Just over two years ago, The King of Fighters XII released with a great fighting system, a hopelessly broken online experience, and an almost complete lack of single player modes. Today, the latest entry in the series releases with the intent to right the missteps of its predecessor.

The expanded roster of The King of Fighters XIII doesn’t have much new for the series, but it brings back a lot of the fighters missing from XII including Team Women Fighters members Mai, King, and my personal favorite, Yuri. With over 30 fighters available, the amount of choices are once again approaching the levels of its decade-old asset ripping, last generation entries.

Cancels are the name of the game here as XIII features Guard Cancels, Drive Cancels, Super Cancels, Hyperdrive Cancels, and Max Cancels. What does it all mean? As long as you have the required power in your gauges to pull it off, you can cancel most actions midway through to create utterly devastating combos. Of course, there are limitations. You can’t cancel an attack with the same attack, for example. But you can cancel it with the EX version.

EX Specials are practically identical to those found in Street Fighter IV, though they take the same amount of power as a Desperation Move (read: Super Special), meaning you’ll likely use them less often and more deliberately. There’s an interesting risk/reward aspect to the supremely powerful NEO MAX attack. You can actually lessen how much of the power gauge it requires by going into Hyperdrive Mode. The catch is that your Drive Gauge will start to decrease, giving you a limited amount of time to perform the attack as well as giving away your plans to your opponent.

The Evasive Roll and Blowback Attack make a return to round out your defensive options. Rolling through enemy projectiles and countering melee attacks with pin point timing never stops being satisfying.

If this all sounds daunting, you’ll be happy to know there are a couple teaching tools to help you out. Tutorial mode will have you perform all of the base mechanics step by step while the Trials mode teaches you character specific combos. As you progress, the combos become absurdly long. Fortunately, you can watch a demo video of each one to give the wall of arrows on the screen a very real sense of context.

Arcade mode is far more substantial than the last entry with tons of (skippable) dialogue specific to every single matchup of characters, a few semi-animated cutscenes, and two end bosses. But it just wouldn’t be a fighting game if the bosses weren’t incredibly annoying. The first has both a move that immobilizes you and another that involves lifting you up and slowly punching you several times for what feels like an eternity (but is actually about three seconds). The second isn’t much better as he shoots projectiles at aggravating quantities. Will anybody ever make a fighting game boss that isn’t a chore to play? I have my doubts.

Other fighting game staples such as Time Attack, Survival, and Story Mode make an appearance. Despite their common nature in the genre, their additions are worth a mention since the last game managed to leave all of these things out. While I’m glad Story Mode gives the player more to do when playing alone, its execution is a bit questionable. Most of the story taking place is only tangentially related to any of the fighting you’re doing. In fact, most of the cutscenes involve non-playable characters. That coupled with some slow pacing in the introduction make the whole thing come off as awkward. Still, I’ll admit that there’s some nice artwork in it and the ability to start at any chapter alleviates the frustration of losing.

Speaking of nice artwork, I can’t speak highly enough of the sprite work. The animation of every character is silky smooth and there’s a high level of detail both in the characters and the stages. It really shows how modern 2D artwork can rival or even surpass the 3D models that so many other fighters have chosen to use.

Online has been streamlined with a much more logical menu structure. You can also play Arcade or Practice Mode while waiting for challengers. And the ability to setup a profile team makes “maining” a team of three specific characters much quicker to choose. As far as lag, my experience was all across the board. While I did have one match that was completely free of lag, others (including some in controlled environments with fellow reviewers) were victim to slowdown and occasionally choppy. I can only hope that this is tightened up over time.

The King of Fighters XIII is a far more substantial package than its predecessor in terms of modes and characters and the mechanics have an extra layer of refinement. In spite of its issues, it’s still an easy recommendation to fighting game enthusiasts who aren’t already burnt out on the series (especially at its semi-budget price). Even newcomers can work their way up thanks to multiple in-game learning tools.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of The King of Fighters XIII provided to the reviewer by Atlus.

This first video featuring Dream Cancel community member, Metaphysics, starts with the basics. And I mean the very basics. While the first half is more of an introductory course on fighting games in general, things get a little more interesting when character archetypes and play styles enter the discussion.

For those already familiar with the art of 2D combat, this introductory video is mostly full of common sense. But it might be worth keeping your eye on the series when it inevitably starts covering the games deeper aspects. Until then, you can check out heaping gobs of previously released character-specific videos on the Atlus YouTube channel.

*UPDATE* - Turns out the audio file had a glitch in it where the last twenty minutes were doubled and off time from each other making it a horrible mess. We at WingDamage would like to apologize to anyone who listened to this episode and promise that the next episode, which will release on Tuesday, is much, much better in both quality and content.

On a very special fifty-fifth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, we have to match up all the different sandwiches if we want to stop the flow of incoming sandwiches. Boshi is there to help. Remember Boshi?

Our regular hosts are joined by Geoffio, as well as WingDamage’s newest writer, Anthony. In what we’ve been playing, Geoffio kicks us off with tales from the aerial combat sim, Wings of Prey. Jonah has just started on The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition and Company of Heroes, an RTS he’s actually enjoying. Anthony gives us his thoughts on Resident Evil 5 and Jesse goes in-depth with the new Valkyria Chronicles DLC.

We talk about last week’s entry into “Friday Old Games“, Duke Nukem 64, then in “Let’s Play Together” we give our thoughts on Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing for the Xbox 360.

