King of Fighters XII

[Lakshun]

No other topic, is everyone shunning this?

Well, I just popped it in for like 5 minutes and I saw the reason.

It has HD, but the sprites and effects aren't quite up to it. They're as pixelated as in 94 and the design is hideous.

Besides that I have never seen a game with the gameplay butchered this much in my entire life.

It has the worst cast since like Fatal Fury, digging up tons of old and boring characters but having barely any of the new and cool ones, only a few staples like Kyo/Iori and Terry.

They also changed the moves for all characters, taking away almost all old moves and giving them barely a handful (literally, some have like 4 moves total) new ones that suck bad.

On top of that only 5 stages and no boss in Arcade mode.
It's like the worst rip off ever, thank god I didn't pay for it or I'd consider taking a shotgun and taking my anger out on the SNK staff.

After XI I actually thought they'd definitely keep dream cancel, one of the bext inventions in any 2D fighting game ever, but it's not like that would have even mattered with such a pathetic amount of specials and supers, each character would have only like a single possible combo anyway.

PS: the design is so bad that I saw Sie Kensou and didn't have the slightest who the **** he was supposed to be.
Then I looked up google images and was surprised, almost shocked to see he's meat bun boy. No idea how he could end up looking this wrong.

PPS: In short this is my reaction and I don't think anyone that actually played it could disagree.
http://randazza.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/facepalm.jpg

[realsilverjunk]

I'm not interested if it doesn't have Shion, K, that card guy, and Geese in it.

[Lakshun]

Not a single one of them.

[hbun]

I disagree.

Hideous sprite designs?
I beg to differ, all the sprites used in previous games for over 10 years were dropped and replaced with new high definition sprites. I'm pretty sick of looking at recycled sprites for the past 10 years; this is definitely more eye pleasing for me, tyvm.

It would be nice if people stopped comparing it with '02 or '98. SNK is trying out something totally different rather than doing an '09.

And do you know how labor-intensive it is to create a sprite? SNK's method this time took them really long to create a sprite for just one character. There are only a team of 10-12 in charge of handling the sprites, if you want more, have fun waiting till your balls sag.


Each character in KoF XII has about 600 frames of animation, I believe they said. Imagine 11 people drawing 600 images that require dot-by-dot animation, seperately, and then having to make sure the shadows, clothing folds, muscle deformation, and facial animation is consistent between all matching frames.

Then imagine having to come up with the special effects for each character (there seems to be very few shared special effects in this game), High-resolution portrait art (which is probably done early on), gameplay, etc.

As an example, In pixel art, making sure shades / highlights stay consistent comes with "Counting pixels". For example, if a shadow is 32 pixels wide, I've gotta make sure that it stays that width in each frame, while taking into account the deformation of the shadow, as clothing folds and perspectives change. I mean, sure, you have to do that for vector art, to a degree, too, but it's not a "per pixel" thing there.

KoF XII has a lot of secondary animation, too. If they were satisfied with stagnant faces on the characters, no secondary animation, no "touch ups" by Nona, and using the same special effects for more characters, they could probably cut MONTHS out of the production time per character, and in turn, serve up more characters in the same time frame.

But they decided to add MORE per-frame detail to characters that are multiple times more detailed, pixel-wise, than their old ones. Their standards of what constitutes a character have actually risen. A pretty daring choice.

Especially in 2D.

There's no "free" lighting work in a 2D game. (Ok, there is some in this game; dynamic shading when walking into light/dark areas of stages isn't hand drawn, that's a programming trick with color pallettes/opacity.)

There's no "free" cloth and hair dynamics.

There's no stable of facial animations that have data that can be shared between character models.

Theres so much more "I've been working at this SAME FRAME for ONE character, for a Week!" and so much less "I got the base frames for everyone's Dragon punches animated! Now we have THAT part done for 4 characters!" It's just a crazy, detailed-intensive, expensive, slow-to-finish way of working.

I really wonder what's with the fucking hate these days.

