The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2

Platform: PS2.
Verdict: Minimum Success, too.
Rating: 2/5
If there was one mistake made by many in the tumultuous 3D revolution of the late 90’s, it was the idea that 3 dimensions automatically dictated success. Countless series' turned to it merely because they could and in doing so destroyed what made them strong. Street Fighter failed at it with the EX series and here we are 10 years later with SNK trying to do the very same thing with The King of Fighters.
As Street Fighter’s closest rival, King of Fighters is traditionally a polished and popular beat-em-up with its own unique characters, niche controls and exact timing. What Maximum Impact 2 does is disregard all the core gameplay mechanics that made the series great and replace them with a substandard Tekken-a-like setup, slapdash production and poor localisation.
Despite its move to 3D, Maximum Impact 2 still plays like a 2D fighter but with a side stepping button to prove that the extra dimension isn’t just cosmetic. In addition there’s a parry button for easy counter attacks (a far cry from Street Fighter 3’s precise parry system) and an emphasis on chained combos, which rely on a robotic input of button presses to a potentially devastating, imbalanced and visually explosive degree.
Combat no longer feels precise and measured – replaced instead with a loose, unsatisfying system that has traded pixel perfect mechanics for a visual makeover that’s dated at best. With the likes of Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur to compete against, Maximum Impact can’t best them graphically and stands no chance in the ring compared to their refined and deep combat, which begs the question – why?
Fans of the series will be put out at the extreme changes to gameplay (choosing to play its excellent 2D counterpart KoF XI, released on the same day) and new players will find little of merit to choose it over its superior peers. Maximum Impact 2 plays like it’s a decade old and only the most obsessive fans will find something to glean from this release and that probably boils down to seeing Mai Shiranui’s exaggerated physical assets in three dimensions – revolutionary!