Review #545: The King of Fighters 02/03

 The King tags into the battlefield.

 There's no stopping the King o' Fighters, and thus now we get the next two installments, 2002, being a 'dream match' just like '98 and 2003, the harbringer of the new Ash Saga. Both games are very different in mechanics, which makes it a rather interesting package. One harkens to the old KoF games, while the other one is a step into the future.

 First up is The King of Fighters 2002, a celebratory game of the NESTS saga, bundling up characters past and present, even dead characters return. Sadly, the roster is quite lacking. We get Yashiro, Shermie and Chris again, as well as a few old faces, but... it's missing characters like Ling and Jhun. How can you celebrate NESTS when you're missing some of its iconic characters? I was quite disappointed with the cast. For whatever reason they also did away with the neat Striker system, going back to the 3 on 3 team format, which once again, is a disappointment. There was no need to regress the series' evolution, specially considering that Striker fights were already 3 on 3, but with an added mechanic.

 Modes are: Team, Team VS Player, Single, Single VS Player, Practice and Challenge. Challenge is a set of Survival mode, 40 time challenges and Team and Single survival modes. In these modes you can unlock 4 bonus characters, but be warned, they are tough unlocks! All in all, 2002 is a disappointing celebration to what I feel is the best saga in the franchise. Further down the line a much better release, The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited March would be released that would get a much better character roster, so there's no need to bother with this one...

 ...if only it didn't come bundled with The King of Fighters 2003. The 3-on-3 battles return with a twist, now you can tag in-and-out with either partner in the midst of battle. It's a great addition, and something new to mark the introduction of the Ash Saga. We get fantastic new characters, like Ash(Fight me, he is my favorite charge character), Shen Woo, Duo Lon, Adelheid and also introduces great characters from Garou, like Tizoc and Gato. Terry gets his fantastic Garou redesign as well! There're a few neat things, like whoever character you picked first in the character select screen becomes the 'leader' and gains access to an exclusive 2-gauge super move.

 The Modes are Tag, Tag VS Player, Team, Team VS Player, Single, Single VS Player, Practice and Survival. The King of Fighters 2003 was a top-notch addition to the series, although sadly the tag mechanics would get ditched in XII. Besides, as much as I enjoy 2003, the next game, XI, has a much better character roster, like seriously, where's Kula?, and perfected the Tag mechanics.

 All in all, The King of Fighters 02/03 is a neat package, although 2002 is a bit disappointing and 2003 would be surpassed by XI. Not a bad purchase at all, I mean it's friggin' The King of Fighters, but there're better alternatives to both games available.
 8.5 out of 10

Review #544: The King of Fighters '00/'01

 How many Kings of Fighters have we got already?

Should've just made original art. Meshing both artworks together made for an ugly result.

 Not as meat as the Orochi collection, this 2-disc monster includes KoF 2000 and 2001, the last game made by SNK as we knew them and the first one developed by Playmore. Back in the day these games were subject to poor reviews, mostly citing the ugly graphics, because paid reviewers always seemed to value graphics over substance.

 Both games offer the same modes: Team Arcade, Team VS Player, Single Arcade, Single VS Player, Practice and Party Mode, which is a Survival mode in which you recover health as you land hits, but also start to gradually lose health once a timer reaches zero. It's the bare minimum, but by this stage that's what we've come to expect from SNK. At least there're tons upon tons of playable characters.

Ralf and Terry won't ever miss a KoF.

 The King of Fighters 2000 is one of my favorite entries in the entire series. It plays pretty much exactly like '99, which means the Striker system that I liked so much, and it introduces a bunch of great new characters like Vanessa, Seth and Lee. But the main attractions are Strikers, whichever character gets stuck on the fourth position becomes the Striker, but this time around there're plenty of alternate strikers, mostly drawing from older SNK games or even unused character designs! The soundtrack in this game is glorious and it has ZERO load times. Thank the gods!

 The King of Fighters 2001 is not as good, but it's not bad either. Unpopular opinion, I actually adore the art for this game. This game concludes the NESTS saga that I liked so much, and it also brought changes to the Striker formula, now you can sacrifice playable characters in order to have a smaller energy gauge to fill as well as more than one striker. I guess that change is alright, although I didn't particularly care for it. On the other hand, Strikers now cost an energy bar to use, which I didn't like. At all. The new characters are relatively bland, Angel is one of the worst designs in the franchise, Maylee is forgettable, K9999... got retconned out of existence and Foxy is alright. No load times here either!

Some things never change. Like Chang's sprite.

 I guess you could say that both games are just more of the same, and I wouldn't blame you for it, but I've a lot of love for the NESTS saga and 2000 is easily one of the most polished and enjoyable games in the KoF franchise. The sad truth is that there's no real reason to own this version over an easily emulated rom, but if you want to own legit copies, this one is as good as having an arcade machine.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #543: The King of Fighters '99

 The King of Fighters gets awesome.

