Garou: Mark of the Wolves

"One of the best 2D fighters.........ever."

Garou: MotW is the newest game in the Fatal Fury series from SNK and makes a dramatic departure from the norm in that SNK actually makes this fighter the new benchmark for 2D animation and positive innovation.

Graphics: Unparalled animation for each character not equalled by even Street Fighter 3. Observe as the screen flashes golden before each special move, or when Rock's brushes back his hair after a sucessful attack, or Terry tightening his gloves mid-fight. Pull off Rock's Potential Super Deadly Rave Neo and watch one of the most beautiful moves in fighting game history. Not to be outdone are the backgrounds, especially Hokutomaru's stage with Last Blade characters Moriya and Kaede and posters of SNK characters on buildings. Only the Last Blade series has better backgrounds than this game, and not by much. Rating - 10.

Audio: Character voices are done very well, and there is actually enough speech in the game that this is important. Music is a little off-setting at first, sounding like 70's disco at times, but it's good to fight to, and each character has an appropriate theme, especially Rock's theme. Punching, Kicking, and Throwing noises are varied and loud and soft at the right times. Rating - 10.

Gameplay: The critical matter in any fighting game, luckily this game is awesome in this department as well. Using the Neo-Geo's basic four button configuration, you have your traditional weak, strong punch and weak, strong kick. Start is the taunt button and taunts can be done and interrupted at any time to resume fighting. The special moves of each character are both simple, for the beginners and for easy gameplay, and complex, for the more skilled who can pull off the less well-known supers, like the Deadly Rave Neo. In the case of most characters, a special is merely quarter circle forward twice and a button, weak punch or kick if S.Power and strong punch or kick if P.Power. This helps the learning curve of the game and the AI can be lowered or raised to your level or skill, ultra-hard will offer a unique experience every time you play if you're at that level. The innovations are not many but have high quality to compensate. The game has a strategic element called the Tactical Offensive Position set before you start with your character soemwhere on your lifebar. Once your lifebar reaches that point, your life slowly goes up, you have access to a new attack, and all your attacks become more powerful, even your special moves are augmented by extra hits. Garou: MotW also takes a page out of Street Fighter 3 with ''Just Defense'' in which if you block an attack at the last second, you actually gain life from the block instead of taking the tick damage. There are feints of special moves that can trick you opponent in a crucial situation. These innovations really help the gameplay experience. Rating - 10.

Storyline: A rare rating in fighting games but Garou: MotW has a mysterious storyline all its own, worthy of note. In the story, Terry Bogard, stalwart main character of the FF series, is actually second fiddle to Rock Howard, son of Geese Howard, who was raised and trained by Terry. Rock struggles to control his power, which while great is tainted by his relation to the evil Geese. Rock, searching to find his heritage, most importantly his mother, joins the infamous Kain R. Heinlein's fighting tournament with the promise of information of this heritage. All the characters are given good motivations for being in the tournament and all have still artwork and text endings, which are great especially Rock's. Rating (sense a trend here?) - 10.

Replay Value: Another critical component in any fighting game, Mark of the Wolves has it in spades. The 2P game is of course extremely fun (I especially enjoy ripping off the flashy Deadly Rave Neo against my friends for the coolness factor) but the single player keeps you coming back as well. The single player game offers a Survivor Mode, a Training Mode in which you can perfect your super moves and learn the damage a particular move will do, and of course, the Story Mode. Each fighter has three taunts but two of the three involve more than the start button and are only available at the end of a match. The game has two secret characters in Kain and Grant, and the game's AI is always fun to play against at the hardest level. Mark of the Wolves one weak spot due to the insane amount of animation it contains for each character and the limitations of the Neo-Geo hardware is that it has only 12 characters including the secret characters. This number is very small compared to Street Fighter Alpha 3, King of Fighters, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. However, each fighter has their own unique style of fighting, none similar to the other(except Marco Rodriguez, a better version of Ryo from Art of Fighting and indirectly Ryu from Street Fighter) and each has great depth. Rating(gasp) - 8.

Overall: This game is incredible in every way and it is unfortunate that it hasn't gotten enough attention in the US. The only ways to obtain the game are to get the obscenely expensive cartridge version, the pretty expensive CD version, hope for a Dreamcast port(unlikely), find an Arcade that has it(hard in the US), or the illegal way which I won't mention though fairly well-known.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/00, Updated 08/07/00