Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is ready to beat up the competition

The fighting game genre is going through something of a renissance right now. In the past year alone, we’ve gotten several mainstream hits in Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1, and Tekken 8. That’s not to mention the games filling in the cracks between them, from Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising to Multiversus. Is there a seat at the table for one more competitor? You bet there is, and its name is Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.

I went hands on with a new demo build of the upcoming 2D fighter at this year’s Summer Game Fest. While we were already impressed by it when we got a taste of it in March, SNK’s latest has only bulked up since then. Its signature rev system makes for a more cerebral fighting game that’s just as fun to watch asStreet Fighter 6.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a traditional 2D fighting game where two players duke it out with stylish moves. Each face button controls a limb, pressing back on the control stick lets players block, and there are tons of combo strings to learn. It’s a hardcore fighting game that rewards expert players with flashy combo strings that can really punish a novice. When I first jumped in, the computer-controlled characters wiped the floor with me as I learned its intricacies on the fly.

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And there are a lot of intricacies to speak of. The big hook here is Fatal Fury‘s rev system, which makes it stand out among the competition. Certain actions, like special moves, build up rev. A meter at the bottom tracks how much has built up via a percentage. If that meter hits 100%, players will overheat and lose access to those extra actions until the meter cools down over time.

It’s an ingenious touch. It forces players to make brainier decisions rather than just spamming blocks and powerful moves. During my matches, I’d find myself