 |
Review: Garou: Mark of the Wolves (alternate) |
Thanks to Agetec, US and Japanese fans get a port of the highly anticipated Neo Geo Arcade and Console game, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves in the US. While Garou is technically a sequel to the highly popular Fatal Fury game series, it’s more like a spin-off. The basic storyline in Garou is that it follows the trail of a young man known as Rock Howard, A highly energetic young man, who is haunted by a dark past, and evil lineage. He was raised by Terry Bogard, the only returning Fatal Fury character, who steps aside to take the role of co-star in this installment.
The presentation in the home installment is no different from the neo-geo home version, aside from a little fan service that was included for loyal DC owners in the form of a Gallery mode. In Gallery mode, you start with a set amount of artwork from the game, and by completing the game with various characters, you unlock more eye-candy.
As far as in-game presentation goes, I wouldn’t go as far as to call this game “super-slick,” but it’s definitely well-put-together. The game starts out with an amazingly well-animated intro, clean artwork and fabulously orchestrated music. When you are playing the game, before each match, you are greeted by your opponent in a special animated intro, outlining their stage, the character, the location in south-town and the fighting style displayed by your opponent.
It’s pretty cool and original the way that it’s done, however, there is something about it that just SCREAMS mediocrity, I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there. Maybe it’s the gay 70s game show screen-to-screen wipes in-between rounds, or perhaps it’s the funky and inconsistent match-over artwork.
The BIGGEST thing about the presentation however, is this single sequence, after your second match where Grant (a sub-boss of the game) seems to be MASTURBATING for about 15 seconds, only to be followed up with what seems to be, at least based on the many hentai videos that I’ve uh… studied, a RAGING ORGASM. This is the text that this strange sequence is accompanied with:
“Aahhh…”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
“OOH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWD!!!!!!!!”
Yes, G-A-W-D. WHAT.THE.FUCK!? I find that to be EXTREMELY creepy. The only thing that could have made this sequence more inappropriate is if he followed that up with, “YEAAAAAAAARGH NIGGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Anyway, the presentation of the game is pretty impressive, some of the little things are the individual win quotes that are exclusive to each opponent, the character specific win icons, the ability to choose between two special taunts at the end of each match and of course, in true SNK fashion, if you read closely, you’ll find a great deal of mistranslations, misspellings and strangely worded phrases to keep you on your toes and making jokes about such and such character’s homoerotic tendencies for days.
The characters in this game are pure SNK OWNAGE, this game has some of the most inspired character designs I’ve seen in a game, at the same time however, some characters are way off the mark and SNK should be disbanded (oh yeah :\) for even letting shit like this pass. I’ll go ahead and give everyone at least a sentence’s worth of my time. This will be long and boring, and I’ll give the main characters a great deal of my time, so just jump to the characters you like most if you want, I’ll boldify their names for easy navigation.
I’m going to start with the “star” of the game, Rock Howard, the orphaned son of Geese, raised by Terry Bogard, the murderer of his father. When I imagine Rock Howard, I imagine him as a pretty young teenager with a lot of problems, I see him as a quiet introvert who just likes to spend his days wandering around inside of his own head, trying to figure out why life is so fucked up. I don’t see him as an eloquent speaker, or even much of a winner in life, but thanks to Terry, he is a damn good fighter, and being a fatherless child, I would imagine that he gets into a great deal of fights. Anyway, Rock’s character design is RIGHT ON THE MARK. He looks totally awesome, the only thing that I would change about him is that I would tuck in his uber-faggy shirt. It’s almost a belly shirt for goodness sakes, he is ASKING for DEEP ANAL PENETRATION. Rock’s moves are a hybrid of what I would assume that Geese taught him as a child, and what Terry showed him through adolescence.
