King of Fighters XII launched this friday, and I wanted it, I wanted it bad enough to make my zombie fingers fall off, climb up my leg to re-attach themselves and fall off again..  The game was drawn in High-Definition, frame by frame the thought of a group of artists slaving over the game like this made me want it more…

And playing it led me to only one question..  Is High-Definition code for Play Station sprites?  The backgrounds were vibrant, exciting, explosive even.  The combat felt fluid and fast, the counters made me excited, but the character models looked like vintage PS1 games.. You can imagine how torn I was enjoying such fluid combat, and having to see the victory pose with a pixelated arm pointing shamefully at the losing opponent. Since when were biceps and karate gii’s made from squares?

Deep breath…. on-line play will save it.  I played three rounds before the lag and frame dropping was too much to handle.  KOFXII is a beautiful concept delivered poorly.  If it was going to be just another KOF game they should have marketed it as such, and not slapped on a 59.99 price tag.

Final thoughts is a 7.5
The disappointment in visuals still can’t overshadow what a great fighter KOF really is. If they could fix online, and make the models as pretty as I dreamed, and as pretty as they said they would be, the game would be at the top of any fighting gamers list. Over-all any fighting enthusiast will drool over this game for months..

And Zombietron, will just go back to Street Fighter.