King of Fighters XI review

Dec 4, 2007

King of Fighters XI, like most of its older brothers, was originally a 2D arcade fighting game, and has been faithfully ported to the PS2 - with plenty of extras, to boot. The PS2 exclusive features - new characters and endings developed specifically for the conversion - probably won’t be a selling point unless you’re one of the lucky few who have access to the arcade original, but it’s nice to know they’re in there.

From the moment you turn the game on, you’re greeted with a rockin’ soundtrack, and the sound effects and character voice-overs pack a similar punch. Graphically, though, things are a bit disappointing. While the backgrounds, menus, character artwork, and various little flourishes look nice, the character sprites themselves - despite having been reworked a bit - still look stuck in the Neo-Geo era. The look of the low-resolution sprites atop higher-resolution backgrounds can actually be so jarring as to be distracting, particularly on nicer displays.