King of Fighters XII (XBOX 360) - Brand new Sealed Unit

KOFXII is a one-on-one fighting game that lets you choose a team of three different characters to challenge your opponent's team of three, and the game's fundamental fighting mechanics are pretty sound. The game's roster has a good variety of different abilities, strategies, and combination attacks, and the pace is good and brisk--about as fast as that of more recent games in the series. The characters also seem balanced--a team of any three characters has a good chance of beating pretty much any other team of three. KOFXII even has some new gameplay additions that really change the way matches are played, such as the new-and-improved knockdown attacks, which set up new offensive possibilities. There's also more emphasis on advanced "juggle" attacks than in previous games in the series--there are more opportunities to knock your opponents skyward and then hammer on them before they hit the ground, so skilled players have new ways to punish their opponents' mistakes.

The last new gameplay feature is the "critical counter" system, which rewards your well-placed counterattack by briefly stunning your opponents, opening them up to a huge offensive flurry. It sounds interesting in theory, but in practice, it tends to encourage both players to be a lot more conservative because nobody wants to open himself up to a critical counter followed by a giant knuckle sandwich. Also, even though the game has several of the gameplay accoutrements of the more recent games, such as the ability to roll forward and backward, as well as multiple jump levels, there's only one level of your character's "power meter" to perform only one level of superattack--the spectacular hyper and leader attacks of recent years are gone.

Iori Yagami: Savagely beating other people since 1995.

Please include R45 for packaging & postage or R63 for spped service delivery (48hrs).