A long time ago, a colleague asked: "Why do you like fighting games?" I sat with the query for a beat and replied that the genre—a staple since the 1990s arcade scene—is the perfect combination of action, strategy, mind games, and YOLO moments. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves ($59.99, available for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox) truly typifies those ideas. It resurrects the long-dormant Fatal Fury series using rich offensive and defensive combat mechanics, a cool comic book-inspired graphics style, rollback netcode that enables dependable online play, and an RPG-like mode that sees you leveling up characters while braving South Town's mean streets. In short, City of the Wolves is a top-tier fighter and developer SNK's best combination of gameplay and presentation since the beloved The King of Fighters 13, earning it our Editors' Choice award.

New Fighters, Returning Fighters, and the Continuing Story

The narrative picks up a few years after 1999's Garou: Mark of the Wolves, City of the Wolves' predecessor that shifted the series focus from the iconic Terry Bogard to his young, troubled ward, Rock Howard. The young man continues searching for his past, encountering new and classic Fatal Fury characters on his journey. 

(Credit: SNK/PCMag)

Besides Rock and Terry, the returning Garou characters are B. Jenet, Gato, Hokutomaru, Hotaru Futaba, Kain R. Heinlein, Kevin Rian, Kim Dong Hwan, Marco Rodriguez (previously known as Khushnood Butt), and Tizoc. 

The new faces are a mix of original and classic Fatal Fury characters, including Billy Kane, Mai Shiranui, Preecha, and Vox Reaper. Oddly, there are also two real-world people: football/soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and superstar DJ and producer Salvatore Ganacci.

The flesh-and-blood people aren't playing in-game characters; they're playing themselves. The former uses his soccer ball in combat, while the latter has a bizarre, comical move set that incorporates music and dance. Their bewildering inclusions, seemingly done for worldwide marketing purposes, immediately broke the South Town immersion when I saw them on the character select screen or encountered them in battle. Though, I must admit, Ronaldo's funky, soccer-based move set is a lot of fun. In all, City of the Wolves has a good mix of brawlers, zoners, grapplers, and other popular fighting game archetypes.

SNK has more interesting characters in tow. The free (yes, free!) Season 1 DLC roadmap includes Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi (Fatal Fury), Mr. Big (Art of Fighting), and Chun-Li and Ken (Street Fighter). The latter pair represents the continued lovefest between SNK and rival developer Capcom, following Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui's appearance in Street Fighter 6 as playable characters.

Graphics: A Cool Comic Book-Inspired Aesthetic

The roster looks great, too, courtesy of an American comic book-inspired art style that uses bright colors, crosshatching, and heavy shading on the backgrounds and character models. If you weren't impressed by the look in the game's many compressed YouTube trailers, seeing the artistic flourishes pop on your TV or gaming monitor may change your opinion. In addition, comic panel-like cut scenes are interspersed between Arcade mode matches to move the story forward. 

The comic book aesthetic's not as heavyhanded as the ones in Ang Lee's Hulk movie or Sega's cult classic Comix Zone game, but it's effective. The visual design feels like the proper evolution of SNK's classic, anime-style sprites from its Neo Geo era. I find it more visually appealing than the semi-realistic models that Capcom employs in Street Fighter 6. The Arcade mode's cut scene art is simpler and plainer than the characters you control, but it's not bad.

Gameplay: The New Rev Meter and Updated S.P.G. Bar

From Kain's keep-away, zoner tactics to Tizoc's in-your-face grappling, the characters move with graceful fluidity. Yet, City of the Wolves is a dynamic, exciting fighter fueled by the new-to-the-series Rev System.

The game's intermediary and advanced mechanics (Rev Arts, Rev Accel, Rev Blows) are fueled by the Rev Meter, letting you bust out wickedly effective enhanced specials, juiced-up supers, supers that combo into other supers, and armored attacks that act as an offensive or defensive move. 

(Credit: SNK/PCMag)

The Rev Meter is the game's take on Street Fighter 6's Drive Gauge, except it fills up instead of draining as you block (no turtling!) and unleash Rev-based actions. Entering the Overheat state when the meter is full puts you at a severe disadvantage; you cannot pop Rev moves and become susceptible to viscous guard crushes that open you up for big damage. There are four options for exiting Overheat: Patiently wait as the Rev Meter drains; walk or dash; use advanced blocking techniques (Hyper Defend or Just Defend); or go on the attack. So, you must strategically use the Rev Meter to avoid the penalty.

My main complaint about Overheat is that, visually, it doesn't look inherently negative. Sure, a red aura envelops your character when it's in that state, but it looks cool. It should not! As a result, novices may not immediately read Overheat as a thing to avoid. Capcom, on the other hand, gave Street Fighter 6's character a grayed-out appearance and fatigued animations when in the Burnout state; it instantly let you know you were in trouble.

