Short And Sweet Review: King Of Fighters XIII

The new KOF game is finally among us after the big debacle of KOF XII, the previous game received so much flak from the hardcore fans of the franchise.  The franchise has stuck to its original formula, staying firmly set in 2D and offering some improvements here and there while still staying with the old school winning formula.  SNK has included several new modes to make up for the lack of modes of the previous game. There is a Story Mode, a Mission Mode for mastering individual characters' move sets, and a few other new interesting modes.  Since I'm a a sucker for any kind of story, I found myself spending most of my time with the Story mode.  The cutscenes are mediocre, but its cool to see some of the character interacting with one another other than kicking their teeth in.  The visuals are very good, I'm loving the old school 2D type of style.  The sprites look great just like the last game, and you can come to appreciate that kind of hard work of the artists.  The music is OK, pretty standard soundtrack for this type of game.  The big reason for fellow gamers hating the last game was the terrible online, I can honestly say the online is vastly improved.  Its very playable this time around, so I have been getting my rear-end kicked lag free.  I'm going to go deep into the controls because when it comes to fighting games, I'm a big ol' button masher.  Gameplay is tight and slick, and easy to control.  SNK has released a good solid fighting game with good online play, if you're a fan of the series, its a definite purchase.

Final Score = 8/10