The King of Fighters approaches the fighting genre in a slightly different way to Capcom’s Street Fighter series, it is still one on one fighting to the end but instead you have teams of three made up by any of the 22 characters on offer.

 

Many popular faces make a return to prove themselves in this latest version of the game including Andy and Terry Bogard, Joe Higashi and Ash Crimson plus a few new console exclusives in Mature and Elisabeth, each of which have their own fighting style and of course special moves to master. To become the King of Fighters your team needs to have the lowest overall time over the 5 fights, although if you make a mess of it you can replay fights once more to better your time.

 

 

The amount of bars on screen during a fight can be a little confusing to the casual gamer as there are so many things going on at once. As well as the usual health bar you have a critical counter gauge which rises with every hit you receive, once charged you can stun an opponent allowing for you to unleash a barrage of attacks. The power gauge increases with every successful attack you make and once maxed out you can pull off a super special move that can alter the flow of the fight to your favour.

 

There are only a few game modes available, the main arcade mode is over 5 fights, I am no fighter specialist but even on the default settings I finished the game in just over 10 minutes, which to me is far too short and offered no real challenge. The other main game mode is the online mode, here you can join rooms to play in winner stays on matches.

 

There appears to be plenty of people online at the moment but I had to wait a while for a fight as when the other players are fighting you are just looking at a boring waiting room screen. When the action finally took place it was very laggy and had some terrible slowdown, completely ruining the game. Just like the PS3 version I have tried playing against quite a few players and also played other Xbox games online and therefore am certain it is not my connection, but rather a fault with the games servers. Hopefully this is something that is looked at for a post-release update as it spoils an otherwise decent experience.

 

 

On early games the visuals looks stunning, the backgrounds have huge depth with loads going on, some picture in picture video screens in the stadiums, crowds of people gathering around and a great looking market scene. The characters also have some great detail with each animation hand drawn and well animated. However on closer inspection the characters have a strange fuzzy outline to them, almost making them disappear into the crisp HD background.

 

Overall King of Fighters XII has been a bit of a disappointment, with the release Mark of Garou on Xbox LIVE recently we remember how good this franchise was, sadly number XII does not live up to it. Oh well, we can always hope for lucky number XIII.