Judging from what’s in the game now and from what Keiko Iju said in her intervew, it looks like Noise intends the roster in Maximum Impact 2 to look something like this:
- Kyo, Beni, Iori
- Terry, Joe, Rock
- Mai, King, Lien
- Ryo, Robert, Yuri
- Alba, NEW, Soiree
- Athena, Kensou, Mignon
- Leona, Ralf, Clark
- Chae, Chang, Jhun
- K’, Maxima, Whip
- Seth, Vanessa, Ramon
I’m not saying that’ll be the exact arrangement; it’s just an example. I can see a third Magical Girl taking Kensou’s place. Or a new woman, in King’s.
I’ve broken this into teams, because it seems from the current arrangement like Noise wanted a team-based structure; they just didn’t have enough characters to support it. If you notice, I’m mostly just adding one color character, as Noise puts it — meaning a supporting character or sidekick, such as Benimaru or Kensou — into each of the existing rough “teams” (going horizontally).
Color characters are the likes of Joe, King, Robert, Chang, Ramon, Whip, Vanessa. They serve no important role in the game balance. They don’t represent anything that isn’t already covered by someone more obvious. They exist mostly to provide different kinds of energy. To make the game feel more alive and varied. In my interpretation, it’s the kind of subtle variation just for the sake of humanity which makes The King of Fighters what it is.
Which might go a distance toward why MI doesn’t feel like a KOF game to me. You might notice that there are basically no supporting characters here. It’s all heroes; protagonists. Main characters. Icons. The only ones who you might count as supporting characters are Maxima and Seth — yet K’ and Maxima are close to a matched set, and Seth actually serves a bigger role in the plot than anyone outside the new characters.
Seth, you see, was investigating Mephistopheles — the gang which currently controls Southtown — and its connections to a bigger and more sinister operation. He used a guy named Fate — Alba and Soiree’s father figure and the leader of a powerful rival gang that was, to then, keeping Mephistopheles in check — as an operative. Fate got killed; his sons blame Seth. When you encounter him in Story Mode, Seth actually tends to have something relevant to say; when he reaches Duke, they have a conversation of their own. As such, Seth is the only character aside from Soiree, Alba, and Lien to have any variation to his story.
As for not really feeling like KOF, I notice that there are only a handful of KOF characters as such, in this game. There are eight characters originally from other games, six originals, and six KOF characters: Kyo, Iori, K’, Maxima, Seth, and Leona.
Leona I barely think of as a KOF character; I expect her to be a lead in the next Ikari game, whenever SNK decides to make another. Seth seems like the kind of guy who could pop up anywhere. That just leaves the heroes, who — I must say — feel a little out-of-place here. I mean. They’re from Japan. This is a small domestic dispute. They have nothing to gain here. No part in it. It’d make more sense to have other Southtown regulars present. And, frankly, the Fatal Fury cast would work best in 3D. Since FF is 3D, effectively.
Yet they’re the only things which feel like they concretely tie MI to KOF. Okay, they and the Esaka stage.
The one stage not set in Southtown is the traditional scene outside the NeoGeoLand in Esaka, Osaka. You can see the SNK building across the street. And what might be a Japan branch of King’s bar. It strikes me that it must be interesting to play an SNK game in that NeoGeoLand (though it’s now closed, supposedly), given how often the fights take place in the street right out front. Even in Capcom vs. SNK…
If MI remnds me of anything, it reminds me of Fatal Fury. Which would still make it KOF, of course. Yet. Well. It’s a smallish game, one-on-one. 3D playfield. The story involves two brothers whose master was killed by the crime lord now in control of Southtown. There are only as many KOF characters as there are new ones in this game. One of the new characters is basically a boobed Kim, who is of course from FF. Duke even reminds me of Geese. He has a similar kind of charisma to Geese’s. Just as with Geese, he’s cheap — yet he seems kind of reasonable. He makes sense as a player character. He’s not just there to be a boss. He seems designed as an actual nemesis.