Moving on, Terry Bogard is extremely bad ass too. He’s totally transformed over the years, gotten a little bulkier, abandoned the ponytail and the hat, and seems to have learned a lot from his well traveled days as a King of Fighters competitor. In terms of attacks, he doesn’t seem to have learned too many new things, but he has indeed refined his style with a finesse and perfection just not apparent in any of his KOF incarnations. I think that this is Terry at his best, perhaps the only other incarnation that even comes close to this Terry in terms of sheer power is his KOF99 self. Garou Terry has abandoned his Rising Tackle, in exchange for a much more prioritized Power Dunk, and he has refined his Power Charge into a 3-hit sequence of attacks that do reasonable damage alone but a great deal when combined. There was a change to the vocals of his Power Wave in the US version of Garou however, that I find highly disappointing. In the Japanese Garou and Arcade/Neo Geo US Garou, Terry clearly says, “FUCK YOU!” when throwing out his wave, in the US version, they ripped his “POWAH WEEEVU!!!” vocal, directly from KOF99, in place of the obsinity. Very anal… understandable, but anal nonetheless.
Other mentionable characters are the Kim Brothers, these two brothers are the polar opposites of each other, and they are the game’s representation of the Yin Yang. Jae Hoon is his father’s son, a hero full of work-ethic and humble strength. Dong Hwan however, the older of the two is trifling and loves to play around and gamble, his fighting style is a far more relaxed Tae Kwon Do, and he has recklessly abandoned the training that his father gave him, in favor of his own techniques. While these characters are sort of palette swaps, they have extremely different attacks and are both very interesting and fun to play in their own ways.
On the more upsetting side of the character design line, is Hokutomaru, this little guy just SCREAMS flaming FAGGOT. He is apparently Mai Shiranui’s little brother, and he is a hybrid of Mai and Andy, with his own cheap little tactics thrown in. His moves are sheer high-priority OWNAGE, he is full of spunk, carries a tendo stick and has the ability to disappear at the drop of a hat. His character design is pathetic, he wears what seems to be a modified potato sack, and a bath-towel.
Another character with a design that I didn’t like much aesthetically was Freeman. Freeman is the dark goth from England, and is a slasher/murderer/rapist apparently. While his design is pretty gay, his movement and attacks, while complimenting his style, actually own my bones. He has a raging demon type of move, that, if you attack him during it, he automatically rapes you, however, if you don’t move at all, nothing happens, think of Lin from KOF2000, in fact, these two characters share a great deal of similarities.
Next up is Gato, or Cat in spanish, he is a mysterious Kung Fu master with a close relationship to another character in the game, his design is pretty cool, not too flashy, not terrible, and his attacks are cool too, the designs of this character stuck VERY CLOSELY to kung fu and created a character who is not only faithful to his style, but is also a RIOT to use. However, I discount this character, because for some reason, he reminds me a GREAT DEAL of that aZn FAGGOT in Pamela Anderson’s show, VIP… and just… UGH… I wish I could meet him and show him Goatse he makes me fucking want to VOMIT.
Ok, back to reality, Hotaru is a HILARIOUS character. She is a cute design, think Chibi Chun-li. This character is OBVIOUSLY SNK’s downright CRIMINAL attempt to market to child pornographers and all of the Card Captor Sakura Hentais out there as well. I say this because of one move, she has an attack where she mounts her opponent, and in her S. power, she ORGASMS on top of them, and in her P. Power she has a raging multiple. I don’t know what SNK was thinking when they approved this attack, but the fact of the matter is, I can’t stop looking at it.
Tizoc/Griffon Mask is a BAWLIN character, think King from Tekken, that seems to be who he’s roughly based on, he’s a powerful, burly luchador who fights in a similar fashion to Zangief from Street Fighter, but is far more mobile. Tizoc was one of the first characters that I learned in the arcade, and his power far surpasses any other character, as it’s not uncommon for him to do 25% damage in one attack. Tizoc’s design isn’t too awe-inspiring, but he’s definitely an enjoyable addition to the cast of characters.
