Fighting Games Friday: The King of Fighters XV Looks as Good as It Needs To
Of the features that The King of Fighters fans wanted SNK to improve on for The King of Fighters XV, the visuals were among the largest. The King of Fighters XIV was a welcome return for the series, but was hardly a looker. The visuals were bound to be divisive with the switch from beautifully-animated (though very expensive and time consuming to create) sprites to polygons, but it didn’t help that the character models looked nearly a generation behind the competition at the time. It either showed SNK’s inexperience with creating models, or their hesitance to give their first non-pachinko or non-mobile game in years too large a budget — or both.
Either way, SNK was clearly listening to the criticism. The biggest issue with KOFXIV’s models involved the unimpressive shaders on the character models, which were only slightly improved through a post-release patch. SNK learned how to create good shaders for Samurai Shodown, and has now applied that experience to KOFXV’s models. The results are much easier on the eyes, and the process of creating this game’s models doesn’t seem to have been that difficult.
The trailers thus far show how the same base models are being used for the returning characters, especially the individual trailers. SNK apparently plans to release one character trailer a week, which means we have a lot of weeks of previews in the future considering the sheer number of characters the previous game contained (51, not including the DLC). This started with Shun’ei, the main character of this KOF arc, and continued with Meitenkun and, this week, longtime favorite Benimaru Nikaido. The three of them make up “Team Hero,” with Benimaru somehow taking Tung Fu Re’s place on what was previously the “China Team” in KOFXIV. The Jean Pierre Polnareff resemblance must have elevated him.
The characters are clearly reusing the same animations form KOFXIV, though new ones have been made for new techniques — and returning ones have been created in 3D for the first time in Benimaru’s case. But that’s fine considering the animation wasn’t the problem in the previous game’s visuals. Again, the shaders were the issue, one that’s been addressed. The animation reuse is actually a good thing; it will make it easier for the developers to focus their work on new technique animations for those characters and creating models for new or returning characters who weren’t playable in XIV. It’s a good throwback, continuing the strategy applied to the sprite-based installments from The King of Fighters ’94 to XI, and between XII and XIII.
Beyond the animation and aesthetics: Another piece of good news is how the roster is unknown outside other characters confirmed to return like Kyo Kusanagi, Mai Shiranui, Leona Heidern, and K’. Two supposed leaked lists circulated around message boards and gaming social media corners (likely originating form 4chan), but neither one listed Benimaru as being part of the Hero team, disproving both of them. It’s also possible they were true at one point, but have since changed as the development process continued. Either way, it’s nice that we won’t have a repeat of KOFXIV, where the roster leaked shortly after the reveal. Hopefully it will stay that way.
This is yet another post where I must harp on the need for KOFXV to have rollback netcode. Several fighting games in the past have sworn by keeping their horrendous delay-based netplay codes, which account for lag by delaying player inputs. Even with the best connections, it’s impossible for matches to come close to mimicking offline play, and the worst connections make both players feel like they’re fighting underwater. SNK swears by this netplay more than any other fighting game developer, after using it in KOFXIV and Samurai Shodown, where even patches to mitigate the issue weren’t enough.
It’s long past time for them to drop it, but early signs that they could for KOFXV are disappointing. SNK knows this is a big deal for fighting game players, with how they’ve promoted the implementation of it in rereleases of old games like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and The Last Blade 2, both in collaboration with Code Mystics. They also immediately confirmed that The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match would have it with its announcement — a rerelease announced alongside XV at that.
It is unacceptable for a fighting game releasing in 2021 to not have rollback. As Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon said, rollback is not easy to implement, but it’s necessary. The longevity of online communities depends on having it, and KOFXV’s could be dead as soon as it arrives if it doesn’t include it. There’s a reason why Arc System Works suddenly felt it was necessary to implement it in Guilty Gear Strive alongside its upcoming release in April, and SNK should feel the same way now.
If SNK continues the pattern of releasing one character trailer per week, it means the game won’t release until the end of the year. But they’re free to speed this up at any point, so don’t use this method to determine the timeframe. They’ve also yet to say which platforms it will release on, but we should know this alongside a more definitive release date in due time.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
