EvilNeil
24th April 2002, 11:54 AM
Depending on your outlook on this sort of thing - King of Fighters 2001 was either a brave new start for the series or its death knell. The first KOF game to be made not by alive-dead-alive SNK but by a Korean company named Eolith - as details were released things looked worse and worse, and when it finally hit arcades (to some degree, I've never seen it) general response was a crushing blow to the optimists and a Smugness and Ego +5 for the fatalists.
What I'm trying to say in my own confused little way is that KOF2K1 isn't a game to declare your love for from the top of a tall building. There are faults, weirdness and irritations all over the place, some of the series' greatest assets are conspicuous by their absence, and there's a distinct lack of that hard-to-define magic the best of the games possessed.
On the bright side it's not a total bust, there are a couple of good ideas, and the bane of the past two games - the increasingly puerile striker system has been toned down hugely - this single fact making up for a hell of a lot of the other flaws. So while I won't be ordering the MVS cart as I type (yep, another ROM review) - I won't be burning my SNK figures in the streets. It is Eolith's first fighting game and although they had a lot of their work done for them, they're still newcomers to the field, so to speak - so I'm willing to forgive them some of their mistakes.
So, where were we in the series? Two-Thousand saw renegade NESTS operative Zero attempt to gain control of the Zero Cannon in order to destroy the organisation. He failed and the various endings continued to give annoyingly little about the organisation away. Apart from introducing a couple of new characters it was actually a complete waste of time, but had damn fine art.
This year round, the world-famous KING OF FIGHTERS tournament is not a front for a nefarious scheme orchestrated by a deranged, power-hungry maniac ... sorry, I'm lying, it is a front for a nefarious scheme orchestrated by a deranged, power-hungry maniac really.
Originality aside - the storyline of 2K1 is most notable for being the END OF NESTS, yes, the guy in charge is revealed, their stupid goal is revealed and they get punched in the face and die at the end.
So, no more NESTS ... kind of sad in a way - though I preferred them when they were the faceless point of light that dropped ceiling on people they didn't like back in the old days - as opposed to the fashion disaster squad they end up as. Fans of vintage SNKglish will be glad to hear the dialogue - in both cut-scenes and win quotes - is as ridiculous as ever. Highlights this year include May Lee's "Fights you know you'll win are such piffle paffle, eh?", Iori's spectacular "Bring it on, noodkin!!!" and bonus points for the defeated end bosses' heart-rending "Urrgh... Is this the end... of lovable Igniz?"
The actual game is a strange mix of standard KOF gameplay, stolen ideas, damage control on past mistakes, plus some brand new mistakes thrown in for good measure. Strikers have been toned down so incredibly that for 90% of the game I forget they're even there. Eolith deserve respect for this - firstly returning the activation times to KOF'99 levels - in other words the 150 'active striker' infinites are gone (replaced instead with 150 bad play-testing infinites) - and secondly for removing the concept of 'striker stocks' altogether and making the summoning cost a level of super meter. It's this idea that practically removes the strikers from the game for me. I know I suck and everything - but I prize a level of meter and the chance to combo>DM or the DM's priority way over the chance to call some fool in. Add the fact the CPU never uses them (apart from the sub-boss) and it's possible to pretend they don't even exist quite convincingly.
In a further twist, one in no way influenced by the ratio system in Capcom's Capcom vs. SNK series - it's possible to break the ENGRAVED-IN-STONE LAWS OF KOF GAMES and customise the player:striker ratio. You can have a single player and three strikers, or two players and two strikers, or three players and one striker or four players and NO STRIKERS. For the first time ever a KOF match can go up to "round six" and, er, stuff. God I hate the word 'striker' now. It's lost all meaning for me. ;_;
This option also comes with various tactical repercussions. The less characters you have - the more strikers you have and the more super meter you get to play with. 1 player/3 strikers gives you fours levels of meter (or two SDMs in a row) - and considering the meter fills up in seconds is a pretty good deal. A single character will also do far more damage than a team - in fact with four charas/no strikers the damage an individual does is laughable, but sheer weight of numbers goes some way towards making up for it. I found myself gravitating towards 3/1 and 2/2 most of the time - preferring the damage advantage but too scared to gamble it all on a single character. The diversity also leads to differing match-up tactics depending on what the opponent is using.
Then there are 'Wire attacks' - moves which bounce the opponent off of the end of the screen, setting them up for further punishment. I found the choice of moves for the WA to be a little strange for some of the characters - some have pretty much no chance of ever landing them, or can't recover fast enough to follow up. Still, some do, and juggles and infinites = BAD. This isn't an original idea either - I remember doing something exactly the same in Sunsoft's Waku Waku 7, and it also shows up in that renowned tournament fighter Bishi Bashi Special.