Kevin Ryan is a SWAT TEAM member in New York and all of his attacks WREAK of terrible in terms of looks and design, but strangely enough, they are highly effective and he is definitely a force to be reckoned with in the game. His design borders on weak, but just makes the cut on my tolerance gauge, but I confess, I don’t use him much and I haven’t come across anyone that does.
Of course, I can’t go without mentioning KHUSHNOOD BUTT, or Marco Rodriquez. This guy rocks the fucking HOUSE. Let me describe him, he is a hardcore, afro-brazilian Kyokugenryu martial artist with a POMPADORE, who trained DIRECTLY UNDER Ryo Sakazaki. His attacks are all overpowered Shoto ph33r. This guy is fully packed, if there was anyone who could be IDed for overcompensation due to lack of PENILE MEAT, it’s definitely Khushnood Butt.
Now, the STRANGEST of the characters, has to be BONNE JENET, now, I don’t know if SNK did this on purpose, but her name bears a striking resemblance to the murdered, child-exploit victim, Jean Bonet-Ramsey, now, if you pronounce the names, and even switch the letters around, you’ll see what I’m talking about. I find this extremely creepy, considering both her age, the game’s time frame, her blonde hair, and her fondness for overdoing it on the make-up end. I guess we’ll never know for sure if SNK is just a bunch of weird creeps or if this is an accident, but it sure fucking gives me the willies. She’s a mediocre character, in my opinion.
Considering the excellent animation of the characters in this game, the backgrounds sincerely disappointed me. The backgrounds are for the most part single-layer, meaning that no matter what moves you make, or what side of the screen you’re on, the angle of the stage doesn’t change in the slightest bit, now that’s just sloppy, SNK, I’m disappointed in that. However, I give them a great deal of credit, because out of the 3 possible rounds that you can fight, the majority of the stages have changes in them, ranging from slight to significant, and that’s ownage. Hokutomaru’s stage is by far the most impressive in the game, if you consider this, if you fight all 3 rounds you can see the drama that unfolds after Moriya and Kaede from Last Blade 2 get into a little skirmish with a policeman after a minor fender-bender due to them paying attention to the street brawl between such and such adult and the homeless kid in the potato sack.
This is where this game shines, this game has solid, intellectual and extremely enjoyable gameplay, all that you’ve come to expect from SNK and more. This game is far different from any other Fatal Fury, and even from SNK’s HUGE success, KOF. The gameplay here abandons the usual great deal of abilities for a more rigid, purist fighting style, sort of mimicing a Street Fighter game. There are no multi-plain, Fatal Fury style battles here, players head to head until the death. As I said, the mobility of the characters isn’t as free as KOF, but the characters still have a pretty decent share of universal abilities. Depending on the character, he might dash or run, each character has a top-to-bottom attack, performed by pressing AB together, or a bottom-to-top attack, performed by pressind down+AB.
This game runs on the TOP system. TOP stands for Tactical Offense Positioning, which basically is a sub-gauge that takes a third of your fighter’s gauge and can be placed in either the beginning third, the middle third or the final third of your life gauge, and it increases your attack power, lets you recover life periodically throughout the TOP area, and grants you the ability to use a special move previously unavailable to you, known as a “TOP Attack.” A TOP Attack is performed by pressing CD together, and depending on the character, it can be high damage and priority, to utterly retarded. Some TOP attacks trail shadows behind you like supers, and other just look like an entirely new special move. Another use of the TOP attack is the great ability that it grants you to guard crush easily.
Another mode that was born of this game, and has been imported to CVS2 is known as the Just Defense maneuver. Defensive move is the equivalent of an SF3 parry, except that you tap back instead of forward, just before the attack hits you, and the window for success is a little bigger, making it a little easier to perform that a parry. The benefits of this move a few, but great. First off, if you Just Defend any attack, you recieve a couple of pixels of life back, and if you are good, you can just defend multi-hit supers such as Hokutomaru’s fireball and regain a great deal of life. Another ability granted is the ability to guard cancel. The last benefit is that your blocking gauge isn’t decreased.
