King of Fighters: Maximum Impact - the true king of fighters?

So I got this game a few days ago called King of Fighters: Maximum Impact. Every review I've seen puts is as average, but then I started thinking. KoF: MI... about the same time we got Tekken 5... And Soul Calibur 3 just around the corner... hm... And MK: Deception a little while ago...

Here's how I felt about KoF: MI. It rocks. I never liked Tekken that much in the first place, and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance seriously disappointed me. MK: Deception put MK back on top again, and it's only rival is Soul Calibur 2. Well, until now. MK: Deception rocks, but there are problems like some boring characters, boring arena, lack of modes after you beat Konquest. Sure you have that Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat, but they don't have anything to do with the actual game. I want a fighting game, not a chess game with some fighting.

And then there was KoF: MI. The characters are pretty much standard, but this is actually a good thing. You know what you get, and the characters are quite balanced. You have insane combos (I pulled off a 15 hit combo without even trying), but they don't do that much damage. You can counter attacks, you have special movies, you have a power-bar that fills up as you hit the opponets, eventually giving you super-special moves and so on. It just... works. It's wonderful, to say the least. So it doesn't look as good as Tekken5, but who cares? If you want gameplay, this is about as good as it gets.

And there was the mission mode. This works just like that weapn master thingy from Soul Calibur 2, except you don't have to watch the painfully boring story. You pick a mission (hit opponent with 10 hits, beat him in 30 seconds, survive until time runs out...) and have fun! Each character have two different outfits (one has a dress and a bunny suit, and yet it works) and each suit has at least three different colors. Beat the story, and you'll have two more variations of the outfits. (eg. add a stupid hat and a sword on her back).

The problem is the difficulty. A game like this takes ages to get into, but it's worth it. The problem is the story mode. The end of game boss has unlimited super-special moves, so I have only beaten him once in three days. And that's on difficulty 2 of 7. (1 being the easiest). You basically pull of a long combo on him right away and kill him before he can strike back, or you're dead. He's really, really not balanced at all, but that's a minor part of the game. The rest of the game rocks, to say the least.

Bottom line is this game is worth a try if you like fighting games. Tekken might be the king of iron fist tournament, but it just didn't work for me. I don't like it. Soul Calibur 2 are still the best fighting game I've played, but I've played it to death. Literally. The disc don't work any more. Mortal Kombat: Deception finds itself pushed down to number 3, with KoF: MI as a great number two. Well, until Soul Calibur 3 at least. But then again, there's a sequel to KoF: MI in production already, so who knows what the future will bring? At least it will be sweet. :

Im totally into fighting games and I've played mostly all of SNK and Capcom games, they seem to have the best fighting games to me. How could you not get into the Tekken seris?! Tekken is an awesome game, its just like Virtual Fighter and Soul Calibur! Those games are the serious deal for the fighting genre. You played Soul Calibur to death eh? I played Tekken to death! I do wonder, who is your favorite character in Soul Calibur?

You know what? I play these fighting games all the time: Snk vs Capcom 2, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Tekken 2-5. All the fighting games I need. Mortal Kombat? Pfft...to me after they made MK3 it just sucked from there on, I didn't want to think or touch another MK game again! I dont know why, but I just completely lost interest in the MK seris after MK3.

KOF games are the bomb! I just love the fighting game to death, Im totally in love with Terry Bogard, he's like a Ryu in the KOF seris. Anyways, SNK has never let me down with thier fighting games, they all are good but I do agree with you with the boss fights, they tend to get a little bit over the edge and frustrating and the plot too when you finally beat him you get a not so great ending. Btw, thanks for the little review as well, we greatly appreaciate it.

To me, fighting games consist of two equally important things: Gameplay and characters. With bad gameplay, it doesn't matter how great the rest of the game is. Gameplay includes controls, combos, special attacks, balanced characters and all that. KoF has it pretty much as good as it gets, only beaten by Soul Calibur 2. Characters are equally important. I need to like them. A bad character can ruin everything. KoF has many great characters like Leona and Chae Lim. (yeah, I know. Girl power.)

The problem with Tekken is mainly that no matter how great the gameplay is, the characters are too boring. I don't like any of them. Well, maybe that half-man, half-cat thingy, but that's it. Boring characters, boring game. Simple as that.

Mortal Kombat? Yeah, sucked after MK3, but Deception is stil quite good. It's by far my favourite, although there is certainly room for improvement. The characters are (mostly) decent, some great. The gameplay is quite good, and it has some interesting bonus features to back it all up again if we get tired of the actual game. The Konquest mode is even a decent game on it's own. Well worth the money.

