Archived KOFXI news

[SonicTempest]

I'm not really too bothered about them reusing the same sprites again - apparently the rest of the visuals (backgrounds, GUI, etc) look very solid.

And, more impressions.

Beelzebubble:

ok more details from the 20 minutes i spent with it this morning before work (i just got home pheww... puffed).

oswald is fucking cool. shen woo and ash are ok designs imo but oswald kicks ass. he looks about 55 is quite tall and thin and to sum him up id say gambit meets heidern. he looks like his sprite is modeled on heiderns and he's wearing a similar outfit bottom and top though his head is short grey hair with a receeding hairline.

all his normals look sweet and he has .... get this a card in each hand which he uses as his weapons. all his normals have the cards with speed tails on them which look cool.. im definitely gonna give him a try tomorrow when i put a couple of hours into watching/playing the game.

as rbj said dont worry about duck/eiji and the rest, they are just not complete yet.. they are definitely gonna be part of the initially available roster.

the ingame art is all very slickly done and looks like the artist who did the front cover of the ps2 version of motw.

Posters:
http://www.neo-arcadia.com/News/voir_news.php?id_news=1

Translated stuff from Neo-Arcadia:

"Bad news it's a tag like 2003

It was full of peoples I've come at 12h and only can play at 17h...
It was hard to take some shots so I've taken one of the flyer and a bad one of the game system.

Only 24 playble characters yet, the other one where:
*Whip
*Duck king (hehehehe)
*Ramon
*Eiji
*Duolon
*Momoko
*Kensou
*Maxima
*Iori

then 2 bosses
*Adel afters some matches

*and a lady (don't know her name) she fight with a spear, and a chain with a stone at the end, she use it a bit like Axl in GG.
she dressed and move in a similar way than Kagura, really nice artwork (look close to Duolon) but common sprite.

about the new faces, Elizabeth is bad animated, and looks like she comes from an old "Breakers" game, Sad she have a nice face.

Oswald is appreciadte, he use some cards, and paper to fight. Tall like heidern with good damage, he have a counter move and a really nice DM. Sad that he have a really ugly design...and no charisma.(Old, bald...)

Background goes to Good to Not that good. (We really miss the old SNK style from the OLD Garou games of KOF) sometime they have the CFJ syndrome, with only 1 poor animation, sometime it's goodly animated.
at each start they show the name of the area and the hour.(Is there some variation?)

Stages where:
*Beach (1 beach with a military base...) 13.00
*Aqueduct 15.01
*Temple 10.05
*Ruins 11.09
*White town 13.03
*alley 00.24
*Ice festival 14.05
*Final hall 19.24

About the graphic style I didn't really like it. (just like neowave) it looks like a web site animated in flash. (style welcome to the global network).

In the 2/3 of the upper par there is 2 big circle with the characters you've chossen, and in the bottom 33 smaller cicrle with the characters.

misc:

*Many stuff appear on screen, Like cancel, and such.
*Yuri can make her 100 Feet DM in air.
*Athena: she's in asailor fuku, Got a new projection and can teleport in air, got a new DM max too.
*When we break a Close attack, ther is an ugly energy effect
*B Jenet have her Aoi mademoiselle DM
*KO: Animation is freesing and text appear, pretty nice!
*Kyo remeber how to make a fireball!
*Kula have an air projectile like an huge snow flake.
*K'have a new kick.
*Kim got a new projection
*Victory screen show the 3 fighters with the 2 other in the back and the winner on the front.
*nice ingame art, similar to KOF 2003.
*Cutscenes are similar to the old KOF( I like them!!)
*artworks are from Hiroaki, in a 94 rebout style.
*Next stage are show with a picture first with the hour.
*DM Flash/spark effect is far nicer than the 2003 one.
*Leader DM seems to be done with E button.
*Before the match we choose the Leader and order.

http://img67.echo.cx/img67/9576/flyerpersoflash5as.jpg
http://img67.echo.cx/img67/6210/flyerpe ... ash2yd.jpg
http://img67.echo.cx/img67/738/flyersystem1cp.jpg
http://img67.echo.cx/img67/268/poster5al.jpg

[Kyosuke Kagami]

they are definitely gonna be part of the initially available roster.

HMMMM?


*reads the report from Neo-Arcadia*

So, some people thinks graphics are leet, other thinks they're CFE-esque.


Now I'm REALLY sceptical.

*Kyo remeber how to make a fireball!

:0

*Cutscenes are similar to the old KOF( I like them!!)

Cutscenes? the "intros" for each scenario? o_O

*artworks are from Hiroaki, in a 94 rebout style.

I knew it was him. That B. Jenet is recognizable.

[Shadow Devil]

Everything that i'm reading so far is wonderful...except that neither Mai or Leona are present.

