King of Fighters: Maximum Impact

"The Marvel vs. Capcom of 3D fighters!"

Celebrating the tenth anniversary of the King of Fighters, SNK Playmore has released multiple games this year and other products, including, Neogeo Arcade Stick and Pad for the PS2, King of Fighters ReBout, and King of Fighters Maximum Impact. ReBout being a remake of the original game, and Maximum Impact a brand new deviation, bringing the third dimension and totally new gameplay to the King of Fighters series!

Admittedly, this game is guilty of EXTREMELY shoddy programming, but it doesn't stop it at all from being fun. Lots of old games had tons of glitches and they're still considered great.

Gameplay: 9/10

King of Fighters: Maximum Impact utilizes a completely new style of gameplay. It doesn't even try to be like its 2D brethren at all. The only things akin are the CD attacks, rolls, and safe fall. There's no command cancelling. MAX mode is gone. An additional level of DMs has been added, and the game overall has a totally different feel. As such, some hardcore 2D King of Fighters fans may be turned off by this drastic change.

The game feels like perfect blend between 2D and 3D fighting; sidesteps are very powerful when timed right, and jumps are a lot higher than in games like Tekken and Soul Calibur.

But anyway, gameplay is VERY fast paced in this game with the addition of the "Stylish Arts" (aka 3D style chains), fast meter building, and easy super cancelling, allowing powerful combos. Turtling is almost impossible. The guard crush system is brutal compared to any other game. Each hit blocked causes the guard gauge to go down an equal amount, even punches! The guard gauge doesn't refill until it's fully depleted. Furthermore, once it IS depleted, EVERY move that you throw at them guard crushes them until their guard gauge is fully filled again, which takes quite a bit of time. On top of that, a glitch allows people with command throws to throw their opponent while their opponent is in blockstun. To sum it all up, the game is all rush. It is possible to turtle, but you have to use rolls or sidesteps rather than simply blocking.

The game is broken as hell though. But that never stopped a certain game named MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2 to succeed though, did it? It's so broken it's fun! Many characters have 50-50 mixups with stylish arts (or even 25-25-25-25, Soiree!). The flabbergastingly lax OTG system allows for huge combos. Characters with command throws can grab while the opponent is in blockstun. And I'm sure there's a whole plethora of glitches just waiting to be discovered. It's quite apparent that SNK Playmore didn't beta test the game since they even put in a combo limit to prevent infinites!

There are four gameplay modes: Story, Versus, Time Attack, and Mission Mode. Story and Versus are the same thing basically, except you can set variables such as time and amount of meter in Versus, and you can play against someone else in Versus. Time Attack has you beat a series of opponents as fast as you can (duh!). Mission mode has you play missions of four different difficulty levels with preset variables, such as your opponent being much stronger than usual, or doing a 30-hit combo. Completing missions unlocks alternate costumes and stages.

Overall, I personally love the frantic pace of the game, but I can see why someone would be turned off by it. If you're looking for a game where you can turtle, then you're not going to like this game.

Story: 1/10

This game tries to have a story, but fails utterly. Alba and Soiree Meira, two of the new characters in the game, are apparently trying to take revenge on Duke, the boss, for killing some guy (I think his name was Fate or something), and that's about it. The new characters have been given a meager reason to exist in the universe, but the other characters are just... there. And there's no endings either. Who cares though, it doesn't matter THAT much, it's a fighting game.

Graphics: 7/10

Bah. The graphics aren't OMG! quality, or even on par with the other fighting games out these days, but they're sufficient, although some people look kind of dumb. The only real complaint I have is that in some parts of stages there's actually the occasional slowdown. It only happens on a few stages, but this pisses me off to no end when it happens. I guess it's the background or something.

The backgrounds are all pretty decent, except that they're all square or circle. And there's the moronic fans in the background that remind me of the pathetic attempt of the people on The Sims to dance. Or worse, some are standing COMPLETELY still. This is mostly the cameos in the background. Don't get me wrong, I like them and all and it's good to have them stand out, but they look kind of dumb just standing there. Worse than Ramon trying to get funky with the rest of the sims on the Esaka stage.

And for the people who are absolutely obsessed with this, no the game is not censored (with the exception of the Parking Lot stage music).

Sound: 8/10

This game would have gotten a perfect score if it weren't for one thing; the horrid English voice actors. Blame the SCEA for this (OMG U CANT PORT DIS GAME TO THE US WITHOUT ENGLISH DUBZ). Don't get me wrong, I would MUCH rather prefer hearing my own language over Japanese, but this is just ridiculous. I mean, it's stuff such as a middle-aged woman voicing Athena with a horribly high-pitched voice. I can't stand it for the life of me. Yuri's just as bad as Athena. Overall, I'd call half of the voice acting cast crappy, but the other half I like a lot.

Other than half the voice actors, the sound is GREAT! This game has hands down the best soundtrack I've heard in a while (except for the Parking Lot stage, but that one was censored in the US version to keep it a T rating, so it's all good). It blows away even some of the old KoF ASTs in my opinion. The sound effects are excellent too.

Replayability: 10/10

If you've got a friend it's got the same amount of replay ability of every other fighter.... infinite.

But otherwise, the lack of more difficult AI may annoy some people. Adjusting the difficulty level does nothing but alter how much damage you do to the AI and how much they do to you.

Maximum Impact has quite a bit to unlock. Not as much as MK SMILEY, but enough to keep you busy. Each character has four additional colors/costumes to unlock, and their profile with the model, which you can add some stuff to. Not as well implemented as I would have liked though.

Overall: 8/10

This game is great... it's just missing a few elements that make it seem a tad unpolished. But it's pluses more than make up for it. Definitely a keeper!

Rent or Buy: Buy

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/04