The King of Fighters XII

Considering the number of sequels that SNK has deemed necessary to bestow upon us, we figure it should have finally perfected its King of Fighters formula. Unfortunately, this 12th installment (a port from Japanese arcades) doesn’t get it quite right.

The King of Fighters XII gives us everything we’ve come to expect from the long and storied franchise: Six hand-drawn fighters per match meeting with basic arcade-style fighting, all set around hand-drawn backgrounds. Problem is, the aesthetics are disconcerting. The backgrounds tend to be very different artistically from the characters, and most of the time they’re way too busy. Even if we wanted to focus on the somewhat dull and awkwardly controlled battle at hand, it’s rendered almost impossible by the huge amount of animation in the background. Throw that on top of slow-moving and uninteresting characters, and you’ve got a brawler that hasn’t gotten the polish a truly good fighter needs.