Over the past weekend, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, developed and published by SNK, had an open beta to allow eager fans to check out how the game plays ahead of its April 24th release. With eight characters to choose from, including fan favorites like Terry Bogart and Mai Shiranui and newer faces, there was a fair amount of variety for players to experience. Combine them with some unique systems, and the Fatal Fury open beta presented players with a strong experience.
The most central element of the Fatal Fury open beta combat is the S.P.G. This roughly third of your life bar allows you to gain strength, health regen, and access to special moves when your current health is in the space. Where the S.P.G. appears is customizable. Setting it to the beginning, middle, or end of the health bar can bolster strategies and play mind games with your opponent.
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Seeing a foe’s S.P.G. set to the first third can signal that they plan to come out aggressively. Putting it at the end can put opponents in a precarious position in close matches, tempting them to try for big swings to knock a foe past as much of their S.P.G. as possible. Succumbing to such temptation can find greedy opponents quickly punished when they try to force a special move when they shouldn’t.
The other major system here is the REV system. Powerful moves like REV Arts, Ignition Gears, and Redline Gears cause the REV meter to fill when used. If the REV meter fills, access to these moves is lost till the meter empties. Despite not having access to many of their best moves in this state, combatants are encouraged to attack, as being aggressive causes the REV meter to empty faster.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’s REV system feels great.
This choice feels great in tandem with the S.P.G. Players who set their S.P.G. to the beginning of their health bar are likely to come out swinging with their best attacks. However, overusing them early can put them in a tight spot if their foe weathers their initial assault, leaving them on the back foot.
Having attacks quicken the cooldown on the REV meter is also a great call, as that discourages the obvious plan of avoiding combat and trying to wait out the REV’s cooldown. This will help keep both sides of a fight engaged, even under less-than-ideal circumstances.
Beyond these big systems, in the Fatal Fury open beta brings the plethora of elements and fighting options expected of a 2D-fighting game. Grabs, fireballs, mid-air combos, and all the rest of the usual assortment of goodies. Each of the characters I tried felt good to play and brought something unique with them. Whether it was the familiar combos of Terry or the more complex, multi-step attacks of Preecha, there was a lot to discover with each fighter.
Discovering each character’s intricacies was made a bit more difficult due to an oversight in the Fatal Fury open beta: the total lack of a practice mode. The beta only offered the basic, scripted tutorial mode to teach the broad strokes of the game. In online matches, individual characters’ moves and combos had to be learned on the fly. Early fights were even more frustrating than one usually expects when trying out a new fighting game.
The Fatal Fury open beta introduces a streamlined control scheme for new players.
Much like its contemporaries, this game offers a streamlined control scheme option. The smart control scheme does a great job of allowing unfamiliar players to get their feet under them as they learn the ropes of the game. Like most control options, special moves are simplified to a single button press and a corresponding direction. Plus, some maneuvers like dodge attacks, which require two buttons to be pressed simultaneously, are set to a single button, making it much less complicated to pull off.
The big weakness that looks to hold Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves back is its presentation. The visuals are solid, but they lack the memorable style or visual polish of other contenders on the market. The menus in some spots fall even further, being easily defined as ugly.
Combined with the visual shortcomings, some of the audio also lacked energy. Announcements like combatants’ names or even the title screen declaration of the game felt ho-hum. Now, some of these things could be placeholder elements that will be improved in the final game, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves‘ open beta left me with strong if not overwhelmingly positive, feelings. The game plays great, and its S.P.G. feature feels like something that could bring a new angle of strategy to the game’s matches. As long as some of its presentation issues can be fixed before launch, it seems likely that the final game will be able to deliver fun and challenge for its core audience.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves will be released on April 24th on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X.
