Quick Look: The King of Fighters XIV

OH MAI GOD!

3:47:

The art style is really bad. I'm not a big KoF player, but those sprites they used to animate beautifully, while this mostly looks plain and cheap. King of Dinosaurs and Antonov are pretty funny, though. Antonov has a real Final Boss of Metal Gear Rising-thing going on.

It's pretty clear that her outfit isn't providing the support she needs either. Those things are gonna drag on the floor when she gets older.

Game seems legit.

So a company with way less resources than Capcom can release a game with way more content and that is feature complete.....sad Capcom...sad!

Wait, what? Didn't this series win GB's "best graphics" a few years ago for its 2D-looking 3D models?

@doomed: Pretty sure you're thinking of Guilty Gear Xrd

I don't really play fighting games anymore, but I wouldn't mind another Capcom vs. SNK.

I enjoyed the demo on PSN and watching this QL.

Maybe I'll get it digitally at some point later this year.

@av_gamer: I'm sorry, but what? I feel like people expect so little from KOF these days that they are biased in favour of it (and I say that as someone who grew up with KOF as my first fighting game series). Large cast of characters? Sure, but they're unbalanced as fuck and having 50 characters is the main reason they had to go 3D and change what was formerly perhaps the best looking modern fighting game series. Fully functional gameplay works between either game, whether it's KOF or SFV. Weird netplay issues in both but largely alright.

It's the "good single player modes out of the box" that really gets to me, you are excited you get arcade mode (aka story mode), trials, time mode and survival? As someone who worked his ass off to survive arcade mode in classic KOF, please. I've got better things to do than play some KOF arcade mode. Also trials and survival are in SFV...

I don't see people raising a ruckus for KOF over its lack of a training mode, or better single-player modes - I guess folks went into SFV readily expecting it to fail and in this case are rooting for the underdog. If KOF 14 succeeds then great. Nothing's gonna stop cuz it's 1998! But hopefully people don't get hypocritical: hopefully they can evaluate SFV and KOF a little less biased and not just give KOF a free pass because "oh SNK is small time these days."

Jeff using my KOF 13 standard team. Well except for Takuma in place of that new girl.

@belegorm: Aside from the visuals I'm not sure what people are giving a pass to SNK for. As for the netcode it's just another fighter that for some reason isn't using GGPO in my book. KOF's balance is generally pretty good in that very few characters are really bad. Sure it has it's top tiers, but so does any fighting game. This time they will probably keep patching the game's balance post-launch as well to fix things like KoD being terrible.

Not directed at you specifically, but I have to wonder how many people talking up XIII's graphics bought it, or how many more would buy XIV if it recycled XIII sprites and had a smaller roster. As far as I know it didn't sell too well and the character creation was extremely painstaking and expensive (you can find interviews and articles on it online which are a very interesting read). At any rate we can assume it didn't do SNK's finances any favors. The style is probably an unrealistic goal even with a small roster.

I'm crap at fighting games nowadays but, I went down a big KOF hole the other month so I'll probably pick this one up when it's on Steam.

To a casual observer like myself, this looks like a 2D Tekken, but nowhere near as good.

The art style is uninspired and the animation in both stiff and floaty. Kind of a let down considering the sprite based stuff looked so amazing.

Not sure if it's the capture or some vid issue, but the game seems super frame-y.

It is not even close to loud. It sounds like he has silent buttons. Check a fighting game stream for how it really sounds, constant clicking and clacking.

What is happening with Angel's boots there? o_O

@chibithor: I'm totally one those guys that bought KoFXIII in part because of how beautiful it looked. I'm also one of those guys that totally understands why they went cheap 3d.

2d is expensive as fuck and doesn't sell (more?).

Still, for selfish reasons I very much wish they decide to go back to that well in the near future.

@belegorm: I assumed they have such a roster size because it went 3d, not the other way around.

Though maybe I'm being too generous...

@lv4monk: That's what I meant :)

The roster size in KoF has always been out of control and it's kind of dumb to compare it to SFV when most of KoF's character roster isn't even balanced. Man people can just not miss a chance to shit on SFV.

Well if the comments for this video tell us anything, it's that 'people don't miss the chance to shit on King of Fighters XIV.' :P

Since everyone else is making the comparison anyway, so will I. I REALLY wanted to love Street Fighter V, but it's done nothing but endlessly disappoint me since the day it released.

But from what I've seen (and played) of this newest entry in the KoF series, this blows SFV out of the stratosphere in nearly every area. XIV's fully-featured list of game modes beats it alone -- that much can't even be debated. Its robust roster is the icing on the cake. The stages are beautiful and far more interesting imo. It's a VERY solid fighter and is a blast to play. Easily the best fighting game of 2016.

The character models themselves look less exaggerated and more stiff by comparison, because that's SNK's style for a vast majority of their fighting games. It all purely comes down to preference though, as it's impossible to compare the two and are completely different styles. Apples and oranges. The only negative I can say graphically if that they didn't capture the likeness of a few of the older characters very well.

Looking forward to them releasing this gem on Steam as well!

I'd play if it came to PC just for some gd Terry Bogard.

So, looks like we got some best new character of 2016 candidates from this video. King of Dinosaurs, Xanadu, and Antonov are the big standouts though. The Overwatch cast has some competition.

@deadstar: They did. It was called Primal Rage and came out years ago during the Mortal Kombat "Gore is cool!" period of fighting games.

R U OK?

watching this in 2023. game holds up