We take a look at Garou: Mark of the Wolves, the appropriate rival to Street Fighter III: Third Strike.

Warning: 688 Megs of awesome inside.

Since the XBLA version of this game is up this week, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the last SNK game that bears the Fatal Fury mark and storyline: Garou: Mark of The Wolves.  Back in 1999, this game is right up there with Street Fighter 3: Third Strike for being one of the best fighters of the last generation of 2-D fighters and, dare I say, even this generation. I’ll go as far as to say that it beats out the entire Soul Calibur and Tekken in terms of complexity and fun factor, because there’s only so much you can do after you learned all of Martial Law and Jin Kazuma’s 10-button dial-a-combo-fest. In that regard, I blame Killer Instinct for introducing that banal concept, but that’s a post for another time.

The game takes place right after the canonical Real Bout: Fatal Fury, where evil badman Geese Howard falls to his death and unwittingly leaves Terry Bogard, the true winner of the Fatal Fury tournament, to raise Geese’s kid as his own out of guilt. A lot of years later, Rock is all grown-up and sports a combination of his late father and Terry’s fighting style. With a new SouthTown fighting tournament coming up, Terry and Rock are up to the challenge. Of course, we’re not here playing this game for the story, although it is sort of fleshed out here amidst the muddled-up-to-the-point-of-Rosetta-Stone-proportion SNK-Engrish translation in each cutscene. “Martyr of Might”? Who comes up with this shit?

When you first touch the game, the first thing you’ll notice is its aesthetic and setting. Everything looks, to put it mildly, mind-blowingly detailed and beautiful. Every area set in the city area of SouthTown is bustling with spectators. Outside places like the forest and waterfall look gorgeous. Even having specific characters play in certain levels affect the background. If Dong Hwan and Jae Hoon fight each other in the marketplace, the background characters will show their support to their specific dojo leaders if they pull off their taunts. SNK took their time in making sure that their roster is brimming with personality, and it definitely shows. Take a look at Bonne Jenet’s finishing blow on one of her Supers and the way she blows a kiss when she hops backwards, or see how Hokutomaru approaches you with not a care in the world to see what I mean.

Speaking of its roster, MOTW boasts diverse playing styles despite its small roster. For the beginners, you have Terry Bogard and Marco Rodriguez for those familiar with Ryu & Ken’s playstyle. You know, with the usual assortment of attacks such as fireballs and uppercuts and the horizontal leg attacks that most fighting games need to have for their main characters. Characters like the SouthTown cop Kevin Ryan and criminal-under-the-influence-of-the-Orochi Freeman plays unlike any other fighting game character, allowing for fighting game lovers to feel free to experiment like how they did with Makoto from SF3 when she burst into the scene with her repertoire of close-range combat and guile. Even the main character Rock plays a little differently than his Shotoken counterpart; with his counter moves and dashing Power Dunk/side-switching tricks, he should be played defensively, thus breaking the archtype that all main characters should put up their offensive fronts. Personally, I’m fond of using Gato and his toolset of moves that would give opponents a bit of a mindf***.

Forget about button-mashing and wailing the joystick like you’re spending your Saturday nights at home by yourself in this game; MOTW is as technical as they come. No Guard Cancelling here like in Guilty Gear or the Marvel Versus series, you have to learn the game’s precision-laden fighting system. The first technique, Just Defence, is executed the last-second moment you block an opponent’s move. Indicated by the blue flash when you block, not only does it shorten your recovery time (enabling you to counter with a swift attack of your own) but also nets you a bit of life back. Plus, it also works in the air, and since you cannot airblock, this requires precise timing on the player’s part. This is arguably easy to get used to than parrying in SF3, since if you hold back at the wrong time you still end up blocking normally, rather than eating a foot/fist in the face.

For certain moves, you can perform a Feint Move version of them by pressing either the Light Punch or Light Kick button and Forward/Down together. Doing this enables you to make a lightning-quick recovery from that specific move, enabling you to follow up with an attack of your own to catch people off-guard, or to move away from an impending counter-attack. MOTW also adds in a T.O.P (Tactical Offensive Position) bar system. Before you start the match, you are prompted to choose, out of three choices, a position on your lifebar. When your health reaches that portion, you get multiple combat bonuses like limited health regeneration and stronger attacks. Plus, you get character-specific T.O.P attacks by pressing both heavy attack buttons: Terry does a 3-hit rush attack while Freeman does a red overhead slash. The choice you place it shows what kind of player you are. Aggressive fighters would put it way in front, while the ones who would save such bonuses to the end would place it near the last bit. Things like this that made players strategically think about their choices before the match actually made fighters like MOTW ahead of their time, and even surprisingly, not one company borrowed or outright steal this little feature.

One thing that MOTW one-up its rival, Street Fighter III, is the music. Instead of using clichéd and mostly horrible-sounding rap, MOTW’s composition fits each character. Hotaru and Gato’s music are very contrast, yet follow the same style of using Chinese-style motives in their soundtracks: while the former is mellow and angelic, the latter is dramatic and brimming with hidden evil. Bonne Jenet is accompanied with sultry jazz, while Kevin Rian has a soft Texan jingle for his out-in-the-open stage.

It seems that I might be leaning towards MOTW when comparing it with Street Fighter 3. Frankly, I love them both. They’re both hella sweet, and choosing one or the other is like choosing between your own two children. Both have different types of awesome laden onto their fighting game backbone and have their own distinct styles. But they share one huge trait: both are technical to the core and forces players to master their fighting mechanics if they wish to get far in the game.