You don't get a lot of time to stop and breathe at gaming conventions. While 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Summer Game Fest has no fan attendance and is therefore a far more intimate show than the likes of E3 or Gamescom, there are still often back to back appointments. But it also came with more chill vibes than any show I'd been to before, and nothing typified this more than my hour with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
I had my session in the slot immediately before another journalist I knew well, Mirror Gaming's Scott McCrae, and we had a brainwave. Since he was supposed to get half an hour right after my half an hour, and the demo was just playing through arcade battles, couldn't we just spend an hour playing against each other? The whole experience was a blissful callback to gaming all-nighters at university getting my virtual teeth kicked in, and that's because Fatal Fury channels that classic feeling that much of gaming has given up on as it chases other gods.
Summer Game Fest and serendipity played a part too. Many of the games in the Play Days HQ arena were set up with couches around TV screens, and while I didn't drink at the show and we obviously didn't eat during the appointment, the fact that SGF provides free beer and pizza gets you in that headspace. Add in Fatal Fury being against the back wall, out of the way, and being lucky enough to bump into Scott just before my appointment, plus us both having the corresponding half an hour free, all that was missing from the perfect recipe is a game.
The reason Fatal Fury fits so well into this puzzle (recipes are kind of like puzzles) is because it longs for those days as much as we do. I love me some fighting games, but I'd never played Fatal Fury before. Scott had, hence his 84 percent win rate. But even as a newcomer playing against a veteran who did not offer any mercy, I found myself a main (Preecha) and some moves that worked for me, learned the game's rhythms, and left after an hour of repeated humiliating crushing defeats wishing for just one more round - ideally against 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:someone I could beat, like for example, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:anyone who attended TheGamer's Tekken 7 and Tekken 8 tournaments.
Preecha is good, but she's no Lili.
With just five fighters, two stages, and one mode, this was clearly not the full City of the Wolves experience. It will have online multiplayer, which will likely be as draining an experience as it is in many other contemporary fighting games. But there was something charming in Fatal Fury, from the more stylised visuals over realism to the clear personality in each characters' moveset, that made it feel nostalgic anyway.
The move sheet we were given in the preview had mainly combos using stick rolls rather than chains, meaning 'flick the right stick around and press X' rather than 'X then a bunch of other buttons I can't write here or owners of the other console will be upset I didn't pick theirs'. Apparently, this is how it has always been with Fatal Fury, and sticking to that helps explain the feeling of nostalgia in play here.
Not counting the 2007 compilation game, this is the first Fatal Fury since 1999. Back then, the number of combos was more restricted by hardware capabilities, and so other series have piled them on in the two decades since to make each game bigger than the last. City of the Wolves could have been a reinvention for Fatal Fury as a more modern title, but instead of shaking off its roots, it is happy to be a throwback. I'm not sure how that will fare for the current day fighting game community, but it's perfect for me.
These stick twists can be a little difficult to get used to, and I rejected the arcade stick peripheral in favour of my preferred DualSense (d'oh! I mean, generic game controller...), which meant accidentally choosing the hard mode. However, once you get the hang of it you basically know all the moves in the game, so it balances out.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in the game is the SPD system. This is a period of the fight (either the first, middle, or last third of your health bar) where your attacks become more powerful and you gain the ability to do more of them. You can also build up this power in game by holding R1 or uꦦnleashing these moves, but do too many and you overheat, leaving you vulnerable to big damage.
This introduces some tactics - go early and start off with a bang, with more road to spam ༺without overheating, but risk running out of juice? Use it in the middle and where you could come into it with momentum against you, and at a less critical time in the fight, but with the ability to control the flow of battle? Or save it for last when your opponent could be ready to end it all for you, but when it could come in clutch to snatch victory from the jaws of KO?
City of the Wolves feels like it was made to be played by two friends sitting on a sofa together. All fighting games used to feel that way because they basically were - that, or standing next to each other at an arcade cabinet fishing in their pockets for quarters. I love the cinematic nature of Tekken 8, but it feels like games have gone from the relatively simple aim of entertaining friends playing together to meticulously balancing each character for the elite meta of online warfare. Getting obliterated in person reminded me that it's not the sucking that sucks.
After 26 years, FATAL FURY is back! SNK’s beloved Fatal Fury series first hit the market in 1991, spearheading the fighting game boom of the 1990s that swept the industry thereafter.
GAROU: MARK OF THE WOLVES (released in 1999) has, for some time, served as the franchise’s most recent installment. But that is all about to change: 26 years on, a brand-new entry—FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves—is set to arrive on the scene!
FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves features a unique art style that stimulates the senses, an innovative REV system that supercharges the excitement, plus a host of other battle systems even more robust than before. The game also breathes new life into the series by introducing two distinct control schemes (ensuring fun and excitement for newcomers and veterans alike) as well as other fresh features and elements.
The streets o🔯f South Town are a hotbed of action, wild dreams, and even wilder ambition. Here, at long last, a new legend is about to unfold...
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