Meet K'. He defines badassery.

 As I previously claimed, King of Fighters '99 was the game that made a fan of the series, and getting to revisit that game again... well, now I remember why.

 Before starting out you should know that KoF '99 on the PS1 is a very skimpy offering. Team VS Player, Team Arcade, Single Arcade, Single VS, Practice and Survival are all you get, alongside an art gallery. That's it. I was also disappointed to find that there was no move-list while ingame, which hurts a lot. On the plus side '99 introduced class into the series, the new characters K', Maxima, Whip, Jhun... they are all great new additions that look incredible. Well, Bao is a stinker, but 1 out of 8ish is nothing. A few returning characters, like Kyo, Ralf and Clark got new duds and they look great too, '99 did a great job at making characters look fantastic. I'd argue that this game was the one that set the standard for what to expect out of new characters coming forward.

Kryzalid is not as bad as previous SNK bosses.

 Extra and Advance modes where done with, now it plays exclusively like 'Advance' but with a few tweaks. Teams are made up of four members now, the fourth member taking the 'Striker' function, a character you can summon to perform an attack and leave. You start with 3 stocks and get a new one every time you lose. Dodges, knock-back attack and all that hoopla remains the same, but why fix what ain't broken? This is the best King of Fighters has been yet, and we haven't even gotten into Tagging yet!

 As great as this game is, the PS1 version came with a huge drawback: Loading times. There're somewhat lengthy, albeit not too intrusive, loading screens before each round, understandably since characters change, and it's something you'll have to deal with if you want to enjoy The King of Fighters on PS1. In my opinion, it's not too bad, although the seamless play of the Arcade version makes it the superior choice.

Ralf and Clark finally get different clothes!

 The King of Fighters '99 is a top-notch fighting game, and it's a great addition to anyone's PS1 library. That said, this is not the game at its best, the loading times do put a bit of a dampener on gameplay, but I think it's something you can learn to live with.

 8.5 out of 10

Review #542: The King of Fighters Collection - The Orochi Saga

 A bundle of fighting game nostalgia.

Stylish... the way KoF ought to be!

 Welcome to The Orochi Saga, a collection of five different games: King of Fighters 94, 95, 96, 97 and fan-favorite 98. As with other SNK collections, these are Arcade Ports with very few bells and whistles, the standard bonus art, as well as 'challenges' and bonus arranged music.

 A thing to keep in mind is that, being arcade ports, the difficulty can be rather high, even on the easiest setting. Continuing doesn't even grant you the 'Service' SNK games were known for! Modes are also very lacking, each game has only Arcade, VS Player and a new, somewhat limited, training mode. 'Challenges' are played on KoF 98 and they are silly stuff, like not being able to see the enemies' life bars. The games run relatively well, although the initial loading times are rather lengthy, luckily there's very little in-game loading, the worst culprit being '97. Lastly, controls feel a bit unresponsive on a few games, since they require very precise inputs, you can't just do the shoryuken motion with Right, Down, Down-Right, Right+Punch, you gotta end it exactly at down-right.

Fatal Fury veterans reunite on the battlefield.

 '94  was the very first King of Fighters(Well, technically, Fatal Fury was the first one) and it introduced the staple 3 vs 3 team matches. There's no arrange team so you gotta play as pre-selected teams. Your energy bar fills very slowly when you get hit, so you have to charge it by holding down a couple of buttons, and there's also a dodge move and a knock back move. Seeing these old sprites has its charm, but 94 is not a game you'll spend much time on.

 '95 is pretty much more of the same, but now you can select any three characters and play as a custom team. It also introduced Iori Yagami, the series break-out character. If you liked '94 you'll like '95 even more.

 Poor Sports-Team, only two appearances in over 10 games! And you can own both of them with this disc!

 '96 was the series's first major face-lift. Sure, a lot of sprites were redrawn in '95, but not as many. Sprites are much better, and characters look more badass than ever before... except Benimaru, who lost his neck. The dodge move turned into a dodge. All things considered, '96 was a great game, a great roster and an overarching story that began in 95 and promised to continue the next year...

 '97 shakes things up, now you can play in either Advance or Extra Mode. Extra mode plays pretty much like previous games, but Advance gives you a more streamlined energy gauge, one that charges as you hit and get hit. Since energy stocks are a thing now, you can be more strategic with your team, you may want a character to build up energy stocks for other to use. I liked 97 a ton, and it looked like the series was only improving.

Yamazaki's crazy streak continues in King of Fighters.