Both 'counter mode' and 'armour mode' (as seen in '99 and '2000) are gone, hopefully for good, but to make up for it the last addition to the innovation sheet is actual, bona-fide, hiding in lockers in Capcom's design room super-cancelling. Although this showed up to some extent in KOF's '99 and '2000 (through the aforementioned Counter Mode) - 2K1 is the first game to feature it as a fully-fledged gameplay system, and despite my initial fears (OMFG KOF IS DYING) - it hasn't turned out as bad as I'd feared. It's not MvC2-style everything>everything, and is stricter in execution than even the SF3 games. Moves are hard to cancel because of the tiny cancel windows and enough attention has been paid to the game that not every hit ever turns into a guaranteed DM connection. It's also possible to cancel normals into normals in some cases - such as, bizarrely - Terry's Round Wave > Power Wave - again, a bit flashy, a bit un-KOF-like, but nothing really that ruins the game - at least, not as far as I'm concerned. It also ups the pace a little more, which is no bad thing.
KOF2K1 sees the introduction of a lot of new command inputs - many never seen before in a KOF game and some never seen before, anywhere. I'm a little puzzled why these changes were made, but they certainly add to the 'all new' feel of the game (something I felt 2K lacked) Some examples off the top of my head - K9999's SDM is D,F,DF+ABCD, and his two DMs are Raging Storm motions. Mary's Dynamite Swing has a ShunGokuSatsu motion (!) - A,A,Fwd,B,C to be exact, Iori's SDM is QCFx4 +AC and Ryo's SDM Ryuuko Ranbu is activated by "qcf + C,A". These strange motions take a little while to get used to, and even longer to pull off consistently. I still can't do Ryo's SDM at all reliably, the timing is a bitch.
While the removal of active strikers has toned down the more blatant related infinites/100%s that last year's game was plagued by - poor playtesting has opened the door for others. Angel for example can be juggled infinitely by certain, simple moves - which is actually MORE shameful than the omissions and laziness of last years' game. It doesn't seem to be as blatantly obvious as last time - for example I haven't done any infinites yet, but lazy testing is lazy testing, and as such is a shame to see, especially when it could have been so easily avoided.
Plenty of changes have been made on the character level too, again much more so than in KOF2000. Familiar characters have new moves, replaced or removed moves, commands changed, and in Andy's case - a new outfit! K' moves a lot faster, Mai has lost her fan throw DM and in its place is the rush>uppercut DM that 'alternate' Mai had in KOF98 and Hinako loses her sumo slaps and becomes a much more 'beginner friendly' character. Some of the changes are puzzling - why for example has Kim lost his CB - fwd + K move? - but some, such as a new DM for Choi, the switch from charge character to controller motion character for both Heidern and Robert (finally!) are very welcome indeed.
Despite all the changes I don't feel that any character has really been made unplayable or has been ruined beyond repair - though Kyo's ultra-retarded new Iori-grab-sprite DM is a damn close call.
Another year sees another team mix-up - aside from the Fatal Fury and Psycho Soldier teams - every team has been messed with to some extent, characters swapping over, or forming up new groups entirely. Iori is now teamed with Seth, Vanessa and Ramon; Kyo is back with Benimaru, Goro and Shingo - Whip has left the Ikari team and joined with K', Maxima and Lin.
Only two characters from 2000 are absent - Kasumi (boo) and Jhun. Hilariously Jhun isn't fighting with the Korean team this year because he was hit by a car while running to pick an Athena Asamiya poster off the wall.
So there are four brand new playable characters and the return of three old faces. Kula is playable right from the start - and she's accompanied by three new guys to make up the first, and last NESTS team.
K9999 (pronounced K-FOUR-NINE I believe) is the latest freaky clone warrior - not possessing a single elemental power like K' and Kula do, but instead having all sorts of weird biomechanical and psychic abilities. Bad storytelling if you ask me. His resemblances to AKIRA's Tetsuo character have been well-documented, as have his strange move set and tricky-but-powerful DMs so we'll move onto Foxy, she of the bizarre striped hairstyle and appearance in a couple of the KOF2K endings. Wielding a rapier-style sword, her moves consist mainly of stabs and slashes, with a cloak uppercut, stunning projectile and low rush attack to round her off. She also has a 'suicide' DM - which kills her and her opponent should it connect. I have to mention her taunt - the "Baka song", for it's sheer game-exploding awesomeness. Yes really.