The last two special features of this game are Braking and Fakeout attacks. Braking is like putting on the brakes after the beginngin frames of a move, each character can brake one or two special moves and this allows them to get out of danger at a set point of an attack, or just cut an attack off early for a l33t juggle. Braking is done by pressing AB as soon as you’ve entered your special commands.
Fakeout attacks are awesome, each character has two fake out attacks, down+AC or fd+AC, these attacks actually have more benefits than you think, not only can you fake your opponent out and fool them into an overzealous attack, but you can also do a fake out after a close C or D, and immediately follow up with another attack, fakeouts are like cancels and create the ability to start HUGE combos.
This game’s AI is AMAZING, try cranking the game up to Level 8 and playing through, it really tests your skills, the opponents are expert calibur, follow no patters, have no exploitable weaknesses and are primed to exploit ALL of your weaknesses. The game seems to learn which moves you use abundantly and makes the necessary changes in play style from character to character, and if that’s not enough for you, consider this, with every match, the damage that you do to your opponent DECREASES, and the damage that your opponent does to you INCREASES, REALLY forcing you to step up your gameplay if you want to win. By match seven, you are doing half of normal damage, and your semi-finals opponent is doing double damage to you, it’s gets really hard. I can see how it would frustrate some, but this is the kind of cheapness that I have yearned for in an SNK game, this is more of an old skool Capcom kinda tactic. To be honest, I haven’t cleanly beaten a level 8 game yet.
Now onto the game’s sound and music. This is sort of where the game starts to break down. The game’s sound is pretty choppy and the voices aren’t too clear, not to mention how fucked up Terry’s voice actor is, he sounds the special kid in High School that you always saw at lunch, but he wasn’t in anyone’s classes… don’t act like you don’t know who I’m talking about. The music also isn’t too memorable, it doesn’t compare at all to what we’ve come to expect from SNK after great musical feats like KOF’s soundtracks. It’s not even so much that the music is bad, it’s more that the quality of it reminds me of the Midi tracks on old nintendo cartridges, I’ve heard better sound come out of my Gameboy Advance. The one thing that I have to give to SNK is how the tracks definitely both fit the stages and the characters that they belong to, I have to give credit for that.
The worst thing about the DC sound, and this is big, by the way, sometimes if you attack, the character’s voice will be out of synch with the attack, and lag between 1/10 of a second to about 3 seconds after the attack, this is a HORRIBLE oversight and whoever let this pass should have his throat slit with an electric meat knife.
This game is pretty abundant in terms of extras, it offers two impressive, bosses, playable from the start and the home version has a nice survival mode too that can be closely compared to the DOA2 survival system, where you fight characters, and based on combos or cool defeats, you earn power-ups from them or extra life, very innovative for a 2D fighter and a lot of fun too. In a 2 player game, the game will hate on you if you’re a skilled player, and offers these benefits to the underdog:
· If you accumulate ten wins, your opponent can charge his gauge with taunts
· Twenty wins, and your opponent start the match with a full gauge
· If you are powerful enough to get 30 wins, your opponent’s various gauges replenish and raise faster
· In the event that you get 40 wins, your challenger’s life bar refills automatically
· Finally, if you get 50 wins, your Challenger’s bar is one large TOP area, a la Kain.
There are many other things in this game to find out too, I won’t outline them all here, but try using the left hand player side as much as you can, and also, try taunting in certain stages for certain surprises.
In Closing, I want to say that Garou is an amazing game in itself, and the DC version is definitely a worthy purchase, it’s not as good as the MVS version, the sprites are a little bigger and more pixelated, and the coloration of the special moves doesn’t have as radiant of a look to it, other than that it’s a solid game and I would suggest that you all give much respect to Agetec for bringing this game to DC and to SNK for bringing this game to the fans.
