SNK Playmore’s upcoming King of Fighters XIV is prepping for its early 2016 release on the PlayStation 4, and they’ve recently let loose a new teaser trailer featuring returning fan-favorites Chang and Leona. Gamers aren’t digging it at all.
Sankaku Complex spotted the new trailer for King of Fighters XIV, featuring 39 seconds of snippets of gameplay with Leona and Chang making an appearance. You can check it out below.
Very much like the first teaser trailer they let loose back in September the second trailer was rife with negative comments and complaints about the game’s graphics and 3D visuals. On the upside, I think Leona looks really cool in 3D and her outfit is a nice touch up on what she wore in King of Fighters XIII.
Nevertheless, SNK, of course, figured they know what’s best for fans so they disabled the comments for the video. There’s no better way to let your fan base know how much you appreciate their feedback by disabling any way for them to provide it. The ratings on the video say it all, though.
It’s really sad that things have taken such an unfortunate turn for SNK. I’m sure they could win back some trust if they would at least explain the change to their fan base as to why they had to change the graphics – that 3D is just cheaper and allows them to scale more characters into the game in a shorter amount of time. Or that for sequels it makes it easier to re-establish assets using 3D characters as opposed to trying to redraw everything in 2D.
That’s not to mention that even if they completely alter the new character models for another game they can still reuse the animation and skeletal data for the characters to keep the moves consistent. Using 3D instead of 2D overall just cuts costs drastically on a production.
But SNK didn’t opt to do that; they didn’t bother explaining themselves to the people who keep them in business. Instead the company rolled out two very underwhelming trailers, all in the midst of Namco pumping out Tekken 7 content and Capcom just cleaning the house with Street Fighter V. They then opted to closed down the comment sections and keep mum as if their mouths were duct taped and someone held a gun to their head to stay silent or else.
I don’t have a lot of high hopes for King of Fighters XIV, but I could easily find myself won over once more if they include classic characters like Ryuji Yamazaki, Robert Garcia and Ryo or the highly under-utilized rival to Kim, Jhun Hoon.
Anyway, let’s see if SNK can recover this fumble or if they’ll just keep tripping over their feet up until the game releases on PS4 in early 2016.
