Article by Lois Lane
Is King of Fighters XIII really the “king of fighters?”
Okay, so I’ll confess that I didn’t start with KOF ’94. I knew and saw of ’94 and up, but the first I ever own and played seriously was ’99. while then I went back and tried to the big games, and establish my self into the later on games, though I had missed out on 2003. KOF XII was thought to be some sort of reboot and throwback to the older games, but felt more like a scorn of what SNK had gifted with the series so far. A beta, if you will. It made me nervous when XIII was announce, but I had put some faith into the game and, upon playing the arcade make public one time, I saw some light at the end of the tunnel.A much larger rota, with my girl Yuri back. That’s right, I root for the underdog
Coming to consoles, KOF XIII isn’t merely just a port of the arcade release. It brings to the table balance changes to the entire roster, adds Saiki and Billy Kane, a ton of new modes, and some spiffy downloadable content with Classic Iori (Iori with the Power of Flames) and NESTS Kyo. There is online play…Yeah, let’s talk about that. It’s a helluva lot better than that so called online play for XII, but it’s still rather bad. Matches are difficult to get into, and soon as that lag hits, it’s pretty much time to sit back and grab a bag of popcorn. Okay, with that out of my system, let’s dive into this game, shall we?
You start the game up, and you see all of these modes to choose from. If you’re new to King of Fighters, or need to get yourself back into the groove, the Tutorial Mode is very quick and to the point. It covers everything you will need to know in terms of the basic fundamentals: Moving, attacking, guarding, and various reactions. It’s not as in-depth as BlazBlue’s Tutorial Mode, but it gets the job done. Every fighting game these days should have some sort of tutorial to introduce players, or reinforce veterans.
You think you’re ready to fight? Hit Arcade Mode for that classic fighting action. No need for story, just let your fists and feet (or head) tell the story. Do well enough and you may just unlock the console exclusive characters Billy Kane and Saiki (good luck with the latter). Let’s be honest, who plays fighting games and actually cares about story? (raises hand and looks around >.>) Story Mode is what it is, an actual story that continues where KOF XI left off. You can select various canon teams and take branching pathways to play the story out from many perspectives. There are of course bad endings should you lose during the course of the story. You will spend a bit of time going through Story Mode if you want to experience the full story and unlock gallery pieces.Now Mai, I know you’re happy that you’re in XIII, but diving headfirst into a powered fist doesn’t seem like a great idea honey…
Mission Mode has three different playing options. You can do Time Attack, in which you pick a character and fight the CPU with fixed conditions and go for the fastest time. Survival puts you against the CPU and you must continue to win until you run out of health. How far can you go? Trial Mode is a set of character-specific missions in which you must execute combos ranging from novice and easy to advanced and highly difficult. Each character has 10 missions, and you can unlock even more gallery pieces by doing them. You know what, I’m just going to say this now. You’re going to unlock gallery pieces from doing practically everything. Okay, there. I will say this, you will know a character should you manage to get all 10 done, because they really are difficult so good luck and have fun with that.
Customize is where you set your team, icon, and message for your profile. It is also where you can edit the colors on a character’s sprite. You get a couple rows of colors, and you get to edit various parts of a character’s sprite. For some characters, you can change parts of the sprite, like giving Yuri her ponytail or making it so Elisabeth’s jacket is open like it was in KOF XI. You will also notice four empty rows of colors. These can be unlocked by winning ten matches with a character. Every ten wins will unlock a new row, and there are four rows, so each character needs 40 wins in order to get all of the color edits. Looks like some characters will be missing colors xD
Playing online, you have the choice of player matches which don’t affect your ranking and ranking matches which affects your rank. You can also play with friends and all that jazz. I didn’t spend a lot of time online, given the less than stellar netcode that Atlus did say they are working on fixing so that’s all good. I’ll admit, I don’t play games much online unless I’m gaming it up with the buddies. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s much better than playing XII online.
Overall, I’d say the only problem I really ever gave, given that this is a fighting game, has to do with certain characters and properties of their moves. However, that doesn’t take away from KOF XIII being a fun, straight to the point fighter. There aren’t any gimmicks or modification modes, it’s just classic fighting with nothing but you and your skill. I really enjoy the interaction between characters outside of the story. The pre-fight intros are very hilarious to look at and it just further adds depth to characters and makes them feel more alive and you connect with them more.
Xelnia’s Wrap Up: King of Fighters XIII is a very solid title and an excellent addition to any fighting game collection. It offers a change of pace from the quick action of Marvel vs Capcom 3 and BlazBlue, and adds that extra polish that Super Street Fighter IV seems to be lacking. As much of a fighting game fan I am, I have a thing for fighters that require that extra level of patience and discipline to play. For the price entry of $ 50 bucks, I would say you’re getting quite a game. If you’re lucky, you may still end up with that King of Soundtracks extra, a 4-disc soundtrack bonus that arranges 15 years of King of Fighters music history. Sure, the online kind of sucks, but it’s still there and you can still fight people and, if it’s not good enough, you can always count on the computer on the hardest difficulty. Also, if you have $ 5 bucks, go grab the Classic Iori character DLC and be sure to look out for NESTS Kyo who will also cost $ 5 bucks. This game gets Xelnia’s Stamp of Approval and Recommendation.
The Mog Blog Score: 4/5
This review of King of Fighters XIII was done based on completion of Arcade Mode and Story Mode. Mission Mode was played, missions for 4 characters were done, online play was explored, and some time in customize was spent. The tutorial was also completed. The PS3 version was used for the review, with the Xbox 360 version being identical in all areas.
TheyCallMeJah.com