I guess the premise here is that after Geese was killed, the gangs rose up in his stead. Fate’s was one of the strongest. Duke’s was another. Duke sent Lien to kill Fate, thereby taking control of the city. (Lien later tried to kill Duke back — thus, I guess, the scar across his throat.) Now Duke’s been in control for a while and the brothers are older. So they intend to shove him out of the way and take over Southtown for themselves.
Sound familiar? Kind of?
Duke is kind of the new Geese. When you beat the game with Alba and Soiree, it seems, Duke is unlocked. I assumed I had to beat it with all the characters. Not so. Just the ones with real plots. When you can actually control Duke, he seems like just another good character. I can see him being part of the normal cast in the next game.
Thing is about the next game — as I said, Noise wants to draw it closer to what we know as KOF. I’m not sure that’s all that great an idea. The reason I say this is that the more I play, the more strong the differences feel between the new and the old characters. It’s similar to the deal with 2002, where the characters from the NESTS era had to stand on their own without strikers — and they just felt naked. Only it’s much stronger, here.
All of the new characters are successful, as far as I can see. They’re the best part of the game.
I like Mignon a lot. She feels like she could have been in the series at any point since the NESTS era. I like Soiree, too. I had avoided him before, because he just looks so — uh.
But. He…
When he runs into K’, he says “Hey, you’re so groovy! You’re such a groovy gus!”
To which K’ responds with bewildered annoyance.
When he faces against Mignon, he shouts about what a cute little chick she is. Mignon looks nervous and says something (in the third person) about not being sure she likes people like him…
When you get to Soiree’s playstyle, it becomes clear that he is one of the most developed characters in the game. He just wouldn’t work in a 2D KOF, without some compromises. He has so darned many moves, all of which chain together and most of which use the third dimension in one way or another. As in Soul Calibur, you can effectively just PRESS SOMETHING and get an interesting result.
Basically, about the animation and control: the newer the character, the better. The original characters are seamless. I assume it’s because their animations are all new, so Noise could do whatever they wanted as far as motion capture goes. And of course, their moves are built for this game. Meanwhile, the older characters — they weren’t designed for this. They have two problems. One, they have to move a certain way, in order to be recognizable. So whereas Noise can easily design the the new characters to take advantage of the gamespace, the established characters are restricted by tradition. And — problem number two — that tradition is a 2D one.
Athena, for instance, is normally a monster; one of the most powerful and versatile characters. Out of the characters chosen for MI, she is also one of the most inherently 2D. Here, she is one of the least effective characters. She has probably the jerkiest animation; she has some of the worst control, and she generally doesn’t work too well. This isn’t just a mechanical thing, of course; it seems like someone just didn’t pay attention to her — which is strange, given how much attention she usually receives. Heck, she doesn’t even have a new outfit here. By default, I mean. She has her 2P suit, but that’s kind of scary.
One problem is that Noise tried to make a lot of their animations “realistic”, yet within the same constraints as before — which means delays and different effects, where they shouldn’t be. Leona is a really slow character, now. And her moves don’t have the range they used to, as now she’s doing them with an actual knife.
That “X-slash” move, where you jump up in the air and do a quarter-circle back to fire a close-range projectile downward? Not too useful now, as she jumps so high that it won’t hit anyone who isn’t also jumping. Combine that with the charge moves which now have a reaction time (I mean you can get hit OUT of her ” circle slash” move before the knife comes all the way around), and the earring throw, which can be sidestepped by even the most braindead of players, and Leona’s only really useful move now is the one where she levitates and that ball of power comes from her chest — a move I’ve never found much use for in the past.
Basically, that move is useful because it’s faster than usual and because the opponent will likely be within range anyway. And it’s… it has some range, so it can’t be sidestepped easily. Basically, wait until the opponent whiffs a move then throw that out. And that sets you up to do something else, combo-wise. A way out of a potentially-bad situation. It almost takes the place of the circle-slash and the run-forward-slash moves. Kind of.
Still, I’m a little confused with some of the delay problems. Athena’s teleport, for instance, takes almost a second to register — which makes it close to useless, since it’s supposed to be an emergency move. I don’t see why this has to be.
