A lot can change in ten years.

In 1999 we were wowed by the 128 bit raw power of Sega’s Dreamcast console, but by today’s standards it looks positively prehistoric. In 1999 Steve Jobs announced a new third-person action game named Halo would be coming to Mac and PC simultaneously, but instead is an exclusive first-person shooting success to Microsoft’s Xbox console systems. In 1999 SNK’s Garou: Mark of the Wolves was considered an amazing fighting game, one of the best you can buy.

Ten years later I’ve come to realize that some things never change…

If you are a fan of SNK at all, you have no doubt already paid for, downloaded and played the Hell out of this game. Garou: Mark of the Wolves , also known as Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves is the final game in SNK’s long running Fatal Fury series, and it is apparent that this is the sort of game that can only exist after years and years of fine tuning the series.

Set ten years after the death of Fatal Fury boss and SNK mainstay Geese Howard, a shadowy figure named Kain hosts another ‘King of Fighters’ tournament, calling on fighters from all over the world to compete for the title. The storyline is a bit bland (as it just about always is in fighters),  but the characters are anything but. Garou has one of, if not the best roster of fighters I have ever seen. In comparison to most modern fighters and especially in comparison to SNK’s own King of Fighters series, the number of characters to choose from (12 and 2 selectable bosses) seems rather small, but what it lacks in numbers it more than makes up for in great variety and wonderful balance.  Every character on the roster feels like an individual, and each of them has a large moves list and the tools to be played competitively, there are no situations that I have come across where one character gets completely trapped or has their hands tied. There are always tough situations to deal with, but with a bit of thought, you can always find a move or method to get around it, and turn the battle in your favour, it really comes down to the skills of the player. The special moves of each character should be familiar to anyone who has played a 2D fighter before, with the usual suspects of quarter circle motions and ‘charge’ moves (holding one direction then hitting the other) available. The inputs are a little more strict than Street Fighter, meing some moves like 360 degree motions can be difficult for novices, but for the most part it’s simple to pick up and remember. No matter your play style, you will likely find a character that fits, there are close range fighters, there are grapplers, and there are ranged characters, each with thier own quirks and pros and cons.

A big reason for the great roster is the wonderful graphics this game has. Yes, it is ten years old, which is a ripe old age for a video game, but Mark of the Wolves has aged better than Jane Seymour*. SNK has always been a master of 2D graphics, and this game is no exception. The sprites are beautifully drawn and amazingly animated, especially considering that the game was made on SNK’s Neo-Geo hardware dating back to 1990! Each character has so much personality due to the attention to detail. Before a fight begins you’ll see characters loosen their sleeves for battle, down a beer and smash the glass on the ground, fold away a newspaper and crack their knuckles… it’s a minor thing, but it really goes a long way to giving the characters flair and giving the game a real sense of polish.

While it’s all well and good for this game to look great, the game wouldn’t be a classic without a great fighting system. If you have never played an SNK game before, Garou is the perfect place to begin. While popular games like Street Fighter and (to a lesser extent) Capcom’s Marvel series will share many of the basics you need to know, there are some important differences and some great features to Garou’s fighting system that make it excellent and fun.

First and foremost is the brilliant T.O.P. position. T.O.P stands for Tactical Offense Position, a third of your energy bar which, when reached, gives your character stronger attacks, slow health regeneration, faster Super Move charging and a unique attack available only in T.O.P. mode. What makes this so interesting in Garou is that you choose where this section of energy bar will be before you fight. Will you place it right at the start of your bar, so you can be an offensive powerhouse right off the bat? Will you place it at the very end so when you have your back against the wall you can pull out all the stops to make a last stand? Will it sit in the center of your bar for a happy medium? On the more advanced end of things, there is also a manuever known as ‘Just Defence’, very similar to Street Fighter III’s Parry system. If you go into a block (press ‘back’ or away from the attack) you won’t take any damage, but will actually regain a small amount of health, and be ready to counter attack. It’s a great little technique that really makes high level play all the more interesting. These unique additions to the fighting system make Garou play unlike any other fighter out there, it ensures that you can always come back to it since theres nothing else quite the same out there.

The single player story mode will be quite hard for most newcomers to the genre, but the game has a great system to make sure that even the most ham-fisted fighter will be able to see the end credits roll. In addition to have a good range of difficulty settings, when you lose you have the option to play the match again with a maxed out super bar, your opponents health at only one third it’s usual amount or to play it again with a lower difficulty. If you want to turn down these options, you can of course just play the round again as per normal. In addition to the story mode, Garou also has a really interesting Survival game. In other fighters, sometimes survival mode is simply the arcade mode with no continues, but in Garou you retain your health and the time limit through all the levels. To make it to the end, you need to collect ‘power ups’ for extra time, power meter and health which will be dropped by your opponents after big attacks. While Survival mode starts off quite easy for the first few fights, it gets difficult later on when your health starts to drop and time is running low, you really need to scramble to get those powerups and stay alive, it can get quite frantic. It makes for a very fun addition to the game and will probably take up the majority of your offline play.

So everything about this game is fantastic, right? Unfortunately, no. The net code in this game is unfortunately not as good as recent efforts by rival developer Capcom, and considering a great deal of this game will be spent online, SNK have really dropped the ball. You CAN still find lag-free matches, but you will need to do the legwork of going through ‘Custom Match’ rather than just hitting the ‘Quick Match’ option. If you keep an eye out for a good Ping rating, then you will have no problem finding a good online match, but it really is something that the developers should have handled better. Having said that, when it works, it works very, very well, with a good variety of players and characters to fight. It may sound like a pain, but most of the time you will have no trouble finding a good connection.

Overall, I can’t give this game anything but a score of excellent. Garou: Mark of the Wolves is simply one of the best fighters I have ever played, and an essential purchase for fighter fans.

*Don’t worry, I had to check Wikipedia as well.

Comment on this article.