The King of Fighters 2001:
Spend some time with it and you'll eventually realize that it's one of the
deepest, most technical 2D fighting games ever made.
Arcade-game developer SNK officially went out of business in
2001, but that hasn't seemed to slow down what is apparently a new generation
of games for the company's NeoGeo arcade hardware. One of the last projects the
company was working on was The King of Fighters 2001, the latest edition in
SNK's annual fighting game series, along with a new developer, Eolith. And
while certain aspects of KOF 2001 may seem very different from previous games,
spend some time with it and you'll eventually realize that it's one of the
deepest, most technical 2D fighting games ever made.
It's no secret that SNK's NeoGeo hardware is old. Over 10
years old. That's why its games still use low-resolution, hand-drawn sprites
for its characters, rather than switching to a 3D engine or at least using
high-frame-rate, high-resolution graphics. The age of the NeoGeo hardware seems
painfully obvious when you look at KOF 2001's shoddy background stages, which
look generic at best and ugly and pixelated at worst. But over the years, SNK's
artists have perfected a bunch of visual tricks to help add detail to their
characters and give them lots of personality. And KOF 2001's characters have
lots of personality--as much as you'd expect from SNK, a company with a history
of making some of the most distinctive and memorable 2D fighting game
characters ever. You'll see it in your character's win poses and taunts and in
other extra animations. It's true (and unfortunate) that KOF 2001 reuses a lot
of old character animation from previous games, so that some
characters--especially the newest ones--look better than others. But most
characters have at least some new animations, win poses, and special
attacks--more than enough to make each one more interesting than they were in
the previous game, KOF 2000.
Another KOF tradition is good voice acting; KOF 2001's voice
work is about as good as it was in 2000. Sullen, moody characters like Iori and
Kyo snarl and sneer appropriately, while upbeat, smart-mouthed characters like
Ramon and Joe hurl insults at their opponents and laugh in their faces. KOF
2001's sound effects are pretty much adequate; they resemble those from
previous years, which is just fine. Quick jabs sound like quick jabs, strong
punches sound like strong punches, and KOF's infamous suite of flashy
explosions and fiery bursts of flame sound just like you'd expect them to.
Unfortunately, KOF 2001's music isn't as good. From the series' beginning in
1994, its soundtracks were eclectic mixes of funk, jazz, '80s-style guitar
rock, and heavy metal, though in later years, the soundtracks have degenerated
into generic techno music. KOF's music is at an all-time low in 2001. Though it
tries to hold to a theme of mostly bass and percussion, it all ends up being
the same kind of bland, forgettable techno music you've heard about a zillion
times in every other video game with a techno soundtrack.
Fortunately, if you play KOF 2001, you'll probably ignore
the game's awful background stages and mediocre music, because you'll be too
busy fighting it out to notice anything else. KOF 2001 has a roster of 40
different playable characters, but they're all remarkably well balanced; you can
pit just about any of them against any other and have a fair fight. And every
character has enough special attacks and strategies to be interesting--unlike
in KOF 2000 and KOF '99, which simply dumbed down a lot of characters to favor
the new striker system. Strikers--extra characters that you call in from
offscreen to do a single attack or two--are still in KOF 2001, but they're much
more balanced than in previous games and are actually completely optional in
2001. Basically, the game gives you four character slots, and you can choose as
many playable characters as you want--four playable characters with no
strikers, two playable characters and two strikers, and so on. If you don't
pick any strikers, you characters will do less damage and won't be able to perform
their most powerful super attacks; if you pick one or more strikers, you'll be
able to do more damage and access super attacks, but you'll have fewer playable
characters on your team. It's a system that resembles Capcom vs. SNK 2's ratio
system, but it's much more balanced.
But that isn't all. KOF 2001 also has super cancel attacks,
which let you quickly cancel a special attack and turn it into a super attack,
as in Street Fighter EX and Street Fighter III. 2001 also has "wire
attacks," which bounce your opponent off the corner of the screen and let
you quickly hit your opponent with a follow-up attack, like the wall juggles in
Guilty Gear X. You'll find plenty of skills to master in KOF 2001 without
getting into the specifics of each of your favorite characters, though you'll
definitely want to do that too, especially with some of the new characters in
the game. For instance, the newcomer Mei Lee is a martial artist with two
completely distinct fighting stances that you can switch between in an instant,
while another newcomer, Angel, is a completely original and completely bizarre
character with a huge set of special attacks that are keyed off of a single
kick. And if you're playing the game at your arcade, you should actually be
able to play some decent practice rounds in a single-player game, since the
computer opponents generally aren't too tough, at least until you get to the
end. The final battle with KOF 2001's boss character is probably the most
insanely difficult and frustrating fight in the entire series. But if you're
lucky enough to play KOF 2001 at an arcade with some actual competition, you'll
find that the game holds up extremely well in head-to-head play.
Most King of Fighters diehards will tell you that '98 was
the best game in the series because of its excellent character balance and its
huge character roster (38 characters, plus 12 "alternate" versions of
some characters) of very deep, interesting characters. KOF 2001 doesn't have
the sort of flat-out character-against-character matchups that '98 did, because
of its strikers and its varying team sizes, but it's still a great game in its
own right. Its different options, striker and wire attacks, and sizeable
character roster will let you play KOF 2001 for a good long time before you tire
of it--and they also help make KOF 2001 one of the deepest 2D fighting games
ever.
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