Ralf… plays differently. Just recently, his “AIYAYAYAYAYAYAYA!” move changed from tapping punch vigorously to a simple dragon punch motion. I thought that was kind of lame. Now, in MI, he can’t do his dive-bomb move in mid-air. He has to charge. And when he leaps into the air after charging — as with Leona, though more so, he leaps so high that unless you’re pretty far away, you’ll just sail over the opponent. Meaning the move — one of his best, I think — is kind of useless.
You’ll see this trend from character to character. The more KOF-centric the character, the worse — as the Fatal Fury characters were all designed with the third perspective, and close fighting, in mind. It’s because of this that, in the sequel, I think I’d rather see more original characters, or other Southtown regulars, than KOF staples. Go all the way, and make this a successor to Fatal Fury. It’s more natural.
Although it would be nice to see some of the KOF regulars in 3D. It’s just, they need more attention. They need to be reinvented. To fit better. Noise could be a little more stylized with these things.
Falcoon does a good job, though. I kind of hope that some of his alternate costumes make their way into the main series. Some of them, like Yuri’s, are just plain better than the traditional designs. What is odd is that the alternate outfits for even the new characters are generally so much better.
Falcoon’s character art shows Chae Lim’s TKD uniform as massively oversized. Baggy. It’s not quite so roomy in-game. Oh. Chae is indeed one of Kim’s students. According to her profile, she is his #1 disciple. Accoding to her story, Kim arbitrarily decded to send her in his place.
ONE MORE IMPORTANT DETAIL
Chae Lim likes the women.
…
Though she likes men more.
So she says, in her storyline.
Smiley: I assume you mean more than just socially.
Basically, it says that all the girls are attracted to her. And she likes women — though she likes men more. If she weren’t so manly, she might have a chance with them.
And. That’s what it says.
You can see Leona’s nipples. In Leona’s 2P outfit, they’re blatantly visible through the fabric. Same with Athena’s 2P costume. And Leona is… boingy, now. 2P Leona, anyway.
By the way, Falcoon’s original designs called for Leona’s hair to be blue, rather than pink, and for Clark to not have that weirdly dark skin tone. Iori had red hair, and so on. His sketches, or what he shows of them, all are first colored in a traditional way despite their different designs. Then there are a few other alternate color schemes, for flavor. And it’s one of these alternates which was chosen in most cases as the default — I guess to help set the 2P outfit apart even more. I don’t think the “normal” ones are even available.
One thing which lightens my mood about the KOF regulars is that I would actually like to see Falcoon’s take on their outfits. Characters like Kensou and Robert have a lot of potential. Or just think about Whip.
There are actually more than two costumes per character, if you count the alternate colors. Often the colors are more than just that; they alter textures and often little bits of geometry, while leaving the basic model the same. Rock’s 1P#3 color, for instance, gives him a cowboy outfit — although it’s just a texture swap of his normal costume. Meanwhile, his 2P#3 costume makes him look like Kaede from Last Blade. This required that the big, poofy collar be removed from his bomber jacket. K”s 2P#3 costume removes his sunglasses (among other things). Sometimes things are added.
You unlock one alternate “color”, whenever you complete a new task in Mission Mode. (Sometimes you unlock a new stage, too — like the Esaka one I mentioned .) Effectively, forty missions, forty costumes. And three extra stages. The way this works is, if you beat a mission with, say, 1P Kyo, you get a new color for Kyo’s 1P costume. If you already have the new color, then it chooses another character at random. Had I been brighter, I would have just beaten the missions with the characters I was most curious about.
I’ve completed twenty-five out of the forty. The most accessible objectives at present are, say, beating the opponent within 25 seconds, without being knocked down — where the opponent is Soiree. 90% of Soiree’s moves are trips or other knock-down moves.
Or defeat an opponent who does little but guard, and who has 500% guard power, within thirty seconds.
Or win two rounds against Yuri, within thirty seconds total.
Or defeat the opponent when all attacks which do not do three or more hits of damage are ineffective against him.
