King of Fighters Extreme Review

In the past few weeks I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of new games finding their way onto the N-Gage, and despite not being a fan of fighting games I had high hopes for KoF: Extreme - but once I actually got my hands on a copy, I found the game monotonous at the best of times.

Recently I've had the pleasure of playing two cracking N-Gage titles: Pathway to Glory and Pocket Kingdoms - both games that I could have happily played for hours on end after first receiving the chips. With King of Fighters Extreme however, I was bored within what seemed like ten minutes. Although there is a 'Story Mode' to play through - I didn't have the feeling that I was making any progression within the game.

In addition to story mode, KoF: Extreme also has all the standard extras of a modern fighting game: 'Battle Mode' (fight a friend over Bluetooth), 'Practice Mode', 'Time Attack Mode' and 'Survival Mode'. Nothing extraordinary, but they increase the longevity of the game a little.

The game plays slowly. In addition to having a sluggish frame rate of 15 frames per second - everything seems to take just a little bit too long to happen. For example, sometimes your opponent will throw a heavy combination of punches and kicks your way - and all you can do is wait out several seconds for your fighter to finally hit the ground.

On the plus side, the King of Fighters Extreme does sport reasonably good graphics. Despite the constraints of the N-Gage's screen size, the developers seem to have found space to fit well-animated characters, power and health bars and a neat background all into 176 x 208 pixels without looking cluttered. The game also makes good use of the (normally excessive) number of face buttons on the N-Gage, allowing special maneuvers to be executed with just one button press, rather than a clumsy combination of presses a la King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood for the Gameboy Advance.

The game is a bare-bones 2D fighter. You've got fighters, you've got fighting venues and you get to fight. If that's what you want from a game, and you want it on the N-Gage, you'll probably be content with this game; otherwise, this game may well disappoint.

Overall Rating: 2.5 / 5.

This review was added on 19th January 2005 by Rupe Parnell.