I’ve been playing the King of Fighters series since the 7th installment and King of Fighters 13 is my favorite next to Maximum Impact. King of Fighters 13 is back in its’ classic 2D form which the developers of fighting genre games finally realizing that the 2D side scrolling is a tried and true formula that will not go away.
That being said, it is a little disappointing having to purchase an Xbox 360 game for $50 and have it feel exactly the same as a game I could have bought for $25 back in the 90’s. King of Fighters 13 doesn’t incorporate the new styling and functionality of a 2D fighting game that Mortal Kombat 9 and Street Fighter 4 was able to accomplish.
Those games were using the 2 Dimensional platform but they looked and felt like an Xbox 360/PS3 game because of the amount of detail and smooth gameplay that went into the game. King of Fighters 13 lacked in this area and ultimately made it worth a rent but if they had spent the time and energy that the developers of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 4 did then this game would have been amazing.
King Of Fighters 13 Characters
There are a decent amount of characters to choose from and looks like all the favorites are there, however one thing to note is that Iori has lost his “flame” powers and that changed his fighting style a bit (he sucks now). Ash Crimson is one of the newer characters introduced in the last KOF and is pretty fun to play as well. Another downside of this game is that there are only two unlockable characters and you deliberately have to suck on the arcade so that you don’t get 2,500,000 points by the end of stage 6 and won’t have to fight the final boss ‘Dark Ash Crimson”.
Unlockable Characters
The unlockable characters are Billy Kane and Saiki. Billy Kane is unlocked by performing at least 2 target actions per match and Saiki is performing at least 5 target actions per match.
Story Mode
Lets talk about the Story Mode, there is no story mode. It is just cut scenes that are about 5 pictures fading out very slowly with no voice acting.
Arcade Mode
Arcade mode is really the only fun thing to do on this game and is what makes it bearable. The arcade mode is quite fun and challenging because by the end of tournament you quickly realize how annoying computer controlled opponents can be. It actually takes a bit of skill to defeat the last tournament match and if you score enough points good luck on fighting True Saiki and Dark Ash.
King of Fighters 13 Online
This was another frustrating part of King of Figthers 13 was the fact that everytime I tried to start an online match I would fail the search criteria and there was no explanation as to why. I tried multiple times to get a quick online match going and the game basically denied me access. Could be because I was renting the game from GameFly? Who knows.
King of Fighters 13 Rates:
Gameplay 7/10 The game play in King of Fighters 13 is more fluid than its ever been but still not up to par with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. The developers over at SNK have to push themselves a little bit harder next time and this series can really become popular.
Graphics 6/10 If you are going to make a 2D fighting game that doesn’t mean you need to make it look like the game is from the 90’s. That is one of this games biggest faults and frustrations is the fact that I could have played this game on a Gameboy.
Audio 7/10 Most of the background sound effects are your usual 2D fighting game sounds but for the arcade/story mode there are some nice songs they inputted during the slide show.
Replay Value 6/10 After I ran through the Arcade Mode a couple times I put it straight back in the mail because it just wasn’t that exciting.