The King of Fighters 15

This game was reviewed on Xbox Series X.

Reviewed by: David Cameron

Fighting games have become a little stale in our opinion in the last few years all you rally have to go with is a broken Street fighter game on PS4, and Mortal Kombat. These have become the premier fighting games of this generation and one would like to make a come back........

Well here we have the fighting game masters from the 90's with some amazing Neo Geo games, SNK with another try with the King of Fighters 15. Now I'll be honest here and say that I loved the '96 edition on the Sega Saturn. So without further hesitation lets see how this game came out.

With the modern retro charm of the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games where they all tried to keep the basis of the older games design wise but also modernising the graphics and giving the gameplay a nice touch up at the same time. These games were brilliantly designed in that when someone picked these up you could play the games in a similar way to how you would in say Super Street Fighter 2, but some of the timings for the special moves have been given a wider window to work in so that again its easier to pick the newer game up and get started.

So the game gets a revamped UI and the gameplay is super smooth and this launches with almost 40 fighters and yes that is mind boggling and props go to the developers that must have spent so much time balancing these fighters. With all the crazy selection of fighters you also get the stages and like the fighters these are filled with so much detail and variety with everything from the beaches to the snow covered forests there is something for everyone.

I always felt that the older King of Fighter games as with a lot of the SNK fighters were a little stilted and just didn't have that smooth feel that Capcoms fighters had from Street Fighter 2, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Vampire Hunters the other Marvel licensed games these all just had controls to die for and in a fighting game maybe the controls are the most important aspect of these games. I'm so happy to report here that the controls are as tight as I've played in an SNK game ever.

With all these fighters now the main aim is not just how the game sells but how good the game goes on the competitive scene. But if this is anything like the last game in the series this will be big on in E-Sports so this could have a very long tail with more DLC coming over the next year or two. Helping with all this will be all the costumes and little unlockables for each of the characters just keep you coming back for one more game. 

I can't really comment about the music as while everything is to a very high standard but nothing is outstanding. So in the end it all sounds good but doesn't do anything to help it stand out from the crowd. The variety is great and there are no duds here so you'll find something that you'll like even if you might not love everything here.

In the end what we have here is not only the best ever King of Fighter game but maybe the best ever SNK fighting game ever made!

Reviewed by: David Cameron