 '98 is the final game in the disc, and is one of the most beloved KoF games. Can't say I share the sentiment, since my heart belongs to the NESTS saga, and even Ash's saga was more entertaining that the Orochi one. Regardless, this is a Dream game, it plays just like '97 but brings back almost every playable character from previous years. Honestly, there're better versions of 98 available, even on the PS2, but this is probably the more affordable one. Although this version comes with a nasty but tolerable, audio bug in which the announcer will say 'winner' or 'perfect', depending on how the last round ending, when announcing the start of a new round.

 Orochi Saga was... something I didn't expect to like as much as I did. I didn't care much about KoF until K' brought the NESTS saga, but these first games were quite enjoyable, if to a lesser degree than what is to come. Minor shortcomings aside, this is a great collection to own if you're a fan of King of Fighters.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #541: Ape Escape 2

 Worth going bananas for.

Just a taste of what's to come!

 Ape Escape is one of Sony's most untapped franchises, heck, look at the box, this one was published by Ubisoft instead of Sony themselves, and it's one of the few games that we actually got overseas. What is Ape Escape? They are platform games with a twist, or two, firstly, the collectibles are monkeys and secondly, the games make extensive use of both analog sticks.

 Jimmy, the protagonist, messes up which causes Specter, the evil albino monkey, to regain power and thus empower and control other monkeys, 300 in all. Now the monkeys are going bananas all over the world and it's up to Jimmy to catch them all again. To say that the game doesn't take itself seriously is an understatement, heck, monkeys can be found wearing the most ridiculous costumes and doing ridiculous stuff. Nothing was laugh-out-loud funny, but it's endearing nonetheless.

Stages are beautiful and fun to explore. You'll have to use your gadgets in order to clear them.

 The game is divided into 20 or so small stages, and each one has a its own amount of monkeys to catch. You don't need to catch every monkey in order to proceed, but you do need to collect every monkey in order to fight the true final boss and unlock Spike, Ape Escape 1's protagonist, as a playable character. He plays just like Jimmy but has no cutscenes and has access to all gadgets from the get-go. One tiny issue I had is that the game forces you out of a stage as soon as you captured the minimum amount of monkeys required to proceed, as a completionist like myself this was a bit annoying since it meant having to return to the stage and retread old ground. And just wait until you find out that you are not really done, defeating the (fake)final boss unlocks the final gadget... and 1-2 monkeys on every previous stage, so I did every stage about 3 times. Heck, sometimes stages have monkeys that can't be caught since you haven't gotten the right gadget yet! The game is a blast so I didn't mind it too much, but it would've been nice being able to exit the stage whenever I felt like.

 Controls are fairly intuitive, the left analog stick moves Jimmy around and the right analog stick uses your equipped gadget. The net, used to catch monkeys, works just like the energy baton: move the right analog stick wherever you want to attack. You spin the right analog stick in order to use the gyro copter or the running wheel, or you tilt backwards in order to use the bananarang, etc. There're about 10 gadgets, and they can be put on any face button for quick access. Sadly, as you can tell, there're many more gadgets than buttons, so expect to return to the gadget equip screen fairly often. It's just a button press away, Select, but I can see it annoying a few people. Lastly, R1 and R2 jump, L1 is used to position the camera behind you, L2 goes into first person and pressing both analog sticks lets Jimmy crawl on the ground, for stealth purposes or dodging.

Bonus character Spike plays just like Jimmy but has his own voice clips.

 Since both analog sticks are used for gameplay the camera can be a bit finicky, but the L1 button works well enough most of the time. The camera during boss battles can be worse though, since it's easy to lose focus on a few bosses. Regardless, during normal gameplay you can manage just fine with the L1 button.

 Peppered through every stage, and hidden inside enemies, are coins which can be collected and spent on a Gatcha machine in order to unlock a huge plethora of extras, including three minigames. It's way more addictive than it has any right to be.

Stealth is not mandatory, but you might skip on the monkeys' shenanigans if you alert them.

 Ape Escape 2 is one of the finest platform games on the PS2. The gameplay is great fun, thanks to its fun mechanics as well as great level design. It's a bit on the easy side, but there's a lot of monkeys to collect, a lot of stages to traverse and a lot of silly extras to unlock.
 9.0 out of 10

Now Playing: inFamous - Second Son & Ape Escape 2

 Second son, third game.

 So... I just meant to install this game, but turns out there was no install so I kinda started playing it...
 My very first impression was... not good. I got control of Delsin and quickly found out that Water kills you instantly, which I thought was lame. Then I discovered that Delsin couldn't climb quite as efficiently as Cole, which was also disappointing.

 But I kept on playing, I'm up to the part in which you rescue the bus full of people and I'm enjoying the game a lot. It's very smooth, and I just hope that traversing the environment is as fun as it was on the previous games.

 I'm rather fond of Delsin too, I heard he was an unlikable protagonist... but nothing he's don was particularly douchebaggy, instead he's acting as I'd expect a trouble-child would after obtaining powers. I'm loving his banter with his brother!