The third new member is Angel, dressed in a skimpy, bizarrely futuristic outfit with all sorts of gaps and holes in it. Her play style - a complex, vaguely circular set of moves with various alternatives at each stage is reminiscent of the Tekken ten-string sequences - making her a tough to learn, but powerful and confusing opponent when played right (something I can't do.)
The new three members of the NESTS team all have such delightfully weird and demented move names. Foxy's HCB stab move is called the 'Tree of Beginning' and can be followed up with either a 'Memory of Noa' or 'The Seven Stars'. K9999's throws are labelled as "Get Lost!" and "Quit Playing!" his F+A is called "Shut Up!" and his gun DM is 'You Get Lost Too!" ... and Angel, well - her moves include such gems as 'The Unidentified Victim Consciousness', 'A Train to See Cherry Blossoms', 'A Garden to Play With Ghost' and 'Red Sky of Yaponesia' - pointless but fun.
The last new character replaces the hospitalised (gahahahaha) Jhun on Team Korea - the sprightly and decidedly lovable May Lee. Switching between "NORMAL" and "HERO" stances more like Streetfighter Alpha's Gen than Jhun, Ms. Lee uses some of Kim's standard moves along with some of her own creations. Her cute exclamations, plus her diverse attack options (and wide variety of infinites) make her a fun character.
Making their return to the series are XiangFei, Goro and Heidern - an odd choice, but still welcome nonetheless. All have new/changed moves, new voices and animations and er, Goro has a little kid - or at least a Mini-Goro that appears with him when the fight starts.
The bosses this year (for there are two - go sub-bosses!) are Original Zero, and CEO of NESTS himself, the mighty Igniz. Both are incredibly tough, especially if you're using 3 or 4 characters - the damage you deal compared to what you take is pitiful, and it's soul-crushing to lose three characters while having chipped off 3% of their life bar. With 1 or 2 characters the damage is a little more even, true there's still the overbearing cheapness they have.
Original Zero, apparently who last year's boss was a clone of (!!) is, get this - Zero's body (all cloak and spikes) with KOF'98 Omega Rugal's head on. More puzzling is the fact that in the cut-scene art OZ looks nothing like Rugal, he's got short, straight back-combed white hair and plain, slightly elderly-looking features - yet the sprite has Rugal's trademark wild long locks and manic grin. Tsk.
Fighting about a KOF airship, O. Zero is tough and cheap, with the typical huge damage/priority advantage SNK bosses have always had. He has two strikers (Krizalid from '99 and a black Lion) and either infinite super meter or a super meter so short it charges before it's been emptied. Fortunately like all SNK bosses he also has big holes in his AI and can be defeated with moderate ease before long.
Beating him sees the competitors arrive at NESTS orbiting space station (DGKNASDGLKNSADG) and after some incomprehensible exposition (he wants to do what why exactly?) sees the boss of NESTS cartel finally revealed. Forget any other SNK boss (even O. Rugal in 98) - Igniz is the single most monstrously overpowered creation in KOF history. Wearing an elaborate ornamental cloak, this long-haired, slightly effeminate-looking character wields a hidden whip and tosses huge energy blasts all over the place. He really shocked me when I first faced him - he seemed so unapproachable, so incredibly difficult to hit, to avoid - I lost count of the continues I used up fighting him and at first I just felt like he was a mistake, a bug or something that would be fixed in the final version. Little things like his uppercut, with it's whiff punishment protection make him a damn cheesy fight. Like OZ he's either got infinite meter or a tiny, tiny bar, because the frequency he tosses out DMs (including one that can take 90% of life from an R1 character) is truly frightening. What else? He's got an infinite (or at least a 100% juggle combo) that he KNOWS HOW TO USE, AND DOES. His recovery time is nigh on zero, his activation time for moves and supers is tiny - I swear I've done Terry's Power Geyser DM - and in the time after the DM flash where Terry pulls back his arm, he's reacted with his own super and killed me. Fuck.
Fortunately he's not indestructible - and slowly as days passed my defeats at his hand went from 30 to 20, then 10 and now I find I can beat him in one or two tries. He's got flaws like all bosses, and it's really just a case of hoping he won't infinite/super you, and will uppercut/super you when you're standing behind him.
For all his cheapness, Igniz is probably the best of the Eolith character designs, he's certainly cool to look at and has a neat voice, good BGM and even a nice-looking stage.
Though the whole encounter doesn't really resolve very much... the tiny scraps of plot revealed through the various endings don't actually reveal anything and Igniz's motives, plans and the reasons for his abilities are incredibly vague - making it overall a disappointing climax to the King of Fighters series' second big story arc.
