The King of Fighters 2002 + A.D 2044 : Rubbish Duo

Dear reader. Bad games suck, they can suck for a number of reasons. Some because of rubbish combat/ gameplay (like the first Witcher or Sleeping Valley) or because of broken ports (unmodded Dark Souls and Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines springs to mind) or are terribly obtuse to work with and are about as enjoyable as plastic surgery without any of the supposed benefits of looking like a Barbie doll (one of the two games getting reviewed today and Game tycoon 1.5 amoung many, many others ) Time to tumble to the trash.

The King of Fighters 2002 is a direct port of the arcade original to PC, the game itself if you take away the port is quite a decent fighting game with a large roster of about 39 characters (not that much but suitable none the less) the characters talk to each other during each round which adds some rather nice depth to the matches, the game looks nice with it's pixel art and the designs look distinct and memorable.

The trouble starts with the fact that this is a port of an arcade game, arcade cabinets have a very restrictive control scheme and do not require much in terms of an options menu. On PC or even console you kind of need that freedom, not everyone has the same level of performance as everyone else nor does one have to stick to one control scheme. Some perform better with certain control layouts. Which makes The King of Fighters PC port one of the most galling and horrific ports I have played. You cannot change the control scheme and you cannot alter anything regarding game performance or quality so if you need to change the resolution or anything you can't. It reminds me of those mobile to PC ports that only added mouse functionality and nothing else.  Maybe it would not be so bad if the controls were not bound so bizarrely, Q w and X C to attack just feels wrong and this is coming from someone who does not play one on one fighting games normally. Maybe it would not feel so bad if the controls actually worked consistently, there were times when I could not get my character to do what I wanted him/her to do dispite me abusing the keyboard. The game does have a loading screen tutorial but the buttons shown are as they would be on an arcade machine so it is quite useless. There is no online play so if you do not have poeple close by to play this game then you are screwed. 

The King of Fighters 2002 might be a good game; I suspect it is considering how much people enjoyed the original version. But this port is extreamely poor. Do not get this game unless it gets mods.

Moving onto the next item on the agenda we have A.D 2044.

In a world where a female terrorist group tore the world apart in nuclear hellfire, in a world where men have been wiped out and women rule as the one true race, then a man is discovered, the final man. As the final man you have to escape captivity and fight for your freedom by clicking every single pixel and kissing the killer she-robots to death. It is the strange pulpy birth child of certain internet subsections of doom screamers and 1950s science fiction. Every voice actor reads their lines with either extreame boredom or with the zeal of a religious extreamist screaming that the rise of killer she-robots are upon us. Spelling and grammar is somewhat consistent but it is clear it needed one or two more proofreads before being put onto shelf, while this can be excused to extent as the Devs were Polish and they may have not been able to get English proofreaders in 1996. However it is still somewhat immersion breaking seeing such blatant spelling errors in what is supposed to be an advanced society.

Gameplay is point and click and puzzle solving. The trouble with this, much like a majority of point and click games from teh mid to late 1990s is that logic does not really exist or stuff is is hidden in hard to reach places and items you think might work together don't until you do a series of action that do not make sense such as using a cigarette and matches to trigger a smoke alarm but you cannot do that until you have found a spoon to eat dinner which will unlock bathroom so you can get a newspaper that is hidden in a random pair of boots. There is no explanation for a key used for an essential door should be hidden behind a cupboard in a different room. If it were not for my obligation to put in at least an hour I would have put this down because the story is inane, voice acting terrible and gameplay annoying . The guide I was using got me further then I would have without but I reached the brink wall when a killer she-robot (I know they have names but I am calling them killer she-robots)  ambushed me at a critical point in the story, the guide did say what I was meant to do, doing, nothing got me no where and when I kissed it  (only form of 'combat' in this game) it just killed me. None of the items I had did anything and I could not find anything that would help.  That was when I had enough.

The music, the music just loops and loops for each of it's 20 seconds worth of rubbish techno beat, while you can mute it; that should not excuse it from having such annoying music.

A.D 2044 is a bad game because of obtuse hidden object nonsense that created the standard for the worst of the point and click gene, the story and characters do not endear me to continue through the terrible gameplay. IF you want a good point and click from the mid to late 1990s try anything Lucas Arts was putting out at that time as they have better stories, better writing and characters. Please do not get this game.