Soul Calibur 2 has great characters and great gameplay. I particullar like Cervantes, that pirate guy. Misu-something returns in SC3, and that is very good news indeed. (and did you see that scythe guy in SC3? Now that's a character I like!) :lol

Anyway, you actually like the revew? Hm... maybe I'll take the time to write more? Good to know I have fans.

i'm not sure you're actually getting to in depth into your fighting games if you think king is a "half-man, half-cat"
his character has been in every tekken, and it's a man with a tiger mask.
i doubt i'd consider sc3 right around the corner unless they're going straight to console which i would doubt. usually they stew in the arcades for quite a few months before making it to the states and then released in japan first, seeing as my sc2 is in japanese after all.
mk's really haven't sucked after mk3 since there were so many off-shoots of mk3 that were the same type of play, just tons more characters. mk4, yeah that blows.
i actually liked the arenas in mk: da. you have the ship level were you knock them off a ledge near the bodies being hanged swinging back and forth, they brought back stage fatalities and force you to side step knowing that you can get knocked off at any time. plus many of there characters were good. mk seemed dismal to me at first after all the conquest and junk, but when you played new and better people, like tekken or any fighting game for that matter, it places you into a new realm where you learn so much more. no fighting game should stand on how it is single player, that is not their purpose. they are meant for 2 players and playing new people. that was why mk: da was good, the online feature. i would've loved tekken to have it, but suffice, not namco's way it seems, so traveling in car it remains to be for competition

personally as for kof, i'll stick to garou

Actually, the release date for Soul Calbur 3 in the US is November. Maybe not "around the corner" as much as "around the corner, second turn to the left, first turn to the right, second door to the left and make me some coffee."

King's a normal guy? I didn't see that one coming. Now Tekken is worse than ever. :lol Just saying Yoshimitsu isn't exactly human, and you did have that Panda thingy. Add a demon and some guy with a cat-head, and it could be a bit interesting. But nope, it's just a mask. No wonder Two of them characters left and came to Soul Calibur 2. They simply teamed up with the winning side.

Nightwolf said:

King's a normal guy? I didn't see that one coming. Now Tekken is worse than ever.    :lol Just saying Yoshimitsu isn't exactly human, and you did have that Panda thingy. Add a demon and some guy with a cat-head, and it could be a bit interesting. But nope, it's just a mask. No wonder Two of them characters left and came to Soul Calibur 2. They simply teamed up with the winning side. 

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Actually... isn't the series onto the third King? The original King became Iron King (since the first Iron King died at the end of part 2) at the end of the second game and bequeathed his mask to his disciple, who was King in parts 3 and 4. Isn't the King in part 5 yet another disciple?

armor king, not iron, and he's not king per say
there are two kings. the original in tekken 1 and 2 got killed by ogre. the second took over in tekken 3,4,5 and TTT

and a namco game crossing characters over to another of their franchises happens. street fighter characters weren't strictly in street fighter games either.

all sc2 did was bring scrubby people to the arcades for that crappy conquest mode. job well done in racking in more fodder.

I don't like Tekken at all, but it's mostly because the boring characters. Soul Calibur 2 have better ones. I still prefer Mortal Kombat: Deception, but that's just me. Characters are to me 40% of the game. The gameplay adds another 40%, with the extra modes and gameplay a good 15%. Remove the characters, and Tekken only has 60% of a good game left. Add boring gameplay, and we're down to 20%. That's not good. :-\

you can't play a fighting game little and decide how good the gameplay is. every fighting game has depth beyond what 80% of the people who ever play them can imagine. to me, all SC2 is a mix up game. the only way it can be properly played with the life set to 150% or higher, but i'm not great at it compared to the in-state people i know who play.
to me, if you want boring characters, that's virtua fighter. bad ryu ripoff. never cared for any of the originals except kage, but i don't like the way one of his outfits are now.
or even better mortal kombat and a lot of the SF series
there's nothing better than characters with the same skin and different colors.
story wise, most of them are horrible, it's a fighting game, stories aren't a necessity.
if you want interesting characters, i think darkstalkers, samurai showdown, and guilty gear has a great lot of those, not SC or MK
any game can be sad to have boring gameplay if you don't play the game seriously or other people
it's the games that have bad glitches that hurt or the character roster that is very unbalanced. i love tekken 5 b/c finally it has a decently balanced roster except lei who is obviously the worst and maybe a bit too overpowered steve and nina.
deception i never got to play any great people around me, so i don't know and don't go in those circles
SC2 i'd heard is pretty unbalanced, but the best player still comes out. last i heard the last major tournament winner was a voldo player, which i thought was interesting since i'd been originally led to believe that cervantes was the top tier.

also note that you'll know what i mean about gameplay if you know why people didn't want lizardman tournament playable

The Best Version of KOF MI will be on XBOX and I think of more like Another Garou or Fatal Fury than a Traditional KOF game.
For those that don't know Revolution and XBOX360 will be getting something called Soul Calibur III EX.

Who Play KOF on PS2 anyway? (sony banned most SNK games from US Release)

there can't be any difference engine wise i would think between systems. graphics, yes xbox should have the better, so taste should come down to controller preference unless xbox offers online with it