In the news, we discuss additional RAM being unlocked for PS3 developers, the next Batman game, our hopes for King of Fighters XIII having modes, Monster Hunter Tri’s announcement of being free to play for North America, and much more.

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Middle Song – “Fly Like a Butterfly” by Hideki Naganuma
(Jet Set Radio Future Original Sound Tracks)

Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps

"2D is back in business!"

We are seeing a glorious return of the 2D Fighter genre lately. Games like “BlazBlue”, “Street Fighter IV” (the graphics may be 3D, but it’s the gameplay that counts), the upcoming “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom”, the digital release of “Marvel vs. Capcom 2″, and “The King of Fighters XII” are breathing new life into what seemed like a diminishing genre.

The King of Fighters XI (ps2) was relatively well received when it released in 2007. It had a variety of modes, both single-player and multiplayer, and had a very large character roster. But, just as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 ripped a large portion of its assets from previous fighters (like 1995′s Marvel Super-Heroes), KOFXI was able to pack in so many characters by taking their assets from a combination of previous entries in the series and other SNK games.

This leads me to my first point of discussion: The King of Fighters XII, though it is the latest entry in the series, has less than half the number of characters that XI has. Why this is surprising to anyone is beyond me. Every character had to be painstakingly redrawn in High Definition from scratch, since ripping sprites from previous entries was no longer an option. Yes, there are a lot of characters not present in KOFXII that I miss, but the characters that made the cut feel as solid as ever, and there are already talks to add more via DLC.

"The graphical difference between XI and XII is astounding"

Of course, a fighting game is nothing if the core mechanics don’t hold up. Thankfully, KOFXII’s gameplay feels tighter than ever. I threw in KOFXI so that I could compare some of the features of the two games side-by-side. “Emergency Evasion”, a form of dodge roll that can be performed in both games, felt much faster and more responsive in SNK Playmore’s latest entry. The new “Guard Attack” is a nice addition that allows players to counter their opponent if they execute it at the exact moment they are hit. It feels very similar to the “Focus Attack” in Street Fighter IV, though it requires much more calculated timing which, at the same time, makes it all the more satisfying to pull off. Finally, grabs have been assigned to a two-button combination. Gone are the days of performing throws accidentally.

Unsurprisingly, I have a few complaints with the game. There is only one mode for single-player. Though it is named “Arcade Mode”, it feels more like it should be called “Time Trial”. It consists of five sets of three-on-three battles. Your score is based on how fast you can beat each of them. You can even replay any stage if you feel you can do it faster. At the end, there is no boss. Honestly, this is probably for the best as I’ve found that the average SNK boss tends to be such a cheap bastard that he/she makes Street Fighter IV’s “Seth” seem like a newborn kitten. Even still, I would’ve liked to see more single-player modes such as “Story Mode” or “Survival”.

My next complaint is the online experience. The menus are less than intuitive, and bad connections are commonplace. At this point in time, I have yet to take part in an online match that didn’t suffer from terrible lag. Fortunately, the creators have stated that they aren’t satisfied with the net-code and actually are planning on doing something about it. Until that time, though, I would suggest calling up a few buddies and enjoying some actual human interaction in local multiplayer.

"The new artwork really brings the characters to life"

Local multiplayer is where this game truly shines. “Versus Mode” can be played either with three man teams or one-on-one. I have had great, heaping gobs of fun playing this in local matches. Some of the characters’ move-sets have been mixed up a bit. Luckily, it is a two-way street. There aren’t just moves missing, there are moves that have been added as well.

It’s hard not to compare this to BlazBlue considering they are both highly anticipated 2D fighters that released in the same month. I have both, but have been enjoying my time with KOFXII more. BlazBlue’s learning curve is much steeper and though it has more modes and features, has only twelve characters as opposed to KOFXII’s twenty-two.

If you don’t have geographically conveneint friends to back you up, the single-player probably won’t be enough to keep you satisfied, and it might be better to wait until the online play gets sorted out. However, if you love 2D fighters and have local buddies who will play this game with you, the $60 price tag shouldn’t hold you back from such an incredibly solid fighting experience.

This review is based on the Playstation 3 version of The King of Fighters XII provided to us by Ignition Entertainment.

On a very special eleventh episode of “Barrel Roll! – A Video Game Podcast”, Jesse and Jonah tells us the wonders of “Excite Bots: Trick Racing” for the Wii. It’s not just racing, it’s sandwich making. “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time” turns out not to just have a ludicrously long title, but to be the FFCC game we’ve been waiting for. As it turns out “Rock Revolution” is not worth the $10 price point it has been discounted to. Orange Box and Steam are both awesome, but you already knew that, and it turns out we like the PSP… in theory.

In the news we talk about “Fallout: New Vegas”, Kojima guaging the interest in a possible Zone of the Enders 3, and much more. Wait… A “King of Fighters” Shmup? What the crap?

“Let’s Talk About Stuff” was co-opted from our news story about the recently announced Lego Rock Band and our feelings on the subject. These mostly fall apart into a nostalgic Lego love fest.

All this and much more on the latest installment of our podshow.

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Custom Costumes by Karissa Rangel
Mode 7 album by Main Finger
That Youtube vid of “Passion”
JPAG WOW Guild Thread
Tell Kojima you want Zone of the Enders 3

Giveaway Update

It turns out we were wrong about needing to register to make a post where we can still see your contact email adress, so go comment on the last episode to enter our Emerald City ComiCon swag giveaway!