Dead or Alive? Bah. Keep your Virtua Fighter, too. For a lot of fans out there, 2D fighting games are alive and well, thanks in no small part to SNK Playmore. The company has delivered a seemingly endless stream of King of Fighters games over the last two years, and it's not done yet: here comes Neowave.
For the last decade or so, the KoF series has pioneered the idea of 3-on-3 team fighting; when one character gets taken out, another steps in to pick up where the fight left off. They were
Korean developer Phantagram returns this autumn with a second helping of its fantasy flavoured action/strategy title and from the demo we've been playing this month, it very much appears to be a case of more. More playable characters, more varied attacks, more enemies on screen at any time, more online modes and, ultimately, more of the same: which is No Bad Thing. The first title, KUF: The Crusaders, was a peach and if you overlook Koei's Dynasty Warriors, at the very least brought something
Never mind the crusades, the last two years have been a case of Developer Under Fire for Korean studio Phantagram. Production of its three PC/Xbox games - acrobatic action title Strident, cyberpunk RPG Duality and KUF: The Crusaders - ran afoul of strained relations with its publisher and part-owner, Korean MMORPG giant NCsoft. But after buying back its independence in time for Christmas 2003, Phantagram has concentrated on completing The Crusaders, a move that has encouraged Microsoft to
