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Review: King of Fighters: Maximum Impact |
Ah, King of Fighters. We all know what it is, and half of us love it.
I think.
Right.
At any rate, we do know what it is, and probably that there are ten “proper” King of Fighters games under SNK belt, each being numbered as a year since 1994. Maximum Impact is the first game to deviate from the trend set by the series, not only in name, but really in practically all aspects of the game.
The most obvious change (and if it isn’t, I’m suprised your eyesight’s good enough to read this) is that they’ve taken KoF to three dimensions, and actually made a point of incorporating some Z-axis movement, which although not completely foreign to two dimensional games - think Fatal Fury - is certainly more limited there. What exactly this means for gameplay is something I haven’t quite figured out, since I’m more prone to trying to hit the other guy before they hit me, but, hey, I can dodge fireballs!!!
…
So, yes, good feature. It’s probably a good thing that SNK decided to keep with the idea of Z-axis movement, considering that nearly all fighting games created with polygons these days incorporate such, and at the very least it’s probably kept Maximum Impact from earning the utterly ridiculous “2.5D” moniker. And more seriously, though there is some truth to the notion that I’m not exactly quick to get out of the way of things, I don’t find MI’s method of sidestepping to exactly encourage my use of it. I’ve always been bothered by the concept of a button just for moving along a particular axis, and MI uses essentially that system. The plus side is that they have integrated it with the roll command which has been ever-present since 1996, adding just a slight bit of familiarity to this new evasion ability.
Another quickly apparent change from the other KoF games, is the addition of “Stylish Combos,” which strike me very heavily as being another feature borrowed from 3D fighters. It is also probably part of the reason that the game’s engine is so combo-friendly, or a feature added because they wanted heavily comboability present - it’s hard to say, but both seem perfectly plausible. At any rate, Stylish Combos are simply canned combo strings, a collection of buttons tapped in sequence for a special combo just like you’d see in Tekken, Virtua Fighter, or the like. There’s a healthy arsenal for each character, numbering on average between 15 and 20 SCs, though going as high as 25, or as low as 10. In all, however, each character seems to have a perfectly reasonable number, allowing for some nice personal toying in how they are used.
And indeed, they all seem to be used to great effect. As mentioned earlier, Maximum Impact is friendly to combos, allowing all sorts of cancels and very easy juggling with a whole mess of moves. I’ve seen people chain a fairly lengthy Stylish Combo into a special (or two, which feels incredibly bizarre to me, someone who chiefly plays games with three or four hit combos), blast someone with a super - and hit them with another stylish combo. This sort of thing isn’t exactly easy to do, of course, which is very fortunate, considering it will do a fair chunk of damage. Definitely, however, the presence of these combos fits the engine, with everything moving at a blazingly fast and heavy pace making this all fit together and complement each other pretty well.
The unfortunate thing about the driving pace of this game, however, chiefly reared its head in the single player mode, with you moving through and simply fighting your way to the boss. Obviously, these are in any fighting game, but Maximum Impact unfortunately felt the need to put a cutscene between every fight, where a very ugly and very stupid-looking man tells you who your next opponent is, AND NOTHING ELSE if you’re not playing one of the characters who were newly created for Maximum Impact. It makes single play grind to an annoying halt between every match, severely throwing the flow of play off and clearly for no good reason. It is perhaps a minor gripe, but one that’s bugged the shit out of me nonetheless.
Otherwise, being played alone, there’s the mission mode, which is consistently an awful experience in any game they’re in, making you complete horrendously difficult objectives for unlockables (in this case, new palettes for each character model in the game). Maximum Impact makes this doubly irritating by having it be the ONLY way to get these unlockables, unlike something like Guilty Gear, where there were two other ways to unlock all the game’s features. It’s a pointless addition, and has really only ever served to frustrate me.
Finally, there is the obvious and important cornerstone of any fighting game - playing with other people. Honestly, I have to admit at this point that for all I wanted to like Maximum Impact, it was when I got around to playing this with others that I realized I really simply did not. There’s certainly nothing amiss about two-player play, but rather that something just feels amiss with the entire game. It’s simply lacking the KoF spirit, the KoF magic - I don’t feel like I am playing a King of Fighters game. It’s possible this is because of the combo-friendly engine (in fact I suspect that it, or its effects are a great part of why it bothers me), and it certainly doesn’t seem to have translated well from 2D, either. Perhaps this is the worst part, too, because although I’ve stated that it doesn’t feel like KoF, you can feel its shell here. There’s a ghost of it, a wisp, and it makes it all that much more depressing to play.
What really hurts about it even more is how wonderful the aesthetics are, at least for something from SNK. This is simply the best King of Fighters has ever looked, period, with graphics that are at least reasonable for this day and age, characters looking like they belong on the PS2 for once, and all their moves, effects, everything, coming through beautifully. Ryo’s Haoh Sho-Koh Ken has never looked so imposing before, and Terry’s Power Geyser is a thing of marvel. We get to see Mai’s back side for once (and let me tell you, it’s quite lovely), and… we get a new look for Iori.
Did you catch that?
A new look for Iori.
Yes. Really.
It’s really amazing, honestly, for me to be able to only have minor gripes about the look of KoF. All that I can even think of right now is Kyo’s standing animation looking a bit stiff and unusual, and I can hardly say that matters considering that you will really be doing very little standing about in this game.
The sonic side of matters isn’t bad, either. SNK is once again working with the most advanced technology they’ve ever developed on, and for once we get high-quality music in the original version of the game. It’s a little disappointing they didn’t turn out something on the level of ‘99 or 2K, but at the same time that’s a very tall order to live up to. The soundtrack they turned out for this game was certainly decent, and it’s never something that’s bothered me while playing. The voices are a bit more of an interesting experience, as, well, most of them are not exactly good in the traditional sense, but I’ve sure had a blast with them. There are only a few that are truly outright awful, a couple that are honestly pretty good (Duke, Alba, and Hyena all come to mind), and the rest are simply… fun.
I expect I’ll put this game into a PS2 every couple of months for the rest of my life just to hear Ralf yell “A REAL MAN’S PUNCH!”
Honestly, these last bits I went over make me wish I liked MI better. It’s so sleek and shiny and so very with the times that I want to hug SNK, but then I play the game and fall back into a rather indifferent feeling about the whole thing. Sorry, SNK. I really, really hope you do better next time.
