There’s a lot to be excited about right now in the fighting game community, with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves being the next big thing on the horizon. SNK’s upcoming title is the first new Fatal Fury in 26 years, and it’s coming in revved up and ready to rock.
I spent roughly an hour with it at Summer Game Fest Play Days, and I walked away impressed with how great it looks and feels. It’s got an attractive cel-shaded art style that looks great in motion, and it really helps these characters shine from neutral to super.
Like the overarching trend in fighting games, it goes for a break-neck pace where rounds are often over in less than a minute. On top of that, the newly introduced REV meter is both generated and lost within a round, encouraging liberal use of it.
I used most of my time to play as Preecha, a kickboxing rushdown type of character. I usually gravitate toward speedy fighters, and she seemed to fit the bill for me.
Controlling her felt pretty good thanks to the responsive inputs with clear visual feedback. I quickly picked up some short combos, and after learning her special inputs, they were easy to execute at the end of a combo.
Like with many 2D fighting games, I found a meter that can be burned for supers, but above that, I found the newly introduced REV meter.
To be honest, I haven’t quite cracked the code for all the ways you can utilize it—and I wasn’t alone. According to one of the people at the SNK booth, other journalists and content creators kept coming back to keep getting more of a feel for the game and its systems.
Pressing both kicks or punches along with your input would overdrive your special moves (called a REV Art), which in turn builds up the REV meter. I was playing on stick, but the button labeled R1 would also do a special attack that rushed forward and built REV, as well.
It’s not ideal to just spam these moves though; maxing out the REV meter put me in a state of overheat, which put me at risk of getting into the vulnerable Guard Crush state. It also bars you from using REV moves, which is a heavy disadvantage.
You could chain REV Arts together using a technique called REV Accel, but I didn’t have time to figure that out and get a feel for it in a match. There’s also an ultra-powerful move called a REV Blow, which requires you to have a full super meter and to have your Selective Potential Gear active.
Like I said earlier, there’s a lot of systems to chew on here.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is chasing that fast-paced action that recent games like Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive are going for. However, it’s also got a boatload more systems on top of everything, creating a potentially complex game.
I barely scratched the surface in my time with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and maybe after more time with it, everything will click more easily. All I know is, I’m interested to see more of it when it comes out in early 2025.