All of those I can come at least halfway toward completing. It’s very unforgiving. It’s… scream-worthy at times.
There’s one stage where you are to to survive for thirty seconds against Duke (the boss), if Duke has something like 500% life, 300% attack power, a full meter, and 500% guard power. And you have 50% life. I beat it just by keeping my distance. Staying on the other side of the stage shaved seconds at a time.
Another mission asks you to defeat Seth in the parking garage, with one unbroken combo string. He only has 1/5 life or so and doesn’t attack. If you mess up even a bit, though, he blocks and his life returns. After experimenting with Duke, Soiree, and Kyo, I beat it with Ryo. I pushed Seth against the wall, and then I did the following:
p > p > P > P > p > hundred hand slap move > uppercut > tornado kick move
And it was just enough.
Smiley: You almost got away with only punches!
Yeah. The tornado kick was in desperation. Seth was juggled, and I had to do something to keep him that way. That happened almost by accident.
Smiley: Do you have a Super Meter or two to use during these challenges?
Some of the challenges. It depends. They all have different demands. I was allowed to use super moves here. Ryo has this one move that I’m not really familiar with; QC forward, HC back. He goes on a kicky-punchy spree. In practice, I was able to chain that into my punch-combo. I couldn’t pull it off regularly enough, though, to do it in the actual mission.
Now that I’ve been forced to practce combos a bit, I’m feeling a little more secure in my abilities. I like the mission mode, in theory. It could be balanced a little better, though, to teach me how to play the game well. It goes from “hit the opponent ten times” very quickly to “do a thirty-hit combo”. Without any particular advice on how to go about it.
I am learning to play the game better. I get it better, now. I don’t mind the system so much, now that I do. It’s. I was playing it like a 2D game. But side -stepping is one of the most important elements here. At any point, you can just step to the side and punch someone in the kidneys. One of the most effective things to do is to just wait until the last moment, dodge, and strike. Also, you need to plan ahead a bit. Note your position. Try not to get trapped against a wall. Do that by circling.
So it basically plays like KOF, with big chains and with a really strong emphasis on sidestepping and rolling and fall-breaking. If you get that down, it plays well. It’s still unbalanced. Yet. It works.
Something I would appreciate is a slider for game speed. The finished version is about twice as fast as the one I played at E3. The E3 one was at… KOF speed. This one is on turbo overdrive — which just makes it all the harder for one such as I to react. Though I am adjusting.
Smiley: This might be the next game I need to buy. How beginner friendly is? People who don’t know what a “fireball motion” is instinctively.
It’s more beginner-friendly than the average SNK game.
Smiley: That’s not saying much.
It’s the meeting point of KOF, Fatal Fury, and Dead or Alive. If you’re going to introduce someone to SNK fighters, this is probably the place to start. You can play the game, almost, without knowing too much about fighting games. If you’ve played, say, Street Fighter before, you’re okay. No backstory to worry about. Even the profiles, although they say enough to tell you who the characters are, are vague about story details.
I’m not sure how The Average Person might react. The voice acting will cause him to mock the game for a while, likely. If he sees people having fun, he might go for a few rounds and enjoy it all right, then wander off to do something else. If anyone is familiar with the characters even a little (say, maybe through Capcom vs. SNK or something), it should keep those people lingering.
For someone with absolutely no interest, it probably won’t do much to convince. It strikes me as one of those games that you like as much as you want to like it. Completely casual audiences would do better with Soul Calibur, I think.
For the “Oh, so that’s Iori, huh?” audience, it’ll be interesting. I think. Anyone who remembers Ikari Warriors.
Iori’s rigging model makes him all emo. He slings his guitar over his shoulder (with a bunch of stickers on the case), and he wears narrow yellow-tinted glasses. You can barely see them under his bangs in his 1P outfit. In his 2P suit, though, it’s an interesting effect. Especially with the third color, which gives him blue plaid pants, a white shirt, blond hair, and a black undershirt.
