Garou: Mark of the Wolves

"One of the greatest fighters of its time."

Is MOTW the best Fatal Fury ever? Yes. Is it the best SNK fighter ever? Yes. Is it the greatest (2D) fighting game around? Quite close. Of course by now, the game has become somewhat old, and new fighters are plentiful, ie: Rage of the Dragons, KoF 2001/2002, Last Blade 2... all come to mind as potential rivals. Nevertheless, 'Garou' is still the best available.

MOTW continues the saga of Terry Bogard, SNK's original hero. This time, however, he is not the main star of the show. In fact, none of his old pals returned, no Andy, no Joe, no Mai...

Presentation: (10)
This is a classy game indeed, on the same level as the Last Blade series. The story begins with a retelling of Terry's last battle with archrival Geese Howard, which ends with Geese falling to his death, leaving a son, Rock, without a father. Terry took the kid in as his own, and it is Rock Howard who is Fatal Fury's next generation hero. Besides Rock, there's a Ninja kid (trained by Andy), a standard blonde bimbo (she's happens to be pirate, which is not bad), a Karate master (trained by Kyo), two Tae Kwon Do guys (Kim's sons), a Kung Fu master and his little sister, a Gothic freak, a cop, a wrestler, and two forgettable bosses.

Graphics: (10+)
This is the game's main asset, beautifully drawn characters, flashy special effects, and unprecedented fluidity. Waaay surpasses previous Fatal Furies, and even newer games like ROTD, KOF 2k2, and Capcom's latest. Every character and their stages are exceptionally well drawn, although there's just not that many of them. Every pixel is also brand new, no recycled graphics here, a new game from the ground up. The moves seem almost physically 'realistic', as in: if a person could actually perform a Hado-Ken, it'd look like Marco's move in MOTW. Too bad out of all the original FF characters, only Terry is able to enjoy this environment.

Gameplay: (9)
Although the controls are the best I've seen in an SNK game, it does lack originality and variety (quarter/half circle forward/back pretty much sums it up). Combos are very hard to pull off if you're used to Capcom's VS games, but are typical of KOF, Street Fighter Alhpa, Fatal Fury, and Last Blade series (as in you can pull some off with luck, but it's really more of a one-move-a-time game). Fortunately (or unfortunately for some), the inputs you must make for special and even Super moves are very simple; almost every Super move for each character is qcf,qcf,P/K (except for the wrestler, he follows Zangief's style). There's a 'TOP' system to give extra power when a fighter is in a certain range on their lifebar, two levels of Supers, and a decent number of moves per character. Nothing new here, same as it has been since SFII, but at least it cuts down on learning time...

Sound: (8)
Frankly I don't care much about sound (I'm an eye-candy man). However, I do know that Garou's music and voice acting fits the title well. The BG music is what you expect to hear in a good fighter, and each character sounds like they should (though I still can't understand why Terry (has always) talked in English while no one else does.

Replayability: (8)
There's not much secrets to be unlocked in Garou (in fact, there's pretty much none), but you'll always want to go back again and again to master each character, and to find out the game's capabilities. With only 14 characters (including the two bosses), it may not sound like much, but as stated before, each character is unique, even the two TWD boys. And although MOTW brings nothing new to the fighting game scene, it seems SNK has learned to refine everything.

An excellent game overall, highly recomended, and quite possibly the best...

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/24/02, Updated 12/24/02