Garou: Mark of the Wolves

"Fatal Fury has never gotten any better than this."

SNK created Fatal Fury as the beginning of their supposed fighting game career when it was planned to be a single game. Because of the success of Capcom's Street Fighter II games, it pushed SNK to be developing the fighting game genre and becoming the company that is well known for mainly their fighting games, with Fatal Fury among them that became a series. The latest installment made is Garou: Mark of the Wolves, a new chapter in the Fatal Fury series.

Story

Ten years ago, prior to the events of Real Bout Fatal Fury, the legendary wolf Terry Bogard fought the notorious Southtown crime boss Geese Howard in an epic battle on top of Geese Tower. When Terry defeated Geese, the force of the impact sent Geese falling from the tower. As Terry held out his hand to save a life, Geese rejected the offer and let go, descending to his death. Terry had soon met a boy named Rock Howard, who was Geese' son himself.

As a decade passed, Terry adopted and taught Rock his knowledge of fighting and Rock was able to create a fighting style that blended both Terry's and Geese's martial arts. Terry and Rock return to Second Southtown to participate in the King of Fighters Maximum Mayhem Tournament, run by the mysterious man, Kain R. Heinlein. It's a new generation of fighters that come to battle, including those related to the classic Fatal Fury characters, such as the sons of Kim Kaphwan, Dong Hwan and Jae Hoon, and the pupil of Terry's brother, Andy, Hokutomaru. The only character to return to the heat of battle is Terry Bogard, dressed in new attire and still hungry.

Gameplay

The gameplay has gone through a few changes since the last Fatal Fury games. The two-sided stages where moving around the place has been taken out and is just now a simple one-sided battle. This alters the 4-button control of the Neo-Geo into two strengths of punch and kick buttons. A new system has been implied, known as Tactical Offensive Position, or abbreviated as T.O.P. Select the portion of 1/3 of your life bar and when your character's life reaches that section they will receive an extra attack, a good attack boost ranging from 25%, 50% and 75% depending on how long the T.O.P. bar currently is, and life will be recovering gradually. SNK's creation of Just Defense is inspired by Street Fighter III's parry system, but Just Defense is when an attack is blocked by holding back at the right moment, allowing the short time during when your character flashes blue while healing a bit of your life to guard cancel into a special or super move and counterattack. Each playable character has two feint moves, where they will fake the animation of a move and allow them to cancel into anything. Along with feinting, braking is present, where each character has a single special attack they can use to cancel.

Some things brought back to the series is the super bar of “S” (Super) and “P” (Potential) Powers. It is basically two different levels of energy used to perform a super move. The real innovation in the Fatal Fury games is the background changes during each round as time passes during the fight. An example of is at the beginning of the round it is in the morning light while it shifts to the afternoon and ends with a dark night.

Graphics

The Neo-Geo, a system made back in 1991, is the same hardware for SNK's games for years and was used to create the beautiful visuals and flawless animation that Mark of the Wolves has. The backgrounds although 2-D because of the Neo-Geo's limits are clear and have great detail, including the changing shift in their looks during each round. The appearance in character sprites is very fluid and shows how well done they really are.

Sound

The sound has no severe errors to it, unlike the Dreamcast version of this game with delays. The voice acting is nice to listen to, although the game is dominated with Japanese voices and Terry's Engrish, which is plain fun. The sound effects have been done with effort, expressing pain from getting hit, jumping into the air, defending your opponent's assault, the ripples when you enter water, it's all made at the correct timing and gives a smoother feel to the game. The music performed fits the situation right in cutscenes during the story and the background in stages. The soundtrack is well worth hearing.

Replayability

The Neo-Geo home console version is armed with a story mode, survival mode, vs mode, how to play the game, and the options. Each character in the game has a separate story, although at the end of the game everyone will have to battle the two boss characters. The endings are well worth it to see character backgrounds and possibly even some development. The survival mode is simply pitting a character you select against all of he characters in the game with one chance only to defeat them all, but power-ups for your life, time, and super bar are there to help, as well as downgrading versions of them. The vs mode is letting another player join in the game to fight 1-on-1 battles. I won't elaborate through how to play the game and finally, the options menu allows you to adjust the difficulty of the game, controls, time, and more.

Recommendation

This is a fighting game that goes back to Fatal Fury's roots and also has changes. SNK has put in a lot of effort to create something quite successful. I would recommend it myself, as it's currently my favorite fighting game and Rock Howard is my favorite video game character. Pass on the Mark of the Wolves.

Final Score: 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/05