King of Fighters XII

Audio

Music and sound effects like art, merely add to the experience, but they can make a title if done correctly, or break one if not. The music in King of Fighters XII is nothing but uninspiring and ranges from mixing reasonably well with the action, to the player being rather unsure what they’re hearing. Occasionally the music heats up with the action, but a lot of time it just sounds like random sounds strung together very simply; the only real way to describe it is, weird.

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One problem with the music which seems like such a strange oversight, is that it outright stops out of nowhere whenever a load screen comes up – which is often, see “Misc” section – and restarts when its finished. Couldn’t we have something during these load screens? Is it too much to ask to have a bit of background noise to keep us occupied while the “Now Loading” badge sits flashing in the corner?

Sound effects on the other hand are handled very well, with explosive attacks producing correctly timed and great sounded bangs and fire “whumps” as it ignites from a clenched fist. The female characters – of which there are few – make the typical chick fighting noises that sound like they’ve been poked with a pin instead of just delivering a round house kick to a spandex clad wrestler look alike.

One final issue I had audio wise, was the lip synching in the out-of-place cut scenes that happen 3 times throughout the arcade mode. Once at the start as she explains how the time trial based tournament works, one to give an “update” on how players are doing, and one to wish you congratulations for winning. On each occasion not only is the voice acting awful, far too high pitched and often hard to understand, but the lip synching is completely out. Why dub in an English voice over Japanese animation? There is no speaking anywhere else in the game, just leave the original Japanese audio and give us subtitles.

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