You may have noticed I went straight into talking about the game this time round, instead of waxing lyrical about the graphics and sounds for nine-tenths of the review. This is because, well, because I'm actually a little ashamed of the visuals, sonics and art styles for this game. This is one game that you do not want to try and convert your SNK-hating friends with - the artwork - something which was just heavenly in KOF2000 ... is absolutely awful. Really, really bad - all the character portraits look stupid, deformed, disproportioned, badly coloured and ugly - some of them just defy belief. The cutscenes and intro fair a little better, as they've been drawn more seriously and 'normally' but the number of portraits where the subject looks like they need to be put down, or at least have their drain-cleaner privileges removed... way too high.
The presentation itself is a radical department from recent years - no more stone or steel or DNA themed screens - 2K1 is full of bright, flat areas of colour, boxes and nasty fonts - giving it a retro, 70's pop art sort of feel, which complements the radical, stylised portraits in a way.
The backgrounds are less garish and better drawn than portraits, but still well below-par for a KOF game - - there's just no life in them, they're all generic locations lacking in detail, depth animation and atmosphere. While it's nice to see the 'tournament' aspect of KOF returning (banners, crowds and camera crews) - their presence isn't enough to save such identikit locations as "Mexico" (Mexicans in front of a building), "Korea" (Koreans in front of a building), "Brazil" (on a Formula 1 RACETRACK), "China" (Chinese in front of a building) and so on - they're all so dull. There are two exceptions - the last two stages to be precise: a nifty battle in an airship arena high in the atmosphere, and the final fight in an elaborate techno-gothic throne room overlooking the planet Earth ((fokdnfkjsadasg.)) Those two are easily the highlights, the rest are weak, even weaker than the rather forgettable KOF2K levels. Remember the aquarium? Me neither.
Fortunately the new fighters themselves fair a little better. While Eolith definitely seem to be heading more towards the 'weird' end of the spectrum (much like Capcom did for Streetfighter 3) - none of the new characters really stand out ... new animations and outfits for existing characters blend seamlessly with older works and returning characters look, for the most part, like they belong. Like last year I must bemoan the lack of special intros and winposes, something that for me anyway robs it of some of the KOF spirit and likeability - but it's understandable, given the hardware. Whatever.
What's utterly unforgivable is the music. Ever since KOF'94, the soundtracks that have accompanied the games, from the intros to the cutscenes to the stage tracks themselves have been consistently awesome, moody and atmospheric - driving and just perfectly inspirational. Tracks with such scope, such sweeping evocative melodies --- 2K1 dumps this all and replaces it with shitty techno.
What's worse is the entire soundtrack suffers from "Streetfighter Alpha 3 syndrome" - where far too many tracks use the same sounds in the same arrangements (this time it's the "ZEOW" sample) - and while after a few listens the differences between the more-similar-sounding A3 tracks became apparent - weeks after first playing 2K1 I still can't tell most of the tunes apart. There's also a distinct lack of character - in previous games happy, bouncy characters had happy, bouncy themes, moody characters had moody themes and so on. Again this is gone - almost every track says the same about the characters - that being nothing at all. The only ones that stick vaguely in the mind are the menacing ones - the NESTS team tune, the cutscenes and the last two bosses - proof that Eolith can do decent music, they just uh didn't want to.
There have been big changes in the voice department too, with plenty of new voices (K' has a totally new voice - much angrier and more guttural than before, Kyo has had some of his samples redone, Heidern has joined the "mission complete" club) - they took a little adjusting to at first, but they're all well-acted and decent quality, so it's nothing to worry about.
One last point - Eolith just aren't as funny as SNK - a tiny gripe I know but their little comedy extras are nowhere near as fitfully silly and amusing as past games. The Mai/Andy intro is just a continuation of the '99 "baby" gag, Shingo's new song sounds stupid and Baby Goro ... God what were they thinking?
2k1 is one of those games that I go through cycles of liking and disliking, a bit like GGX. Sometimes it's fun, and fast and, hey the music and art isn't THAT bad, and other times it feels really hollow and freakishly retarded, and the music and art is godawful. Were I to rank this game against the others in the series it would probably come ahead of some but behind the rest.
Um, still I'm reluctant to be too harsh - as it is Eolith's first attempt and I always feel that any KOF is better than no KOF. Overall I've felt more positive thoughts than negative ones, so it just about gets a grudging thumbs-up - and while obviously it can never stack up to SNK's own best efforts, in any area (was there any doubt?) I personally am willing to forgive some of the bad decisions as first game misjudgements and concentrate on celebrating the good ones. Next year I won't be so forgiving.