Selective Potential Gear (S.P.G.), an updated version of Garou: Mark of the Wolve's Tactical Offensive Position (T.O.P.) system, adds to the mayhem. S.P.G. is a short, yellow bar you set to one of three positions on your health gauge (beginning, middle, or end), and it activates when your remaining health falls within its borders. The benefits include increased damage output and the ability to perform the aforementioned armored Rev Blows that let you absorb a few hits before landing a big attack.

Factor in Braking (canceling an animation to open new combo routes), Feints (faking a move to make a foe react or reduce a special move's recovery time), and Wild Punish (a counterattack that leaves an opponent stunned after a whiffed move), and you have a deep and varied fighting system worth exploring. Several times during my play session, I blurted, "I can do that?" after linking moves for devastating combos using the available tools.

The robust offensive and defensive dance may overwhelm casual players, so SNK includes a new Smart Style control scheme. By picking it, you enjoy a simplified control scheme that requires little skill to execute fancy moves. The trade-off? No Braking or Feints, and a reduced move set. Still, it's a fun way for novices to mix it up against the CPU or fighting game veterans playing with the traditional Arcade Style. A training mode and combo trials teach newcomers basic, intermediary, and advanced techniques.

Online Play, Episodes of South Town, and Other Features

Strong online play options are necessary for any contemporary fighter, and City of the Wolves is no exception. You can swing on others in Ranked or Casual online play or create a public or private 12-person room for battling online buddies in solo or team play. That setup runs fine, but searching for a specific person means inputting a 10-digit User Code. It's clunky, especially if you insert it using a fight stick or gamepad.

Another gripe: The win-loss record on your battle profile card represents your combined Ws and Ls with all characters, which doesn't indicate your skill with a particular fighter. I prefer Street Fighter 6's approach, which logs the wins and losses on a character level.

The game's Clone AI tech studies your play style while you fight online, creating copies of you and your rivals. It's great for studying strengths and weaknesses. If you want a top-notch challenge, battle an SNK developer character clone to see what a fighter can do in the right hands.

The other extras include Color Edit for tweaking your fighter's appearance in wonderful and nightmarish ways and Jukebox for listening to nearly 400 compositions from SNK's many series (Art of Fighting, Fatal Fuy, King of Fighters). On that note, the game's soundtrack slaps, floating between acid jazz and hard rock. It's highly catchy video game music, not the atmospheric, pseudo-cinematic compositions you'll find in many AAA games.

City of the Wolves has unexpected additions, too. For example, Episodes of South Town is an RPG-like mode where you travel across a 2D South Town map to fight in regular and gimmick matches. Winning earns experience points that increase your fighter's capabilities. It isn't nearly as robust as Street Fighter 6's World Tour, a fully realized 3D version of Metro City that feels alive with streets to explore and characters to meet. Still, Episodes of South Town is a cool diversion with fun surprises.

The classic Fatal Fury line sway system that lets you brawl across a stage's foreground and background returns. Its implementation here is superior to past games, as moving between lanes is less floaty and has more combo potential. Currently, the line sway is limited to just the Dream Amusement Part morning stage and probably won't have any adoption in a tournament setting, but it's nice to see SNK honor the early Fatal Fury game's staple gameplay element.

(Credit: SNK/PCMag)

City of the Wolves: System Specs and Performance

Like most fighting games, City of the Wolves doesn't require high-end PC components. To run it, your computer needs a 64-bit AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-7500 CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 580 (VRAM 4GB) or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (VRAM 6GB) GPU, 8GB of system RAM, 60GB of available storage, DirectX 12, and the Windows 10 operating system. The recommended specs bump the requirements to a 64-bit AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7 8700 CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 5700XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU, and 16GB of RAM.

In my tests, the action moved at a crisp 60 frames per second. However, Terry Bogard's freight train stage, which features scrolling mountains and other trains zipping by in the background, suffered from slowdown. There, the frame rate dropped into the low 40s, and I could feel the lag. I hope SNK can quickly fix this issue, because it made me avoid the visually impressive stage. Likewise, the game occasionally lagged when I moved the on-screen cursor to different menu options. The situation isn't nearly as bad as in its first beta test, but it's another item that SNK should add to its fix list.

City of the Wolves runs well on Steam Deck, which makes it a great fighter for knuckling up when away from your desktop gaming PC. It supports cross-platform play between PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, too, so you'll always have someone to fight. The game also supports Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, Steam Family Sharing, and PlayStation and Xbox controllers.