King of Fighters: Maximum Impact

Terry Bogard must have fought a billion matches to date... He has never lost his cap though.

Back in the days everyone knew who was fighting who. There was Nintendo vs. Sega, Mario vs. Sonic and, of course, Capcom vs. SNK. If there ever was a game to match Street Fighter in its day, it was per definition King of Fighters. SNK managed to produce some of the best 2D fighting games the world has ever seen, but they have failed to evolve much over the years. The 2D games are pretty timeless, however, and they still have fans across the world, but even so the old company has finally made the jump to 3D. Six or seven years ago this would have been a sensation, but nowadays the number of raised brows will probably be limited. But how does Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and all the other oldtimers handle another dimension? Tighten your black belt and keep reading.

New faces in the gang.

Mingnon Beart. What went wrong?

As usual the storyline is pretty much redundant. You have to fight your way through a number of rounds with varying opposition in order to finally engage a very strong boss, this time a massive guy named Duke who is the leader of the Southtown gang, the people behind this King of Fighters Tournament. Maximum Impact has about 20 characters to choose from and besides the well known faces there are some newcomers.

There is the Meria brothers, Alba and Soiree, who look like a pair of japanese bikers. Chae Lim is a Korean martial arts chick, Lien Neville a female spy with breasts so large se can hardly see through her nightvision goggles and... *sigh*... Mingnon Beart (that's her name, honestly!), a cliché to end all clichés in gaming. That is some achievement, especially when you have seen the blonde bombshell Lien. Mingnon wears a pink school uniform from Hell, she whines and moans whenever she moves, apologizes when she hits you and even beats herself when she wins. It may sound funny but that is only untill you see -and especially hear- it in action. Not nice. Not even when she wears her...*double sigh*... cat costume.

Dead or Alive?

Lien must have problems staying stealthy.

King of Fighters: Maximum Impact use many ideas from Dead or Alive for its visual expression. Females are extreme caricatures and the males are huge slabs of muscle or lean smartasses with pointy hairdos, with both graphics and animation reminding me heavily of Itagaki's bikini-orgy. The gameplay, however, reminds me mostly of a mix between the first Dead or Alive and Street Fighter EX. In other words reasonably solid and pretty old-fashioned. And unfortunatly SNK lost some of their charm during the leap into 3D. The original developers used the Neo-Geo machine to its utmost capacity and created sprites with plenty of life and personality. This personality has been transformed to relatively pretty 3D sprites, who are rather devoid of character. A pity.

Well-known gameplay

Mai goes at it as always.

It is all very simple. As opposed to former games you only select a single character. In battle it is possible to make long, fast combo's and it is all pretty nicely done, but there is little in the way of balance between the moves and some characters have downright unfair combinations available. It is now possible to hit people who are on the ground, making for very quick fights. And you cannot block forever without recieving damage, as your opponent will be able to beat you up, once your blockade-bar has emptied.

It is possible to sidestep a bit, however, or roll forward or backwards to avoid being hit, but none of these features are really usable. The old 2D sidestep that allowed you to jump deeper into the background was a great deal more functionable than this.
As in many other games of this type there is a super-bar, divided into three sections and used for the pretty massive supermoves, which by the way also can be combined. Maximum Impact offers plenty of cool tricks to be memorized if you can keep the interest up.

On a mission

Very nice Ryo... We know how bad you want to be a certain Ryu from Street Fighter...

The game features the following: A very slim story mode as well as training, versus, time battle and mission mode. The latter once again lends its format from games like Street Fighter EX and Guilty Gear X2, letting your fight against a series of opponents in increasingly difficult conditions. Some fights will not let you do supertricks, others will only let you win on counterattacks etc. The reward for completing these missions is mostly just a variation of colorscheme in character clothing, even if this can be quite surprising at times. This does not remedy the feeling of tediousness due to lack of depth in this the perhaps most addictive section of the game.

And finally lets kick Mingnon from the frame.

King of Fighters: Maximum Impact is then a rather mediocre 3D-fighter with plenty of speed and ok graphics. But the charm of its 2D predecessors has all but dissapeared in the transition of format, and the gameplay simply is not tight enough for this game to step into the fray with some of the better titles in the genre. And then there is the sound issue. Effects and music are survivable, but the voiceacting is worse than terrible. The english actors delivers their lines with such a profound lack of talent than one cannot even laugh at it. Strangely enough it is possible to make your characters speak Japanese during fights but not in cutscenes and victory oneliners.

SNK ought to remember what made their 2D games good, and aim at a better transition in future attempts. Because this result mostly resembles a Dead or Alive version for the poor. The King of Fighters series has one of the most extensive casts of characters in the gaming world and we can but hope for a decent use of these resources in the future. If you are a fan of the series, this release may hold some interest. If not, there are better games out there.

Source: Boomtown DK
Translated by: William Bjarnø (Dworkin)