Besides, Jhun got hit by a car!
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VERDICT: 80%
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Discuss
What I'm trying to say in my own confused little way is that KOF2K1 isn't a game to declare your love for from the top of a tall building. There are faults, weirdness and irritations all over the place, some of the series' greatest assets are conspicuous by their absence, and there's a distinct lack of that hard-to-define magic the best of the games possessed.
On the bright side it's not a total bust, there are a couple of good ideas, and the bane of the past two games - the increasingly puerile striker system has been toned down hugely - this single fact making up for a hell of a lot of the other flaws. So while I won't be ordering the MVS cart as I type (yep, another ROM review) - I won't be burning my SNK figures in the streets. It is Eolith's first fighting game and although they had a lot of their work done for them, they're still newcomers to the field, so to speak - so I'm willing to forgive them some of their mistakes.
So, where were we in the series? Two-Thousand saw renegade NESTS operative Zero attempt to gain control of the Zero Cannon in order to destroy the organisation. He failed and the various endings continued to give annoyingly little about the organisation away. Apart from introducing a couple of new characters it was actually a complete waste of time, but had damn fine art.
This year round, the world-famous KING OF FIGHTERS tournament is not a front for a nefarious scheme orchestrated by a deranged, power-hungry maniac ... sorry, I'm lying, it is a front for a nefarious scheme orchestrated by a deranged, power-hungry maniac really.
Originality aside - the storyline of 2K1 is most notable for being the END OF NESTS, yes, the guy in charge is revealed, their stupid goal is revealed and they get punched in the face and die at the end.
So, no more NESTS ... kind of sad in a way - though I preferred them when they were the faceless point of light that dropped ceiling on people they didn't like back in the old days - as opposed to the fashion disaster squad they end up as. Fans of vintage SNKglish will be glad to hear the dialogue - in both cut-scenes and win quotes - is as ridiculous as ever. Highlights this year include May Lee's "Fights you know you'll win are such piffle paffle, eh?", Iori's spectacular "Bring it on, noodkin!!!" and bonus points for the defeated end bosses' heart-rending "Urrgh... Is this the end... of lovable Igniz?"
The actual game is a strange mix of standard KOF gameplay, stolen ideas, damage control on past mistakes, plus some brand new mistakes thrown in for good measure. Strikers have been toned down so incredibly that for 90% of the game I forget they're even there. Eolith deserve respect for this - firstly returning the activation times to KOF'99 levels - in other words the 150 'active striker' infinites are gone (replaced instead with 150 bad play-testing infinites) - and secondly for removing the concept of 'striker stocks' altogether and making the summoning cost a level of super meter. It's this idea that practically removes the strikers from the game for me. I know I suck and everything - but I prize a level of meter and the chance to combo>DM or the DM's priority way over the chance to call some fool in. Add the fact the CPU never uses them (apart from the sub-boss) and it's possible to pretend they don't even exist quite convincingly.
In a further twist, one in no way influenced by the ratio system in Capcom's Capcom vs. SNK series - it's possible to break the ENGRAVED-IN-STONE LAWS OF KOF GAMES and customise the player:striker ratio. You can have a single player and three strikers, or two players and two strikers, or three players and one striker or four players and NO STRIKERS. For the first time ever a KOF match can go up to "round six" and, er, stuff. God I hate the word 'striker' now. It's lost all meaning for me. ;_;
This option also comes with various tactical repercussions. The less characters you have - the more strikers you have and the more super meter you get to play with. 1 player/3 strikers gives you fours levels of meter (or two SDMs in a row) - and considering the meter fills up in seconds is a pretty good deal. A single character will also do far more damage than a team - in fact with four charas/no strikers the damage an individual does is laughable, but sheer weight of numbers goes some way towards making up for it. I found myself gravitating towards 3/1 and 2/2 most of the time - preferring the damage advantage but too scared to gamble it all on a single character. The diversity also leads to differing match-up tactics depending on what the opponent is using.
Then there are 'Wire attacks' - moves which bounce the opponent off of the end of the screen, setting them up for further punishment. I found the choice of moves for the WA to be a little strange for some of the characters - some have pretty much no chance of ever landing them, or can't recover fast enough to follow up. Still, some do, and juggles and infinites = BAD. This isn't an original idea either - I remember doing something exactly the same in Sunsoft's Waku Waku 7, and it also shows up in that renowned tournament fighter Bishi Bashi Special.