The “rigging model”, which is basically a goofy set of accessories. Like the Tengu mask. Or Rock’s technically awesome cowboy hat. About a quarter of the ” rigging models” are decent enough to keep on. Seth’s rigging model is a party hat, a Groucho nose, and a sash which seems to say (in Kanji) “Ganbatte KOF 10 Years!” Or something to that effect. You get them when you beat the game, and unlock the profile for the character you used. This allows you to load any of the available models (1P, 2P, any of the alternate colors and textures), rotate and zoom them, and toggle the rigging.
This section is nice. Especially given the point of the game, which is a combination of “gee, KOF in 3D!” and “Hey guys, we have this series called KOF. See what you think.” There’s something close to a Space Channel 5-ish quality here. The descriptions are sometimes just as inconclusive. As with Mai. And there’s the rotation of the character model and whatnot.
More, though — the character’s profile information is available right there, in-game. The character’s history is detailed. And — it basically tells you all you need to know about who this person is. It goes into how introverted K’ is, and how he has Kyo’s abilities due to some genetic experimentation that was done on him. It talks about Yuri’s increasing power. It goes into Terry’s whole backstory with Jeff and Geese, up through someplace just before Mark of the Wolves.
This is good stuff, for what it is. If SNK keeps up with this, I expect them to figure out how to work a lot of it into the game itself.
I also get kind of a Sonic Adventure vibe out of this. And I don’t just mean the music. Which is… all the pieces which didn’t quite make it into Sonic Adventure, essentially. There are tracks based loosely on “Esaka Forever” and Geese’s theme, which play in those respective stages. They’re about as close to the originals as “Tears” is to “Esaka Forever”. What’s more common is — well. There’s a bit in the airport track which goes “Get yo’ HANDS off mah MAYUN. YOU’RE UNBELIEVABLE!” And… it’s a man singing.
I mean. That’s there. But in general, the game has the same kind of “re-introduction” feeling. Similar quality of CG, where things are rendered. I’d place it closer, tonally, to Sonic Adventure than to Lament of Innocence.
I just noticed — if there are things like chain-link fences in the arena (or, rather, surrounding it), they become deformed if someone is hit into them strongly enough.
Smiley: Neat. This sounds like Tekken 4 with Heart. And Bisexual Ladies.
Seems like most of the stages are based on scenes from past games. “Iron Hell” is the stage where you meet Kula in KOF’00. There are the Esaka and Geese stages. The “Southtown” stage is a rooftop near the Geese building. You can see it through the window of the Geese stage. The “Parking Area” stage reminds me of a lot of old KOF stages. Offhand, it makes me think of one of the things in ’98. Nude Place (or “Ancient Ruins”) is from SVC Chaos, and has been contextualized here as a closed-down church in the middle of a park (with Southtown’s buildings looming close by). One area looks like the place where you meet Gato in MotW. The “Downtown” stage is another which I think comes from ’98.
Geese is sitting in a throne in the background of his stage. (Both this and Esaka count as one entry, somehow; the Geese stage is just categorized as the ” night” version of Esaka.) The Esaka stage has a bunch of characters out front — Ramon, Yashiro, Daimon. I’ve seen Lin, Yamazaki, and Mr. Big elsewhere. Often the cameos are well-hidden. You can only see Lin if the camera happens to point a certain direction during a victory pose, for instance.
I’ve spotted Cheng. And Billy (in his new suit). And Gato, King, Freeman, and Eiji. Mary with her bike. Rugal, in the boss stage. Whip and someone who might be Krizalid. White hair and dark clothes, anyway.
I notice most of the cameos are from Southtown residents. The only exceptions are Ramon, Yashiro, Daimon, Lin, Whip, and Rugal. The first three are in Esaka. Whip is in Ralf’s and Leona’s stage (the airport I mentioned). Rugal (as mentioned) is in the boss stage, and he might just be a hologram anyway. Lin is the only one who seems out-of-place.
Well, I don’t know what Ramon is doing in Japan. But.
No, wait. That wasn’t Krizalid. That was… RYO, driving that forklift.
…
Old Ryo, anyway.
…
Um.
Ur.
That’s got to be intentional.