[principal panda]

looks like a great game so far.the presentation seems high-quality(unlike what i heard about samsho tenka) nice they kept gato and griffon,b.jenet is cool too.eiji finnaly makes his comeback after a decade and duck finnaly joins kof.wonder what happened to sho hayate.skill meter is a nice idea,i was always kind of skeptical about the super cancel and saving up the stocks for dm/sdm/ldm.but now things should get flashier,hope the dreamcancel(dm to ldm)wont break the game.i can see some problems with non-canceling characters(clark,griffon,leona) be low-tier since they might have less damaging canceless comboes while other might have very damaging long comboes.still too early to judge things.

thanks to all the people who gave us the info.

[Sheba]

What Leona? She is MIA atm. And I hope some MIA chars will remain that way.

[badkhan]

In which year did the Garou took place? :?

2008??

[kadosho]

Been keeping up with all these reports, everyone's got their own take. But definitely leaves alot open. Although its kinda neat to see some changes. Plus the roster is quite a mix, hopefully we'll see some of our ol friends return.
XI, sounds pretty cool so far.

[Gunsmith]

I would like to start the Duck King bashing now ie: Blanka with no charge, invincible and grab DM!!! WTFBBQBRB!!!

[Kyosuke Kagami]

>:0 Duck King is awesome.

[Bugle/Hawk'M]

Sounds interesting. Roster has it's ups and downs. The fact that Iori isn't done has me hoping for some significant changes. Then again, with all the time they've been working on this, I was hoping for all new sprites. If only they hadn't wasted all that time on Maximum Impact....

[InFeCt|oN]

I thought some other company made maximum impact?

Roster shakeups and new systems are all fine and good, but not when they can't get the basics right. I'm not holding my breath until

- They fix the normal throw ranges so that you can't just mash throw and magically suck people in from 1 foot away.
- They fix the close C/D range because I'd really rather mash a throw in 2k3 than try an iffy close C/D that turns into a far C which goes right over crouching Duo Lon.
- They fix the hit detection so that it feels like I'm actually hitting something instead of feeling like I'm cutting through butter or paper. In 98 if you did a psycho sword the game actually pauses a split second for each hit so that they don't just fly upwards, but kind of jerk upwards hit by hit, which looked a lot better IMO
- They fix the hitboxes so that when my foot is on someone, it means I hit them, rather than magically whiff for some reason. If they want to shorten the range of certain attacks, they should - god forbid - draw new sprites for the attacks instead of just cutting off the hitboxes.
- They fix the hittable boxes too, so that when I punch someone who's lagging in my face, it's a close C and they stay in my face rather than get magically shunted 10 feet back while eating nothing more than a far C.
- They start paying attention to little graphical details again. The fire effects used to have smoke and sparks but now we just get the palette change which is really halfassed. The screen also used to shake when someone hit the ground hard enough, like after an RED kick, but for some reason that was taken out too. And there's no more flash per super hit. Which, coupled with the hit pauses, is why 98 looks much better than 2k2 and 2k3. Hi-res is one thing, but I miss SNK's attention to detail more.
- They either implement damage scaling that makes sense or just throw it out the window altogether. In its current state it's just... weird. Certain characters get hit hard because they have mostly 1 hit moves, while others like Iori and Duo Lon can still do mad damage for free because their moves hit more than once.
- The move damage makes sense. Phoenix fang arrow doing less damage than Malin air qcfx2+A/C is utter BS, considering Malin's is much faster and more practical.
- The wakeup mindgame consists of something deeper than grab/poke mixup.
- They make it worthwhile to sit down and pick the game apart to find something worth using, as compared to finding something that would be useful if only it didn't lag so much and do 3 light punches worth of damage and die to crouch D. Until you kind of adopt a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality and find out Iori/Beni/Duo Lon give so much more bang for your buck that you wonder why you even bothered with other characters in the first place.
- They stop making combos so 1-dimensional and contrived. Kyo's 2K juggles were interesting because there were so many options depending on how much damage you wanted and how confident you were in pulling them off. Now it's a 1 way street: normal - special - super cancel - dream cancel. It feels like I can cancel only because they let me cancel. I'd really rather have characters with moves that lagged less in general such that it's possible to follow up in certain situations, rather a roster full of laggy characters and a feeble attempt to remedy it and lengthen combos by adding system features that explicitly set up a followup combo, and then nerfing the damage of everything to make up for longer combos.

As it stands I'm more interested in Rumble Fish 2 or Melty Blood Act Cadenza, so I shouldn't say too much

[7d3j]

I want Mai in!

Is Adelheid playable? He's charismatic alright... a pity we might have to wait a good few years of KoFs before we have another Rugal appearance?

*Imagines their intro*

'So... they say you are my son?'
'All because you JUST couldn't resist spending the night with..'
'Shut up!!'

Arrgh, think of the possibilities~ I can't wait for the game to hit arcades!!

[Fat Cat Lim]

More detailed impressions from beelzebubble at the Neo-Geo Forums

loke test day 2.


BG`s:
-spanish looking town bg called "white town". it looks really nice as do all the bgs ive seen so far. the bgs and everything going on in them look quite natural and are well animated with long animated sequences for the bg onlookers rather than just an arm going up and down and the like. the stage is set on a sunny day with a blue sky seen above the white walled buildings. to the left and to the right is a building and then further back and in the middle of the bg is a church looking building with a big round window at the top of it. there are cars whizzing by in front of the church and a young blonde girl to the right, a man with a round belly to the left wiping his face.

