The King of Fighters EX: Neo Blood

"The king has been dethroned..."

I love the King of Fighters series. I've spent quite a few hours down at the local arcades, playing my favorite SNK heroes. But when the new generation of gaming consoles came out, I was left craving for my KOF fix. Unfortunately, the King of Fighters series has catered mainly to the PS2 and Xbox, leaving Gamecube owners like me out in the cold. When I heard that the King of Fighters was going portable on the GBA, I thought that my thirst for a new addition to the series would be quenched. But when king of Fighters: Neo Blood finally came out for my favorite little handheld, my hopes and dreams of another quality installment were shattered.

After all these years, you'd think that the KOF crew would be just a little bit more suspicious about their countless tournaments. How many competitions have they been in that involve plot twists, secret liaisons, and hidden agendas? What will it take for these kids to realize that they're being duped into yet another tournament of lies and secrecy? Actually, they do know that something is up, but are too focused on their own goals. They all have their own reasons for being there. The Hero and Art of Fighting teams are there just for the chance of competition, and the Fatal Fury and Ikari teams are trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances of the tournament. But when you look past the generic backgrounds of the KOF fighting teams, you'll find that it provides little, if any information about why the tournament s so mysterious or why it deserves to be investigated.

Non-existent plot aside, this game comes packed with a full roster of the finest in the King of Fighters series. You've got nearly twenty fighters to choose from, a decent blend of both new and old characters. Ryo is back with those fiery special moves and that stylish white jacket and Terry Bogard looks more than willing enough to punch someone's light out. Once you've chosen your favorite set of characters, all you have to do is choose among the various gameplay modes that are available by default. You have the generic Team Mode, which allows you to progress through the game's storyline all they way throw its lackluster conclusion. You can also try the Single Play Mode, which lets you choose only one fighter per tournament. After those specialized modes, there are the basic Practice, Survival, Time Attack, and VS modes for you to try.

But as with any fighting game, the real meat lies with the gameplay. You can choose and control up to three characters per tournament. You can either go with the preset teams, like Fatal Fury's Terry, Andy, and Mai, or you can mix and match the teams at your own discretion. Each of these fighters comes complete with a decent lineup of attacks, most of which involve simple button commands and a fair amount of timing. If you happen to perfect your control with a certain character, you can lay on combo after combo without much chance of retaliation. Also, you can assign a “Striker” to stand by the sidelines and intervene if you're getting pummeled. If you call on your Striker, they'll jump into the fray and execute a brief combo to keep your enemy busy. If you get the timing down, you can use your Striker to set up for countless combos and variations to put your opponents in a world of hurt.

It sounds so awesome, doesn't it? You've got quite a few fighters to choose from, with a fair amount of specials and combos to round out their attacks. You've even got the Strikers on call to add a little more flavor to your bloodbath. It's a real shame that some irritating flaws essentially ruin all of this quality gameplay. Sure, you can perform a decent assortment of special attacks in the match, but chances are the game's unresponsive controls and laggy attacks will bog you down before you can even finish inputting the command. Just attempting Terry's Burning Knuckle attack will leave your finger muscles straining as they grip on your tiny GBA. It takes some of these fighters nearly a second before they're ready to throw another punch at their opponent. And when you factor in a few hit detection issues on top of the existing problems, this game has the makings for some serious headaches.

If there's any saving grace for this game, it's with the graphical presentation. All of these fighters have a fair amount of detail. Not only can you see the basic colors of their costumes, but you can just barely make out their facial expressions and mannerisms as well. Even though the attack animations occur in slow motion, you can still observe their special effects and shading and coloring of the bodies. Also, the majority of the backgrounds have an excellent amount of detail, as if they were taken from a newspaper ad or photograph. It's too bad that the game designers didn't bother to implement the background lighting effects with the character animations. If they bothered to pay attention to such a seeming small detail, the characters would have seemed more real and meshed with the background settings.

Unfortunately, not even the decent graphics can save this poorly made fighting game. As with all the other aspects of the game, the audio stands out as the worst feature of the game. For those of us that have played Golden Sun or just about any game with a decent soundtrack, we know just how capable the GBA is when it comes to sound. The music in this game is choppy and loud, like it was ripped straight from an old Gameboy game from the 1990s. Also, all of the character voices are garbled recordings of gibberish. Why does Bao sound like a drowning cat? Why does Choi sound like he's been castrated? Whatever the reason, it makes me want to put my GBA's volume on silent and listen to the radio. It's quality of sound that makes your ears ring and your eyes water. And with this sad presentation, the game's overall quality is mediocre at best.

I'm still waiting for more quality fighters for my favorite handheld. Sure, we've got some Street Fighter games, Guilty Gear, and a few other franchise spin-offs. But what about King of Fighters? With this pathetic introduction to the GBA library, what can we expect from the KOF series? While this game suffers from a few irritating flaws, its sequel fixes nearly all of them. This first installment of the GBA KOF was merely a steppingstone for the next game to make it on the market. This game is truly ridiculous compared to some of the other handheld fighters, but the loyal fans might find some solace with it. But if you're in the market for another fighter to add to your collection, stay away from this game. Get the sequel instead.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/04