Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves in the test - it's great fun, although I clearly show my limits

Oh, that's why this seems so familiar to me: The first fatal Fury was created by Takashi Nishiyama, who had previously invented Street Fighter. And while the latter has now become particularly popular, the current one remainsAlso faithful to his roots - which may also be no wonder if it connects to a predecessor who appeared 26 years ago. But does the current Fatal Fury still work as much as the series did at the time?

For mom, dad and everyone else

For me this is a clear yes. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is essentially aimed at experienced finger acrobats, which I certainly don't count. In the story mode it leads to beginners (a large part of the players were not even born when mom and dad gave themselves in the arcade Saures) but gently approach this exchange of blows.

Afterwards you could let off steam in the Arcadem mode against the AI ​​or with a buddy and deepen online and deepen what you have learned in training, where you not only learn combos in tutorials, but also repeat freely configurable situations until you control them from the effect. Oh, and if you want to have it a little more manageable, use a simplified scheme instead of classic control, with which some of the demanding actions are not available, but make many movements more easily.

Time -critical

Now I did not grew up with games from the Fatal Fury brand, but only really got in the days of three -dimensional beating. Of course I knew all of them, but I always only dealt with it briefly. In other words, I can't tell you how it all feels for veterans. For me, the start was definitely a challenge, because here you should not only understand individual moves learning, but also the systems that are interlinked together.

And even if you have permeated all of this, it is still comparatively difficult to line up combos because you have to make the right timing so precisely that I even lead this aspect as a criticism. I don't think that a somewhat more relaxed timing would have harmed the demanding competition. Instead, I don't reliably succeed a number of combos in training, so that I almost only have a limited repertoire of actions. If you do that with "Git GUD, N00B!" can dismiss while you can handle yourself perfectly: great! For this reason, I will not be Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves for long.

And speaking speaking: Since the game could not yet connect to the servers during the test phase, it should only be mentioned at this point that the online duels with ranking fights via cross play and of course self-created rooms for up to twelve players and with adjustable rules offer everything that is common in the genre. I just can't tell you how well this works.

Pretty hot here

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is reminiscent of Street Fighter, among other things, because many moves are triggered by entering quarter circles on digicreuz, keyboard or with the analogy stick. In combination with light and heavy actions with fist or foot, numerous blows, kicks, sweepers or throws are carried out and, while the health bar is in a certain area, the so -called Selective potential (SPG).

Then there are also-and this is new-powerful REV attacks that simply hit the incoming attacks to make great damage. You just have to be careful: if you use these attacks and other rev campaigns too often, you put your fighter into an overheat state in which certain moves are not available for a while.

In this way, City of the Wolves rewards an aggressive approach and gives both fighters the chance to tear or turn the fight in certain moments. You just have to decide before each duel in which area the SPG life bar is activated. Do you want to hand out a lot right right from the start, be able to be able to do it in the middle or prefer to turn it on when your fighter is about to go?

How much risk should it be?

It's not just about striking. There is also a REV block that throws opponents back relatively far-but in the overheat you can lead to taking longer after a reinforced attack to recover. So you shouldn't let it get that far, which is why Rev attacks want to be well dosed.

If you still get overheating, you can accelerate the overheat from the overheat by performing certain risk -rich actions, including countering an attack at the right moment. To do this, the timing must be damn good. City of the Wolves is not as varied as other representatives of its kind, but as I said: When succeeded, this fatal Fury rewarded a risky offensive game, which is why the REV system fits perfectly into mechanics.

The nice thing is that in the Episodes of South Town mentioned story mode South, not all playful possibilities are available from the start, so that you are slowly familiarizing yourself with it. The basic control must also be mastered immediately, but the finesse are available later. The life strips of friend and enemy are also very small at first, in order to only grow when new levels are reached.

In addition, you only unlock a number of skills for Episodes of South Town, including an even longer lifestyle, stronger attacks in certain situations or according to certain moves as well as the waiver of effective actions with your hands in order to distribute powerful steps, and more. In this way you get to know everything and a little more about the character with which you are traveling in story mode.

I only find the stories that you experience. When Preecha is fighting with other people, for example, to get information about how to get rid of a spirit, it is simply too boring for me. Especially since all of this can be read in dust -dry, not exactly lively written text windows. But well, it depends on martial arts and Episodes of South Town is quite entertaining.

Na, hear Mal!

It goes without saying that all playful possibilities are available in arcade mode from the beginning, and of course there are no additional skills. The stories of the characters are similarly brittle and are presented comparably exciting, but I do not value them in games of this kind anyway. Is there a pregnage at all in which the characters - of course in the context of an excessive comic - can be taken really seriously?

In any case, the fact that, like in Tekken 8, the music of the game can be completely freely configured is to be classed by giving the pieces from all sound tracks of the entire Fatal Fury series, including the art-of-fighting and real bout offshoot, freely to every menu and every arena or in peace and quiet.

I only want to mention a little thing in terms of adaptation: as glad I am as that you can freely adjust the control, I lack the possibility that you can trigger actions with more than one button. Without this option, I find blocking with a fight stick in some situations quite unwieldy. But as I said, that should be mentioned in the side.

All in all, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is not only a successful continuation of the traditional series, but also a fine game. Unfortunately there is little in a narrative manner and I wish that the necessary timing of many inputs would not be so damn merciless. Apart from that, I can't think of any reason from which you should miss this representative of its kind. The art design is great, the fights are playfully demanding and tactically versatile and in terms of content is both online and offline everything that goes with it!