King Of Fighters: The Orochi Saga (PSP) Review

Right of the bat I’ll admit my experience and knowledge of fighters is at best, from a casual level, so the prospect of player and reviewing “The King of Fighters Collection – The Orochi Saga” was somewhat daunting. None the less I have persevered and played all of the games included on the UMD and to my surprise I had a good time doing so.

While technically you have five games rolled into one neat little package here, in reality it is more the same game five times over with minor adjustments and additions after each version, although this is not a bad thing, there is no major difference between K.O.F. ’94 and ’98 aside from the backgrounds becoming busier and a wider selection of characters. However, SNK have stuck to a formula that worked throughout the series and fair play to them for it. Aforementioned formula is thus, King of Fighters involves matches played by teams of three combatants, you pick the order in which you wish them to appear and they fight one-on-one until one team has no fighters remaining (kind of like a Pokemon battle, but without the switching). Like any fighter you’ll start off button mashing until greater difficulties force you to employ more sophisticated tactics and there is a sense of reward from laying down some combos and overcoming a team that’s bin troubling you in the past. I love the retro-arcady air about it, mainly because it is retro and arcady but it’s not something your really see anymore so when this effect is pulled off well on any modern platform it feels good. I can picture as I play it the old school controls on a KOF machine and can see how well they have been emulated by the PSP. As I played the series through I noticed that there are several distinct styles and strategies that a player can use and over time you adapt to which one is your favourite, I noticed that I preferred the more athletic and speedy style to dodge and weave between my opponents attack and hit them at the right moment. Of course different characters offer themselves better to different styles of fighting, for example one from the very diverse selection of characters is a very tall very fat man who carries a wrecking ball with him to use against his opponents, although very slow he is perfect if you are the sort of person who will try to bludgeon his opponents with infrequent but devastating attacks. The game play itself is very accessible, my one reservation was that I would not be able to engage with it as I am not a huge fan of fighting games but this was not the case at all, When I first starting playing it; it was in fairly long bursts of maybe 30-40 minutes. After this I would play just in any spare moment of time I had to kill, just pick 3 of my favourite characters and try and get as far through the arcade mode as I could with my favourite three fighters. It is for this reason that I highly rate KOF on a handheld as, for me, it fulfilled the very function of the handheld gaming genre. It is a game that when a spare few minutes arises that you can pick it up and play it for a bit. The controls work quite smoothly with the face and shoulders buttons assigned different types of attack while the control stick handles movement, jumping and crouching, it’s a simple system that work very well without a fault really. One gripe would be that on the loading screens combo’s are shown to the player that involve diagonal arrows and a “K” and “P” button, I was left absolutely stumped as to how this could be performed by the face buttons. OK so they almost certainly will be mapped to the PSP somehow but would it not have been to much effort just to change it when it was ported?

As a very retro arcade title KOF is not going to be visually ground-braking but does offer a nice consistent cartoon style, without trying to be at all flash even up to the ’98 version. on screen the visuals appear fairly sharp as you would expect being ported to a smaller screen, making KOF very well suited to the PSP. The visuals are a big part of the retro arcady feel to the game that it carried throughout. The slow-motion K.O. Sequences are great and if you can keep your eye up to pace with the action there are some little treats, streaks of blood flying and obscure faces being pulled when characters are hit. Although minor I believed it is essential to mention that throughout the series there is the stereotypical female characters with massive breasts that a team has worked tirelessly on to ensure that her assets bounce beautifully along with her in perfect harmony according to the laws of physics. Although crude it is a very good example of the quality of the graphics of KOF.

The sound is also very retro and fits in perfectly with the other aspects of the game as that subtle reminder of a simpler time. Again, similarly to the visuals, very well executed by the PSP although very annoying to others in the room, although a title that you would think you could just play on mute I found myself preferring to use headphones to enjoy the full experience. The effects are fun too, plenty of groaning, screeching and body dropping effects to satisfy even the most hardy of fighter fans.

The games can be played online but on the hand full of attempts I had I could never find any active network game or anyone waiting in the lobby for a game so gave up on that endeavor. I do think that the multi-player is a good addition to the series especially one that is so easy to pick and play for almost anyone. However the non-existence of lobbies was a bit discouraging I could just be trying at the wrong times, but sadly I have not had the time to keep trying for as long as I’d like. I’m not sure if the multi-player aspect, while it is a good one, would necessarily keep people playing KOF. I do however, think that the game itself is extremely playable and as I previously mentioned, is an ideal hand held title as it is the very definition of a pick-up-and-play title that can you can just keep coming back to as and when you please due to a learning curve which is almost endless keeping it fresh for a very long time. One last gripe is that sometimes the loading screens are longer then you would expect and there was some very occasional brief freeze-ups but this was only a very minor issue.

Overall I think that King of Fighters is a real hidden gem amongst the PSP titles as it is a textbook example of a game that can be picked up every so often to kill time while you’re on the move. As a retro title it’s practically immune from naysayers over visuals and sound but I find them a charming addition to the overall style. I think that it’s slight downfall is the lack of multi-player active online, the confusingly ported combo descriptions, the very occasional slowness of loading and freezing in game. One last point I have not mentioned that throughout playing I had a niggling feeling that this game was thoroughly average however I kept playing and coming back to it so it can’t be all bad. However, I cannot comment on how it fairs in comparison to other fighters on the PSP but I can assure you that this is a solid title that is worth looking at if your PSP collection lacks that 10 minute pick and play kind of title, a function that King of Fighters pulls off very well.

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