[Whoaness]

As pixelated as 94? >_>;; The op is a troll.

[DarkKnightEX]

everything is barebones and reeks of unfinished, i weep when i saw concept art of those 3 unfinished characters, unused stages and what could have been. 60 bucks is way too much for what little you get, shame since what is there seems pretty cool, gameplay wise. I'll wait for KOFXIII, that is if Snk doesn't go bankrupt again.

[HongFire]

I didn't try this game yet. I used to be a kof fan. does the online play lag? on xbox or ps3?

[gundamjehutykai]

I didn't try this game yet. I used to be a kof fan. does the online play lag? on xbox or ps3?

Apparently, it lags badly on both. No patch to fix it yet either. And it's rather buggy as well.

As someone else already said, it just reeks of unfinished. And it doesn't have Mai!!!

[HongFire]

WHAT?! HOW CAN IT NOT HAVE MAI!!! I don't care if they remove iori or kyo. BUT MAI!!! my favorite character from SNK!

[gundamjehutykai]

Mai wasn't in KOF XI either but there were some interesting replacements like B Jeanet from Garou mark of the wolves.

But the roster is really small in XII (smallest in a KOF game I think) and I would have a hard time making up a team of characters I can use. I think I can just about manage with terry, athena and Mature but that's it.

[Lakshun]

I disagree.
Hideous sprite designs?
I beg to differ, all the sprites used in previous games for over 10 years were dropped and replaced with new high definition sprites.
Yes, that is the exact problem. They got a new hideous design and the game itself is HD, not the sprites.
The sprites and animations are extremely pixelated.


I'm pretty sick of looking at recycled sprites for the past 10 years; this is definitely more eye pleasing for me, tyvm.
They weren't recycled but always updated and frequently (almost every game) changed and done by a whole different designer. One of them is the same that did them in XII and they are now just as bad as back then.


It would be nice if people stopped comparing it with '02 or '98. SNK is trying out something totally different rather than doing an '09.
Did I EVER mention these? You are the first to bring them up.


And do you know how labor-intensive it is to create a sprite? SNK's method this time took them really long to create a sprite for just one character.
There are only a team of 10-12 in charge of handling the sprites, if you want more, have fun waiting till your balls sag.
lol, wtf are you saying? Arc System did just fine for BlazbBlue. Just because it's hard work or the team is small, is by no means a valid reason to chrun out crap - not when it's supposed to be oh so great and is a full price game.
KoF XII is just so good enough to sell it on XBLA.
SNK were extremely lazy. If not then they don't have the funds to make a proper new gen game and still tried it, like an amateur trying to beat the box world champion.
Also, I'd rather wait another 10 years for a good new KoF then get this ****.
I mean, it's so bad in every aspect that it would be for everyone's sake if it never had been made.


I didn't try this game yet. I used to be a kof fan. does the online play lag? on xbox or ps3?
Don't bother. I'm a huge KoF fan (btw, my favorite is XI) and it was the worst disappointment ever.


Mai wasn't in KOF XI either but there were some interesting replacements like B Jeanet from Garou mark of the wolves.
XI had a good cast. Some cool folks were missing and instead we got some obscure and boring old timers like Duck King, but it wasn't nearly as many as in XII.
Also, XI got a few great new characters like Oswald.

[HongFire]

I played xii for about 20mins and I didn't really enjoy it. The combos and play style kinda feel different. Or maybe It's just me I haven't play kof for many years since 2000 The combo graphic doesn't look very smooth. looks like they skipping many frames. And each character's move seems decreased. :(

[Woobie]

I hated the game at first but now it is quite addictive. It takes some time to get into, after that you'll be hooked. The characters are watered down but they are quite solid. Makes you think more about gameplay style then just spamming.

@Maverick: Yeah, the re vamped system is good. I can't find too much fault in the game system. Other then the points you mentioned, the game is too good to pass. I'm a KoF 2002 and XII player. Didn't like XI. It brought in fancy stuff that was not needed. I hope they are working on XIII.