King of Fighters XII Hands-On Impressions
The long-awaited fighting sequel from SNK Playmore finally made its debut at the 2008 Amusement Machine Show, and we got to play it.
After two long years of silence, SNK Playmore has finally unveiled a playable version of King Of Fighters XII at the Amusement Machine Show in Japan, which will continue to run at the Makuhari Messe convention hall in Chiba Prefecture until September 20. Needless to say, GameSpot was there to check it out.
Development on KOFXII seemed to be progressing well, and the build shown at the AM Show was already 60 percent complete. Character animations are extremely smooth, and our experience with the game blasted away any of our doubts that the developer has just thrown its best animations into the previously released trailer to make it look good. According to the game's producer, there are about 400 to 600 animation frames per character, and it showed. You can see animation even in detailed parts such as the hair, and the characters are animated even when they're crouching in neutral position, not doing any sort of attack. Up until now, Capcom's Street Fighter III series has been considered by many to be the epitome of 2D fighting game graphics. KOFXII is of the same caliber, but with much larger sprites.
That said, for gamers looking forward to smooth, high-res character graphics that resemble an animated drawing, here's a big surprise: KOFXII is pixelly. But before you get disappointed, rest assured that the graphics are well detailed and that it's simply due to the philosophy of the developers. The artists at SNKP decided to purposely go with hand-dotted, pixelated art sprites rather than the cel-shaded line art style used in titles like the Guilty Gear X series and Arcana Heart, because that's how KOF has always been.
One of the things that may not be too obvious from seeing KOFXII's trailer is that, as previously mentioned, the characters in KOFXII are very big. In fact, the game zooms out when you're far away from each other, reminiscent of the Art of Fighting series. In terms of data, the character sprites are quadruple the size of their old NeoGeo era. With the size of their sprites, the artists were able to detail in natural-looking wrinkles on the characters' clothing, not to mention their facial texture and expressions.
The characters in KOFXII still have their KOF feel to them, because most of them have kept their traditional outfits and moves. The sprites have been redrawn from scratch, rather than being blown up and traced like in KOF '94 Re-Bout. The art style, especially the coloring, is distinct and strong compared to previous KOF games. While the male fighters in the KOF series have traditionally looked like slim fashion models rather than martial artists, it's a bit different in KOFXII. The fighters look more buff and muscular, and you can almost feel their weight, particularly due to the heavily colored art style and detailed shades. Athena, who's been criticized by some series fans as looking a bit chubby in KOFXII, actually seems normal-size in comparison to some of the other fighters.
The backgrounds in KOFXII are hand-drawn as well, rather than done in 3D like the recent home ports of SNKP games. The background animations loop and there aren't any interactive elements with the fighters, but they're drawn in high-resolution with detail. There are a lot of spectators in the background and the stages are based in various locations of the world, making the game feel like a real KOF tournament, similar to KOF '94 and KOF '97. Four stages were shown in the AM Show version, which didn't have location names but looked like a street terrace in France, a food market in China, a piazza in Russia, and a ritual ground in Egypt.
The effects for special moves have also been redrawn from scratch, and they animate extremely smoothly, complementing the character graphics. That also goes for the effects in the background, like flames in the Egyptian stage. There also seems to be some form of alpha channel in the game. When characters move into a shadowy part of the stage, they actually get casted by the shadow. If a body is partially in the shadow, only that part will get shaded.
KOFXII doesn't have as many characters as previous entries, perhaps because the artists simply can't draw enough in their given development time. The game will feature a total of 20 characters by default, which is actually four characters fewer than even the original KOF '94.
Eleven of the characters were playable at the AM Show: Kyo, Terry, Ryo, Ash, Robert, Kim, Ralf, Shen-wu, Benimaru, Leona, and Athena. That leaves nine characters to be unveiled, though we've already been given hints to three of them. In previous events, SNKP has shown illustrations of Elisabeth (from KOFXI), and in the KOFXII leaflet given out at this AM Show, Iori is printed on the cover. There's also a big wrestler with a blue mask facing his back on the same leaflet, which seems to be Raiden from the Fatal Fury series.
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