The King of Fighters NeoWave is a 2D fighter in which teams of three martial artists use carefully timed punches, kicks, blocks, counter attacks, and special moves to defeat their rivals. Neowave fulfills this basic purpose, but it really doesn't serve a need. It doesn't look markedly better than any other King of Fighters game that's come out in the last ten years, it doesn't have any particularly interesting features or characters to set it apart from other King of Fighters games, and there's no storyline or dialogue. The game is just kind of there. But even without a reason to be, the game gives you technical and tactical one-on-one fighting you can play online or off with a twenty-dollar price tag.

It's really not a bad game. There may be a near total lack of effort to come up with something new on the developers' part, and anyone who hasn't played the series in the past will only find a really old-looking game with cheesy sound effects and a bunch of weird characters beating each other up for no reason… but hey. It's not a bad game (why do I feel the need to keep saying that), but it is pretty darn lazy.


If you're ripping your entire cast of characters straight out of previous games without bothering to create even one new one, you'd better stuff a lot of old characters in there. Neowave does just that, with a roster of nearly fifty characters. Since the game has no storyline, this is what we call a dream match. Dead characters aren't dead, anyone can fight anyone, and the way characters play may be altered, rolled back, or remixed for the heck of it. It's a great group really, and the animation still has a lot of charm despite the low-tech presentation. If you can get past the looks, you'll find great personalities, though first-time KOFers may need to look harder to find that since this is the only game in the series where there's no character dialogue in the game at all. The game seems to assume that you've heard it all before and seen it all before, which if you're any kind of SNK fan, you certainly have.

Of course nearly everyone present has already squared off with everyone else a few years ago in 2002, so the fact that Kyo, Iori and the gang showed up to kick each other's asses isn't very exciting or remarkable. You'd think that the only reason these old 2D game characters showed up is because they have nothing better to do, and the fighting is still pretty fun. It's kind of like an unenthusiastic company volleyball game that way.