Okay… so you know when I talked last time about Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li messed about with the source material a bit too much? Well… THAT, but to a far, far greater degree is how you can describe this. Why did I even bother reviewing KOF ’94, in hindsight? Oh well, I’ll say this much: at least the actual fighting was, for the most part, well done, which is something it has over the previous effort. Let’s take a closer look then…
My first Neo Geo review! … of very few, to be fair, not having owned one. Still, it was easier to get a collection of NEO-GEO games on the PS2 / Wii than it was SNK Arcade game collections. To be fair though, I wanted to start at the start and eventually cover the whole KOF franchise down the road, but I could’ve sworn I played this on the PS1. Looking into it, it must have been KOF 95 I played on that console… Oh well! I got them all in the various PS2 collections of the franchise, so let’s just crack on, after covering a CG anime series, a crossover fighter and a manga (not to mention a live action film alongside this!), it’s about time I actually covered one of the games!
I went into Legend of Chun-Li with trepidation. I knew it had a bad reputation (as nearly all these films do!) but at the same time I thought “Well, I’m sure it at least has some decent fight scenes to pass the time…” Somehow I was even wrong on that account. Unlike the games that inspired it, this film is devoid of interesting characters and exciting fighting. In other words… *sigh*. Let’s take a look at the first of four fighting game adaptation films in a row!
So back in the “Countdown to Smash Ultimate” I covered the first three versions of Street Fighter II, and with the first SF film I looked at the first SF game, so to take the sting off of “Legend of the Chun-Li” I thought I’d look at the only version of SFII I actually owned back in the day: Super Street Fighter II on the Mega Drive, and then I thought “why not?” and threw in the Arcade Super Turbo in as well, as I technically own it on the Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the PS2 (though I played a MAME emulation for this as I hear the PS2 port is glitchy). So let’s take a look at the final vers- Oh, right. Well, let’s take a look at the final versions of SFII that were released in the 90s…
Within the first few minutes of this film you start to think “Oh, hang on, they’ve nailed the look and feel of the game at least!” and then it all goes away. Well, actually, the look is the one good thing that stays consistent, but everything else vanishes into an ether of dullness. …Hooray! Let’s take a look at yet another film that had a really good base to go on, but decided not to use it…
When I was planning out this marathon and realised this was going to turn up due to the often forgotten film I was really happy. Max Payne was the coolest game ever when it came out, the bullet time system was frankly “awesome” and I really enjoyed the noir graphic novel style story telling. Does it hold up in 2020? Let’s find out!
So a game about a deadly hitman working for a shadowy company should be pretty easy to adapt, right? No need for fantasy elements or big sci-fi set pieces, just a simple thriller, right? Well, that’s right! … Sadly, the emphasis was very much on the simple, and less on the thriller. Yes, for a film titled “Hitman” it very quickly became “generic action movie anti-hero loudly gunning people down in broad daylight”. Still, is it worth a look?
I remember playing about with some of the earlier Hitman games, specifically a demo that either came with another game or came on the front of a magazine. They were fun, but I couldn’t be bothered to get into them. Earlier this year (or late last year…) the 2016 soft reboot of the Hitman franchise became free for PS+ users such as myself, and as I knew the first Hitman film was coming up in this marathon I played through this game a short while ago so I can actually have a game to compare, even if the game itself was released long after the film in question. So is it good? Does the episodic open world idea work when you play the whole game as one entity? Let’s find out!
I went into this film knowing its reputation, hell the posters and DVD/Blu-Ray covers show you what the main “draw” of the film was, but man… it’s pretty awful. I mean by the time this film was released, DOA the game series’ reputation was breast jiggling physics and a volley ball game spin-off, so in reality this film probably did the franchise more justice than a lot of these adaptations, but it was so hard to get through due to the sheer amount of cringe. Let’s get it out of the way and never talk about it again, shall we?
I know, reviewing the original Dead or Alive alongside the movie would’ve made far more sense, but I never owned it, and in fact barely played it (a friend had it and brought it round a few times), where as DOA2 ended up being one of my most played fighting games on the Dreamcast. The main thing I remembered about it were super-fluid animation and controls and it being generally fun to play, but are these things still true in 2020? Let’s find out!
Hogan Reviews 