E3 2018 Preview – SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy
During E3 2018, I had the pleasure of meeting with NIS America and getting a hands-on preview of some of their excellent games arriving later this year. One of those games is the spectacular SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is a brand new 2D fighter featuring an all-female cast of characters pulled from the vast SNK universe. With accessible controls, a tag-team system, beautiful graphics, and a healthy dose of bounce in all the right places (wink, wink) – this is a game any fighter fan will want to keep their eyes on.
There were a lot of things I liked about SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. First off, the visuals were beautifully crafted, with a ton of detail in each of the characters and their numerous outfits. The version we played had only six characters, each with four outfits, but the locked roster screen showed a bunch more blanked out characters. If I were to guess, I’d say there will probably be at least 20 to 30 different characters. The next thing I noticed that really impressed me was the sheer simplicity of the controls. In fact, if you’ve ever played a Super Smash Bros. game, then you’ll feel very much at home here. There were two attack buttons and special moves were performed by combining an attack button with a direction on the control stick. This made it incredibly easy to get into, but will still offer a level of complexity that’ll take time to master.
As you may have guessed from the title, the game features a tag team dynamic which requires you to pick two different girls for each team. While you’re fighting in the foreground, your tag partner (and your opponent’s tag partner) patiently wait in the background and you can tag your partner in anytime during the match. The beauty of the tag team element is that four people will be able to play simultaneously. There are special finisher moves too, which light up the screen and showcase devastating final moves to opponents. They aren’t fatalities, like Mortal Kombat, more like Ultra Finishers from Street Fighter 4. Some of the confirmed fighters include Athena Asamiya, Leona Heidern, and my personal favourite, Mai Shiranui.
While there is no shortage of solid fighting games arriving this fall, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy looks like it could be a fresh new entrant into the fighting arena and a worthwhile addition to the fighter genre. SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy will release on September 7th, 2018 on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