Both 'counter mode' and 'armour mode' (as seen in '99 and '2000) are gone, hopefully for good, but to make up for it the last addition to the innovation sheet is actual, bona-fide, hiding in lockers in Capcom's design room super-cancelling. Although this showed up to some extent in KOF's '99 and '2000 (through the aforementioned Counter Mode) - 2K1 is the first game to feature it as a fully-fledged gameplay system, and despite my initial fears (OMFG KOF IS DYING) - it hasn't turned out as bad as I'd feared. It's not MvC2-style everything>everything, and is stricter in execution than even the SF3 games. Moves are hard to cancel because of the tiny cancel windows and enough attention has been paid to the game that not every hit ever turns into a guaranteed DM connection. It's also possible to cancel normals into normals in some cases - such as, bizarrely - Terry's Round Wave > Power Wave - again, a bit flashy, a bit un-KOF-like, but nothing really that ruins the game - at least, not as far as I'm concerned. It also ups the pace a little more, which is no bad thing.
KOF2K1 sees the introduction of a lot of new command inputs - many never seen before in a KOF game and some never seen before, anywhere. I'm a little puzzled why these changes were made, but they certainly add to the 'all new' feel of the game (something I felt 2K lacked) Some examples off the top of my head - K9999's SDM is D,F,DF+ABCD, and his two DMs are Raging Storm motions. Mary's Dynamite Swing has a ShunGokuSatsu motion (!) - A,A,Fwd,B,C to be exact, Iori's SDM is QCFx4 +AC and Ryo's SDM Ryuuko Ranbu is activated by "qcf + C,A". These strange motions take a little while to get used to, and even longer to pull off consistently. I still can't do Ryo's SDM at all reliably, the timing is a bitch.
While the removal of active strikers has toned down the more blatant related infinites/100%s that last year's game was plagued by - poor playtesting has opened the door for others. Angel for example can be juggled infinitely by certain, simple moves - which is actually MORE shameful than the omissions and laziness of last years' game. It doesn't seem to be as blatantly obvious as last time - for example I haven't done any infinites yet, but lazy testing is lazy testing, and as such is a shame to see, especially when it could have been so easily avoided.
Plenty of changes have been made on the character level too, again much more so than in KOF2000. Familiar characters have new moves, replaced or removed moves, commands changed, and in Andy's case - a new outfit! K' moves a lot faster, Mai has lost her fan throw DM and in its place is the rush>uppercut DM that 'alternate' Mai had in KOF98 and Hinako loses her sumo slaps and becomes a much more 'beginner friendly' character. Some of the changes are puzzling - why for example has Kim lost his CB - fwd + K move? - but some, such as a new DM for Choi, the switch from charge character to controller motion character for both Heidern and Robert (finally!) are very welcome indeed.
Despite all the changes I don't feel that any character has really been made unplayable or has been ruined beyond repair - though Kyo's ultra-retarded new Iori-grab-sprite DM is a damn close call.
Another year sees another team mix-up - aside from the Fatal Fury and Psycho Soldier teams - every team has been messed with to some extent, characters swapping over, or forming up new groups entirely. Iori is now teamed with Seth, Vanessa and Ramon; Kyo is back with Benimaru, Goro and Shingo - Whip has left the Ikari team and joined with K', Maxima and Lin.
Only two characters from 2000 are absent - Kasumi (boo) and Jhun. Hilariously Jhun isn't fighting with the Korean team this year because he was hit by a car while running to pick an Athena Asamiya poster off the wall.
So there are four brand new playable characters and the return of three old faces. Kula is playable right from the start - and she's accompanied by three new guys to make up the first, and last NESTS team.
K9999 (pronounced K-FOUR-NINE I believe) is the latest freaky clone warrior - not possessing a single elemental power like K' and Kula do, but instead having all sorts of weird biomechanical and psychic abilities. Bad storytelling if you ask me. His resemblances to AKIRA's Tetsuo character have been well-documented, as have his strange move set and tricky-but-powerful DMs so we'll move onto Foxy, she of the bizarre striped hairstyle and appearance in a couple of the KOF2K endings. Wielding a rapier-style sword, her moves consist mainly of stabs and slashes, with a cloak uppercut, stunning projectile and low rush attack to round her off. She also has a 'suicide' DM - which kills her and her opponent should it connect. I have to mention her taunt - the "Baka song", for it's sheer game-exploding awesomeness. Yes really.
The third new member is Angel, dressed in a skimpy, bizarrely futuristic outfit with all sorts of gaps and holes in it. Her play style - a complex, vaguely circular set of moves with various alternatives at each stage is reminiscent of the Tekken ten-string sequences - making her a tough to learn, but powerful and confusing opponent when played right (something I can't do.)
