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Where Is Our King of Fighters XIV Review?
The review and video embargo for The King of Fighters XIV lifts today, and you’ve likely seen reviews of the game crop up at other sites. Our own review is almost done, but we’re holding it back until it’s ready.
We want to make sure we’ve spent enough time playing matches online now that the game is out to get a good idea of what the netcode is like at launch. This is especially important for The King of Fighters XIV not only because good netcode is crucial to a fighter nowadays, but because Atlus and SNK have promised they’ve improved the netcode from The King of Fighters XIII, which was terrible.
That said, I’ve played a lot of the game offline, working through a few runs of the Story mode, knocking out combos in the Mission and Training modes, and playing matches with people around the office. The fighting system is still as fast and intricate as ever, but I’m not feeling some of the system-level changes. I’ve gotten used to the game’s 3D look, as well, but I’m still not in love with it.
I’ve also managed to get online matches with other reviewers and people who’ve broken street date. Pre-release, the netcode has been haphazard. Initially it seemed rock-solid, without noticeable lag or rollbacks. As more people started getting their hands on the game, though, I started getting some slow-motion matches and connectivity issues. You can see your opponent’s connection before a match starts, so I could see what I was getting into most of the time (I can’t be picky when there aren’t many people playing), but I had matches even against people who had a four-bar connection. We'll see how the situation changes at launch.
While you wait for our review, you can watch Atlus unbox the game or check out some of the more recent teams added to its roster.
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