Do you have what it takes to be the King of Fighters? That is a question asked many times in the history of the SNK/Playmore franchise, but this time the question has a little more graphical backbone. Why? Because for the first time, KOF has gone three-dimensional with its stable of fighters.

King of Fighters: Maximum Impact for the PlayStation 2 console system looks very good, but stumbles a little bit in the gameplay aspects. The game is a button masher with evolving AI and animations that can’t quite compare to some of the other combat third-person fighters on the market. Compare KOF: Maximum Impact to Dead or Alive, or Soul Caliber, and it trails in the combat. But look at it on its own, and the title is a decent fighter, even if the game has no real point other than endless battles.

The game has four modes of play – story (which is a series of battles toward the boss), versus, challenge and practice. There are 19 of the fighters that are known to KOF fans, plus one random slot. Each of the avatars has four costume options.

Once you pick your avatar, you enter the ring and begin your climb toward the ultimate challenge, with the shady character engineering the fight club. Each fight is best two of three falls, and there are eight stock environments to fight in. Unlike Dead or Alive, the environments are somewhat static. They look very good, but do not really offer anything to the combat. You can pin an opponent against a wall and beat them mercilessly, but as far as knocking someone through a barrier, it’s not possible.

Each fighter has special moves, but pulling them off is a bit tricky. It involves D-pad and hotkey combos. If you can pull them off, you can deliver some devastating combos, and you will need them. The left analog stick controls player movement. The game is almost a side-scroller in nature, despite the full 3D characters. The camera does swing around slightly if your fighter rolls to the side. The controls are not totally responsive either. There seems to be a slight delay between when you trigger a combo and it starts. You see an opening, but by the time you fire it off, your opponent has countered, or gone into a defensive position.

The graphics are lush, but the animation can be a little jerky at times. The special effects are also nicely rendered. The character designs have taken some liberties with the characters. SNK/Playmore has really fleshed them out, some much more than others. The men are ripped, the women are busty. The game’s sound has an upbeat musical score, but otherwise features little that is different from previous KOF titles.

The AI is a little suspect. After battling your way through several opponents in story-battle mode, you are confronted with the boss bad guy, Duke. Up until this point, the game was a challenge. At this point it became an incredibly difficult proposition. Should you defeat Duke in the opening battle, he steps it up a notch … maybe not a notch, like the whole post. From a battle where you are thinking, moving, juking, going high or low, the game dissolves into a ‘whack-a-mole’ exercise with Duke holding the paddle. You stick your head up, he hammers it. If you try to go aerial on him, he plucks you out of the sky as easily as a feather on a windless day, then launches you faster than a NASA rocket. His special attacks erupt the arena, and you get to play rag doll.

After he beats the swagger from you, you are offered the choice of trying again (great, more humiliation and pummeling) or quitting. Choose the latter and it’s game over.

KOF: Maximum Impact is a button-mashing title, a real exercise for your controller fingers, sporting solid graphics and solid fighting. Yes, some of the combat seems a tad jerky, and the controller is not as responsive as it could be, but this is all about combat and you have to react fast to succeed.

Gameplay: 7.8
The controller is not as responsive as it could be, but the action is nonstop from the start of a match to the inevitable knockout.

Graphics: 8.3
The world of KOF has gone three dimensional and it looks very good.

Sound: 7
Nothing new or unique here. The musical score is solid, but overall this is merely an average portion of the game.

Difficulty: Medium
There are three difficulty settings but even the easy setting provides challenge at the boss level.

Concept: 7.4
Moving the franchise to 3D was a good thing, but giving the game a little more depth would have been nice. All the play modes are merely different, and not much different, takes on the same game.

Multiplayer: 7.4
The two-player game mode is a little more entertaining than the single-player game.

Overall: 7.4

The AI may be a little suspect, and the animation a little stiff when compared to similar fighters, but KOF: Maximum Impact is a major step forward for the franchise. It has taken the two-dimensional characters from previous titles and upgraded them into full-blown three-dimensional fighting machines.