The new three members of the NESTS team all have such delightfully weird and demented move names. Foxy's HCB stab move is called the 'Tree of Beginning' and can be followed up with either a 'Memory of Noa' or 'The Seven Stars'. K9999's throws are labelled as "Get Lost!" and "Quit Playing!" his F+A is called "Shut Up!" and his gun DM is 'You Get Lost Too!" ... and Angel, well - her moves include such gems as 'The Unidentified Victim Consciousness', 'A Train to See Cherry Blossoms', 'A Garden to Play With Ghost' and 'Red Sky of Yaponesia' - pointless but fun.
The last new character replaces the hospitalised (gahahahaha) Jhun on Team Korea - the sprightly and decidedly lovable May Lee. Switching between "NORMAL" and "HERO" stances more like Streetfighter Alpha's Gen than Jhun, Ms. Lee uses some of Kim's standard moves along with some of her own creations. Her cute exclamations, plus her diverse attack options (and wide variety of infinites) make her a fun character.
Making their return to the series are XiangFei, Goro and Heidern - an odd choice, but still welcome nonetheless. All have new/changed moves, new voices and animations and er, Goro has a little kid - or at least a Mini-Goro that appears with him when the fight starts.
The bosses this year (for there are two - go sub-bosses!) are Original Zero, and CEO of NESTS himself, the mighty Igniz. Both are incredibly tough, especially if you're using 3 or 4 characters - the damage you deal compared to what you take is pitiful, and it's soul-crushing to lose three characters while having chipped off 3% of their life bar. With 1 or 2 characters the damage is a little more even, true there's still the overbearing cheapness they have.
Original Zero, apparently who last year's boss was a clone of (!!) is, get this - Zero's body (all cloak and spikes) with KOF'98 Omega Rugal's head on. More puzzling is the fact that in the cut-scene art OZ looks nothing like Rugal, he's got short, straight back-combed white hair and plain, slightly elderly-looking features - yet the sprite has Rugal's trademark wild long locks and manic grin. Tsk.
Fighting about a KOF airship, O. Zero is tough and cheap, with the typical huge damage/priority advantage SNK bosses have always had. He has two strikers (Krizalid from '99 and a black Lion) and either infinite super meter or a super meter so short it charges before it's been emptied. Fortunately like all SNK bosses he also has big holes in his AI and can be defeated with moderate ease before long.
Beating him sees the competitors arrive at NESTS orbiting space station (DGKNASDGLKNSADG) and after some incomprehensible exposition (he wants to do what why exactly?) sees the boss of NESTS cartel finally revealed. Forget any other SNK boss (even O. Rugal in 98) - Igniz is the single most monstrously overpowered creation in KOF history. Wearing an elaborate ornamental cloak, this long-haired, slightly effeminate-looking character wields a hidden whip and tosses huge energy blasts all over the place. He really shocked me when I first faced him - he seemed so unapproachable, so incredibly difficult to hit, to avoid - I lost count of the continues I used up fighting him and at first I just felt like he was a mistake, a bug or something that would be fixed in the final version. Little things like his uppercut, with it's whiff punishment protection make him a damn cheesy fight. Like OZ he's either got infinite meter or a tiny, tiny bar, because the frequency he tosses out DMs (including one that can take 90% of life from an R1 character) is truly frightening. What else? He's got an infinite (or at least a 100% juggle combo) that he KNOWS HOW TO USE, AND DOES. His recovery time is nigh on zero, his activation time for moves and supers is tiny - I swear I've done Terry's Power Geyser DM - and in the time after the DM flash where Terry pulls back his arm, he's reacted with his own super and killed me. Fuck.
Fortunately he's not indestructible - and slowly as days passed my defeats at his hand went from 30 to 20, then 10 and now I find I can beat him in one or two tries. He's got flaws like all bosses, and it's really just a case of hoping he won't infinite/super you, and will uppercut/super you when you're standing behind him.
For all his cheapness, Igniz is probably the best of the Eolith character designs, he's certainly cool to look at and has a neat voice, good BGM and even a nice-looking stage.
Though the whole encounter doesn't really resolve very much... the tiny scraps of plot revealed through the various endings don't actually reveal anything and Igniz's motives, plans and the reasons for his abilities are incredibly vague - making it overall a disappointing climax to the King of Fighters series' second big story arc.
