I got to spend about an hour playing KoF XI today. I must say that this game tops over KoF Neowave easily. I really dig the new style artwork for the character portraits, the win poses and endings. The game speed seems to be a notch faster than KoF 2k3 but still allows for easy comboing. The super and dream cancels additions to the game play gives the game a fresh feel albeit seems to take awhile to rack up the necessary stocks to do some good cancel combos. While the single player game play is enjoyable, this game truly shines with 2 player competition. I could easily spend more time exploring this game without the feel of it getting old when playing against someone else. With all the emphasis on improving game play, it seems that the BGM suffers somewhat from it. None of the tracks really stand out to get you in the groove. You would be hard pressed to recall how any of tracks sounded like if you were asked. (I certainly can't recall any myself.) As with all KoF games of the past, there always has to be a cheap ass boss character. KoF XI is no exception and seems to excel at this with the creation of Magaki. I would nominate this character for the gayest and cheapest boss character award if there were such a thing. Just check out this pic and you can see what I mean. (Gayness indeed.)
Regardless of its very few negatives, KoF XI seems to be a good step in the right direction for the KoF series. Those that swear by KoF ’98 or 2k2 might be surprised at what XI has to offer. Here's hoping that future sequels will be just as good as this one; only make sure to include Geese Howard dammit.
so I still have yet to decide if I really like it. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some more free time later this week to actually log some real play time.