-all the bg`s are well drawn and natural looking unlike the slightly forced bg characters/onlookers in nbc. there are lots of animals/little details in them like the monkeys sitting watching in the aztec bg and the cat walking around in the aqueduct bg.

-aqueduct is also set on a sunny day with a blue sky and some clouds lazily floating from the right to the left. the sky takes up more of the screen than in the "white town" bg. beneath the blue sky is a castle, looks sorta like a disneyland type castle with spires and high walls, might be modeled on a real location though. the castle is to the left and beneath it from one side of the screen to the other is the aqueduct.. it takes up 1/3 or more of the screen and looks like a small arch bridge about 30 metres high or something. the characters fight on top of the roof of a building which is made up of red tiles.

-bg "beach" looks like its set in either hawaii or okinawa with a military compound on the edge of a beach. the left hand side has a shed with an army truck in it and a stripped jeep with its engine running in the foreground in front of another jeep. to the right is a tent over a communications set up with a guy sitting on a stool listening to the radio. middle of the screen the compound fences are open and there is a beach with people on towels and sitting under umbrellas. again blue skies and a nice blue ocean and palm trees on the beach.
-aztec stage with giant tree roots wrapped around a giant stone head to the right of the screen. parrots flying around and monkeys watching in the foreground just behind the fighters. a ruined temple complex in the back have gone with vines growing over it. another nice bg.


SYSTEM:
-supers seem to be more easily stuffed in this game (see malin fbx2+K, griffon fbx2+K, kims air super, etc).
-hits sound and look solid, more so than nbc and svc.
-super damage seems very low. most i saw seemed to do about a 1/6 of a bar or less.
-throw break has a little sparkle effect.
-LP`s and LK`s feel like nbc... ryo's for example dont seem to be able to be tapped out at various rates ala kof2k2 which makes it harder to mix up and combo stuff after them.. they spam better though faster... i prefer 2k2 style lights though.


PRESENTATION:
-everything looks very well presented, the bg's, the interface, the loading screens, the characcter select screen, etc. apart from the nbcish blurry sprites the game is looking really well put together and nice.
-the ingame select screen art is very nice as is the victory screen art. all looks really clean and american comicish (finish wise) though the style is japanese of course.
-sprites look bigger im sure..
-character names dont appear on the actual fight screen at all... maybe they'll go in later?
-sprites still have a slight glow around them ala nbc which is an effect brought about by the low rez sprites being against the high rez bgs. this game is the one that mixes the two best that ive seen so far though.
-colours seem softer than 2k3 which lends to the classy presentation imo.


CHARACTERS:
-malins electric sticks come out quicker from what i could tell, shes been changed quite a bit. her yoyos have been nerfed a little coming out considerably slower and staying on the screen for a shorter period. her air A+C move is less effective as she has less time to move around and control air space as she did in 2k3.
-athena has some crazy new (as far as i know) super where the screen blacks out and she turns into a phoenix made of energy. she shoots straight up and off the screen iirc correctly then arcing down at an angle to the opposite bottom corner (sorta reminds me of fuumas nbc/whp super in terms of movement).
-oswald has riddick style lens only glasses on.. hes one of the coolest designs ive seen in a long time.
-k`s charge dash super now comes out and moves forward super fast.
-new ryo move is yoga and kick (the rushing elbow move). his charging extended fist move from 2k3..? is still in.
-elizabeth (not bet as the katakana suggests) wields some white sparkle power which she uses in a button mash (joe rush fists style) type move (dont know the actual motion though) and a super as well. she is dressed in what seems to be a traditional horse riders suit (like the ones they wear in jumping competitions and the olympics) and her whip actually seems to be a horseriders short whip about a foot and a half long with a slightly flexible end. her sprite looked ok to me and she seemed pretty cool all round.
-oswald has a very cool rush super where he rushes iori super style though not bent down so low though his head is bent down and his face all shadowed (with glaring red eyes), looks/feels sorta akuma rush super style. if it hits he pushes the opponent right to the side of the screen ala vice super and then the screen goes black and he jumps back to about the middle and proceeds to throw cards like a madman. its a 50 hit super and looks cool as fuck!

I thought there would be more loke test impressions today from other players. Strangely, it's been pretty quiet. Any blurry mobile phone screenshots around?

[Apathy Wind]

-elizabeth (not bet as the katakana suggests) wields some white sparkle power which she uses in a button mash (joe rush fists style) type move (dont know the actual motion though) and a super as well. she is dressed in what seems to be a traditional horse riders suit (like the ones they wear in jumping competitions and the olympics) and her whip actually seems to be a horseriders short whip about a foot and a half long with a slightly flexible end.

Ahhh so Elizabeth doesn't have a whip, she has a riding crop.

::tries to imagine riding crop specials and DM's::

ugh...

[principal panda]

seems oswald is already a great character even in this early stage.