The game is great, but the cover isn't very descriptive...

 Well, since the Uruguayan customs suck and every time a package gets retained it means they will handle it like garbage... I'm rushing Ape Escape 2 since I want to make sure the disc is OK, considering the box got crushed and the splinters scratched the disc.

 I'm somewhere near the end of the game, I kinda binged through the game, and I'm adoring it. I remember liking this game a lot back when I was younger, but right now I'm loving every second. As a matter of fact I'm catching every single monkey. I love this game.

Review #540: Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 - Road to Boruto

 Naruto's most disappointing Storm yet.

Hideous cover. Should've kept the old one.

 CyberConnect 2 is a company that usually gets a lot of flak for being lazy and... this game isn't helping their case. A disappointing game bundled with its disappointing DLC, Ultimate Ninja Storm is anything but a fitting end to the series that promised so much.

 Well, Story mode has changed a bit, now being split in an episode-based Story Mode and an Adventure Mode that takes place after the story. The Story mode follows the final parts of Naruto's story, which sees Naruto fighting deities and finally reuniting with Sasuke. Story mode had usually been a highlight in the franchise but they managed to ruin it. About 3/4ths of the story is told through ugly anime stills, usually featuring off-model characters, instead of the beautiful 3-D cutscenes CC2 was known for. It's incredibly offputting and cheap, and they only stopped using them because the anime hadn't gone that far into the manga. Losing the ability to freely roam around is also missed, this episode structure feels very disjointed. As for the adventure mode, there're three chapters, one for Naruto, one for Shikamaru and a final one for Gaara, they are silly scenarios that will barely hold your interest, but they have various sidequests and things to do, so there's no shortage of content here... it's a shame most of it is rather dull and repetitive, 'Go find X thing for me', 'Pick up Y things' or win simple fights. Boruto gets his own Story Mode which is a return to form for the series, featuring Adventure Mode's free roam as well as the gorgeous cutscenes from story mode, it's a shame Boruto's movie, the story it covers, isn't very interesting. Rounding up the package are the usual VS and online VS modes you've come to expect.

The particle effects are much nicer, but it doesn't look all that much better than it used to.

 If story mode wasn't disappointing enough, the character roster sure is. There're only 13 new characters, mostly made up of new forms of Naruto, Sasuke, Obito and Madara. They have different animations and models, true, but being just new forms makes them rather dull. What's most disappointing is how many characters we're missing, like the mist swordsmen or a few reanimated enemies, many which already had character models and animations from Ultimate Storm 3. Road to Boruto is even MORE disappointing, there're many enemies with animations and movesets that are simply unplayable, instead we get a total of THREE Borutos(Which share a lot of moves), TWO Saradas(Which share a ton of moves) and new versions of adult Naruto and Sasuke... which are reused character models that share some animations with their previous versions. All of that and not a single playable Boruto villain. To call the character roster underwhelming is an understatement. At least the game includes the Sound Ninja DLC, which should've been part of the roster since the first game. To add insult to injury, 90% of the DLC costumes, thankfully also included, return from Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 and quite a few costumes remain Story mode exclusive. Cyber Connect 2? More like Cutting Corners 2 much.

 Gameplay is basically the same as usual, but with a few novelties. The system from Revolution is gone, thankfully, so now you can Awaken or use Ultimate Justsu at will. A good new addition is that you can customize which Jutsu and Ultimate Jutsu to use with a few characters, which should've been a great idea but is very limiting, for instance, Minato can't use Reanimated Minato's awakening or ultimate jutsu, which sucks since reanimated characters are ugly, but Reanimated Minato can use any of Minato's skills(Sans awakening). That's a great idea executed halfway decently. A good addition is tagging, by using the right analog stick you can switch between any of up to three characters, all of them sharing a single life bar. Lastly, there's chakra counter, by shortening, for a short while, your maximum chakra you can repel any attack directed your way, if you time it right. There're some framerate issues here and there, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Still, this game looks almost exactly as it looked on the PS3, the particles are better, and still only runs at a barely stable 30 fps. What the hell? Take away tagging and this game could've perfectly run on a PS3. So the money didn't go into making new characters, didn't go into a decent story mode and didn't go into enhancing production values, so where was it spent? Only CyberConnect 2 knows.

Road to Boruto's DLC is one of the most lackluster DLCs I've ever seen.

 If you've been playing the series sporadically, skipping a game here and there, or if this is your first Ultimate Ninja Storm game, you might think it's a very good game. But us who have been here since the start(Or Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 in my case) know just how badly CyberConnect2 cut corners with this one. This game was gonna bring closure to the franchise, this was supposed to be the best Naruto game, the ULTIMATE Ultimate Ninja Storm. But CyberConnect 2 managed to disappoint and tried to demonstrate why so many people call them lazy.
 6.0 out of 10