You may have noticed I went straight into talking about the game this time round, instead of waxing lyrical about the graphics and sounds for nine-tenths of the review. This is because, well, because I'm actually a little ashamed of the visuals, sonics and art styles for this game. This is one game that you do not want to try and convert your SNK-hating friends with - the artwork - something which was just heavenly in KOF2000 ... is absolutely awful. Really, really bad - all the character portraits look stupid, deformed, disproportioned, badly coloured and ugly - some of them just defy belief. The cutscenes and intro fair a little better, as they've been drawn more seriously and 'normally' but the number of portraits where the subject looks like they need to be put down, or at least have their drain-cleaner privileges removed... way too high.
The presentation itself is a radical department from recent years - no more stone or steel or DNA themed screens - 2K1 is full of bright, flat areas of colour, boxes and nasty fonts - giving it a retro, 70's pop art sort of feel, which complements the radical, stylised portraits in a way.
The backgrounds are less garish and better drawn than portraits, but still well below-par for a KOF game - - there's just no life in them, they're all generic locations lacking in detail, depth animation and atmosphere. While it's nice to see the 'tournament' aspect of KOF returning (banners, crowds and camera crews) - their presence isn't enough to save such identikit locations as "Mexico" (Mexicans in front of a building), "Korea" (Koreans in front of a building), "Brazil" (on a Formula 1 RACETRACK), "China" (Chinese in front of a building) and so on - they're all so dull. There are two exceptions - the last two stages to be precise: a nifty battle in an airship arena high in the atmosphere, and the final fight in an elaborate techno-gothic throne room overlooking the planet Earth ((fokdnfkjsadasg.)) Those two are easily the highlights, the rest are weak, even weaker than the rather forgettable KOF2K levels. Remember the aquarium? Me neither.
Fortunately the new fighters themselves fair a little better. While Eolith definitely seem to be heading more towards the 'weird' end of the spectrum (much like Capcom did for Streetfighter 3) - none of the new characters really stand out ... new animations and outfits for existing characters blend seamlessly with older works and returning characters look, for the most part, like they belong. Like last year I must bemoan the lack of special intros and winposes, something that for me anyway robs it of some of the KOF spirit and likeability - but it's understandable, given the hardware. Whatever.
What's utterly unforgivable is the music. Ever since KOF'94, the soundtracks that have accompanied the games, from the intros to the cutscenes to the stage tracks themselves have been consistently awesome, moody and atmospheric - driving and just perfectly inspirational. Tracks with such scope, such sweeping evocative melodies --- 2K1 dumps this all and replaces it with shitty techno.
What's worse is the entire soundtrack suffers from "Streetfighter Alpha 3 syndrome" - where far too many tracks use the same sounds in the same arrangements (this time it's the "ZEOW" sample) - and while after a few listens the differences between the more-similar-sounding A3 tracks became apparent - weeks after first playing 2K1 I still can't tell most of the tunes apart. There's also a distinct lack of character - in previous games happy, bouncy characters had happy, bouncy themes, moody characters had moody themes and so on. Again this is gone - almost every track says the same about the characters - that being nothing at all. The only ones that stick vaguely in the mind are the menacing ones - the NESTS team tune, the cutscenes and the last two bosses - proof that Eolith can do decent music, they just uh didn't want to.
There have been big changes in the voice department too, with plenty of new voices (K' has a totally new voice - much angrier and more guttural than before, Kyo has had some of his samples redone, Heidern has joined the "mission complete" club) - they took a little adjusting to at first, but they're all well-acted and decent quality, so it's nothing to worry about.
One last point - Eolith just aren't as funny as SNK - a tiny gripe I know but their little comedy extras are nowhere near as fitfully silly and amusing as past games. The Mai/Andy intro is just a continuation of the '99 "baby" gag, Shingo's new song sounds stupid and Baby Goro ... God what were they thinking?
2k1 is one of those games that I go through cycles of liking and disliking, a bit like GGX. Sometimes it's fun, and fast and, hey the music and art isn't THAT bad, and other times it feels really hollow and freakishly retarded, and the music and art is godawful. Were I to rank this game against the others in the series it would probably come ahead of some but behind the rest.
Um, still I'm reluctant to be too harsh - as it is Eolith's first attempt and I always feel that any KOF is better than no KOF. Overall I've felt more positive thoughts than negative ones, so it just about gets a grudging thumbs-up - and while obviously it can never stack up to SNK's own best efforts, in any area (was there any doubt?) I personally am willing to forgive some of the bad decisions as first game misjudgements and concentrate on celebrating the good ones. Next year I won't be so forgiving.
Besides, Jhun got hit by a car!
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VERDICT: 80%
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