.)
And their storyline start… Well, they’ve drifted pretty far from the old days when they really cared about story. SamSho3 ditched story concerns in favor of making the game a more mass market appeal, and the series never really recovered. SamSho0/5 is the nail in the coffin that they only care about the story in a token way (like making Rera “official”). KOF storyline went wonky after 98, though with 2003 they are trying to return to something that works at least. Garou cared about story, but is currently starting to collide with KOF.
It is fun. Whenever I’m not caught in the middle of a twenty-hit combo that kills me before I even get a chance to move. Then I begin to scream. Otherwise, I enjoy it lots.
It reminds me of a Saturn game. Not graphically. Something about the way it thinks. Can’t pinpoint why, exactly.
Also, I just unlocked Rock’s profile. Yeah, this definitely takes place in an alternate timeline. In this version of events, Rock grew up in an orphanage. It was only when he was an adult that he chanced to meet Terry and teamed up with him.
That works.
Yes. That’s a different SNK, though. Almost a completely different group of people. This game comes from nowhere, effectively.
I was thinking about the Buriki thing. Now that SNK has a 3D program going on again (rebuilt from scratch, more or less), that’s a series they could explore more. I never played the first game; I hear it’s actually pretty good. Some of the character designs are decent, too.
The KOF story, as far as it goes, has been getting more vague as the years go by. While the NESTS era did away with character aging and started to pull the series in a different direction from Garou, the current series does away with precise character AGE altogether (I guess to help blur the lines and explain why Terry is suddenly older and why Bao will probably be close to an adult whenever he returns, after all these years of stasis). And it pretty much severs ties with Garou, by making Geese still alive with no explanation at all.
However, within each series there is a certain level of coherence. Garou does its own thing. KOF does its own. Same with AOF. And Buriki. And Last Blade. They’re all in the same multiverse, as it were, and some version of each timeline exists in each of the others (mostly). It’s just not something you can point at and say “this is real, and this is not”.
Maximum Impact is yet another splinter to the SNK multiverse, one step away from KOF which is itself one step away from Garou.
It’s best illustrated with a tree, I guess.
MI pretty much severs itself with both of the earlier series over the Rock issue (although there’s plenty else to wonder about). See my reply elsewhere in this thread, on that matter.
All the same, that does not mean that the events and ideas in MI will not have their shadows or reflections in the other parallel universes. Seems little can go on in SNK-land without causing bubbles elsewhere. I’ve a feeling some of the stuff here will show up in the main KOF series, sooner or later.
That’s both true and not, somewhat.
Every team effectively has its own storyline. That storyline tends to remain constant from game to game. Yet the various story threads do not always meet each other on a direct level, and not all of them are directly related to the main plot of that particular chapter.
At different times, the threads will wind more tightly or more loosely. The Ikaris, for instance, were vitally important during the NESTS saga. There’s been something big simmerng under the surface with the Psycho Soldiers since ’99. That’s likely to come to the fore at any time. Even the AOF team is starting to get more affected, as of ’03.
As the series goes along, SNK has tried to pull the threads in closer and closer. It seems like with the current storyline, they’re building a climactic situation where just about everyone finally has an important role to play, in one way or another.
And with that, if it does come together as it looks like it will, it kind of justifies the earlier meandering.
For instance. Well. Something I particularly like is K”s role. His story was effectively over, with 2001. He had no reason to stick around in the series — yet suddenly he’s important again, in a way. He has become the “backup Kusanagi”, in case something goes wrong. He’s not at all thrilled with the idea. He’s just being used, again. Yet, now he has a purpose for being.
So. As far as the plot goes, that whole NESTS business wasn’t for naught, because it produced K’. And it looks like he’s going to be a vital part of what’s coming.
The story is developing into a certain shape. It’s finding its way. And it looks like it, indeed, is finding its way toward something rather grand and epic.
also in this alternate world, rock has a cowboy hat.
rock’s cowboy hat is a monster.
have you beaten any of the challenges yet? me and drew beat all except three. the last challenge, the fucking impossible one, is not one of the three we didn’t beat. because we rocked.
yeah, duke is a son of a bastard. i think i lost about fifty times the first time i played against him on hard.
once you figure the tricks out, he’s not so hard.
it’s that damn special that drains half your life, is (nearly) unblockable, and . . . sorry, i left this sentence for about ten minutes.
yes — his special meter never depletes. that’s not nice. i mean, i’d consider that cheating. if, as terry, i could do AA YUU OkKEEE over and over and OVER again . . . yeah, i’d be able to beat anyone three dozen times in a row, too.
I’ve beaten a fair number of them. The first two pages of them, in fact. And five on the third page. I’m not sure I can beat any more without another shot of scream juice.
Rock wears the hat as well as Leona doesn’t wear her gas mask.
Duke reminds me of Geese as much as the game reminds me of Fatal Fury. Which is to say, not quite. Almost.
I put the horns and the bat-wings on him. I figure he needs them.
This game is teaching me how to do combos better. Sort of. The mission mode could be a little more instructive. It goes quickly from “hit your opponent ten times” to “do a thirty-hit combo within ten seconds while your life is draining and an irate armadillo is placed down your (the player’s) boxer shorts”.
I haven’t beaten that one yet.
I am still on the fence about getting this game. Had I know about the hat that would have sealed the deal for me, but alas, no longer is the hat available. Anyways, I friended you.
I wonder if there are people out there who care about the continuity of, say, the Gang Bang Girl movies…
Actively?
Yeah, Rock looks pretty great in…
Oh. That hat.
Yeah. It’s a nice hat.
I can’t get past mission 2.
which probably shows something about my skills at this game.
You might want to skip around a little. Even missions which seem easy sometimes can be obnoxiously hard, for no apparently good reason.
Expect to scream, lots. I’m a quiet man, mostly. Oh god, did this game make me scream.