SNK Playmore has seen fit to revisit the long-running, highly revered, old school, 2D, flat-stage brawler in King of Fighters XII for PlayStation3. In the process, however, the game has lost much of its appeal for the legion of King fans as the game is missing most of the kitschy character "stories" that would normally play out like a series of cheesy Anime cartoons, better described as hand-drawn conniptions. Instead, it's just jump-right-in and brawl, 3-on-3, elimination tag team style, with just 22 fighters to choose from (skimpy by King of Fighters standards) and played in one of five different arenas.

Actually, "brawl" doesn't even describe it properly, as King of Fighters XII, like it's predecessors, is mostly about hopping, super-jumping and otherwise flitting about the screen hoping to land some blows from an angle not blocked by the opponent.

The fighters on the roster have a decent set of punches, kicks, counters (now "critical" counters, too), several sets of ubiquitous combos, and, of course, a couple of those furious super-moves for throwing fireballs or spewing lightning, etcetera, etcetera.

New to the franchise are the high definition graphics making the game quite the feast for the eyes - but again, only if you consider convulsive Anime a visual foodstuff. Otherwise, it's just lots of color and spastic flash; hand-drawn, Flat Stanley sprites and a fastidious mash of buttons making for a cyclic series of fight scenes in a Saturday morning cartoon - accompanied by whiny grunts and plaintive squeaks and groans, naturally.

Worse, the game strives to accommodate that aforementioned legion of fans by including an online, head-to-head mode... that doesn't work... unless you consider unremitting lost connections "work." SNK Playmore issued a fix the same day the game was released, but to press time, the lag and connection issues remained, and SNK has made do by releasing a series of apologies. Perhaps more on-the-fly fixes will smooth things out eventually, making King of Fighters XII a sure-fire fan-pleaser - and also a pre-played / bargain-bin bonanza.

King of Fighters XII is certainly not a bad game - indeed, it's rather fantastic in its old-school ways, where speed-thumbing exactitude prevails - but at some $60 ($70 in Canada!), there's just not much to it - and what there is to it is broken. It'd make a great $9.99 download at the PlayStation Store, but $60? No.

Equipment Disclosure:
LVQ-42EF1A LCD HDTV provided by VisionQuest (visionquestce.com)
PlayStation3 provided by Sony (playstation.com)
Software provided by the publisher