So, if you love SNK Fighting games, or perhaps you are a big fan of the Fatal Fury series, then let me introduce you to one big bad wolf!

Garou: Mark of the Wolves aka Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves

This is the final Fatal Fury game in the series, featuring a new generation of characters, and good ol' Terry Bogard. This game certainly takes place after KoF XIII for the most part, and would be based more on Terry's adopted son, as well as Geese Howard's son, Rock Howard.

Depth: 9

This is SNK's answer to Capcom's Third Strike Street Fighter III in short. This game is literally on par gameplay wise with Street Fighter III, the only difference being that the game just didn't have that fame and spark Street Fighter III did.
So what did Mark of the Wolves (MOTW) do differently as an SNK game besides Parries like 3rd Strike? T.O.P. Gauge, Feints, and Breaks.

For starters, T.O.P. is the first thing you'll discover, being that you can select 1/3 of your life bar where you want this "T.O.P." to activate. Basically, when your life reaches that point, or starts at the point, you'll be fighting with not just heightened power while your life gradually recovers. Feints on the other hand is not just your character faking a special move, but allows you to link normal attacks together if you are quick enough! Break is used with one specific special move usually to cancel the animation of the attack after the first hit allowing you to launch your opponent into the air for a juggle combo.
So, MOTW has a few things to set it apart in depth, but what about the core and basics of the game?

Since it is a Neo-Geo arcade game, you can expect the usual A, B, C, D, set up with only light and heavy attacks. The gameplay on its own is very smooth and is perhaps a little slower than Street Fighter III depending on how you look at it. There are 14 characters in all including the two boss characters. Unlike its previous Fatal Fury predecessors, you can't move between different planes of fighting fields in the background or foreground. The game however does inherit a few King of Fighter's features such as juggling launched opponents with specials or super moves, short hops, and two levels of super moves; so fans of the KoF series should feel at home.

What's very interesting is the characters. Though there are fewer than Street Fighter III, the characters set themselves apart from one another with a special feature. For those who've played plenty of KoF games, you may notice that some characters are a hybrid of two characters from the KoF series, or even Fatal Fury. Creating the characters such a way actually helps veteran gamers to understand and feel comfortable playing as a character they might have used before with a small touch of originality. (Street Fighter III took a similar approach with certain characters also.)

The more advanced techniques such as breaks, feints, and just defend, further enhance the combat versatility with more damaging combos, longer battles, and skilled gameplay to give you an edge on your opponent. Though, even with these techniques at your disposal, mastering them is in fact a little difficult, especially when facing a computer who knows an answer to plenty of your strategies. Interesting enough, the just defend technique acts like a block still with a similar effect of the parry from Street Fighter III, but heals a small bit of your health whenever you do use it. Naturally against someone who could "just defend" everything you do, that opponent would simply make up any damage you might cause him if he does make a mistake. This could be unbalanced, but at the same time, it's still a tough feat to pull off in some cases for many.

Counter hits with in this game give a inflict a long hit stun on the opponent allowing the player access to longer combos. They also have a slow launch effect depending on the move used allowing the player to easily time combos. As much as they sound like fun, in my own personal experience, I've had trouble timing them against the computer. Perhaps they aren't as easy as hand outs to occur, but that's just what I experienced.

Difficulty: 8 (5 for non-veterans possibly)

Difficulty with fighting games can be a difficult task to discuss, especially when retro franchises are involved. The reason I say retro franchise is because back then, if the game is made by a certain company you know made great games, you'd get that game in a heartbeat. But nowadays, video game creators have left the video game companies they worked for and went on to pursue their own dream. Now when you hear Hideo Kojima, you know automatically, Metal Gear Solid

With that cleared up, this game can be incredibly difficult for someone who's never played an SNK game before, and still very challenging for those who aren't as dedicated to becoming a pro fighting gamer. However, for SNK veterans who know the ins and outs of the A.I. and overwhelming final bosses, they might place this game's difficulty under a few of the KoF games. I run somewhere along the line of a hybrid, I've played SNK games to know a few concepts, I've had my larger share of Capcom games on the other hand, and I'm aiming more towards a high-amateur level of being fighting gamer rather than a pro. Boy, did I get my butt handed to me plenty of times.

The A.I. by the third or fourth stage will really start to pick up it's game and make you choose one of two choices if you are new to SNK or aren't that serious of a fighting gamer: "GET SERIOUS!" as Terry would say, or, maybe your just not using a character suited to you. MOTW, will not let you go any further in the game without skill, unless you just have some extreme luck, but being able to utilize your moves in such a way that you can exploit weaknesses and loops are definitely important.
The computer opponent will literally stop you at any attempt from continuing by punishing you for every move you make, and in my recent plays after so long, abusing "Just Defend." Not to mention, landing counter hits on the computers to at least score a little more damage can be a little tough if you don't utilize your character properly and understand their pros and cons.

However, if you are looking for a nice challenge, you've found the right game. Not to mention, the boss actually isn't as cruel as some other bosses in other SNK fighters. Though, it'll still be a struggle against knowing and not knowing your material when it comes down to it.

Aside from A.I. difficulty, The basic controls can feel a tad bit stiff if you've never played certain SNK fighters. But I wouldn't necessarily say it's stiff if you are familiar with using single button inputs for pretty much anything you do. Mashing buttons in some SNK games (I can't be too sure if it's all.) can make the game feel stiff as linking moves sometimes needs to be done with precise timing. It might be all in my head, but panicking can also cause your hands to move in such a way that it just makes your character do what you don't want them to do, so my best advice to remain calm and level headed when finding the best way to damage your opponent.

Learning advanced techniques can be very challenging for someone new to fighting games, or someone still in the learning process of fighting games. However, if you do manage to learn early, it can make other games a little easier down the road. For anyone who's played Street Fighter III, you may feel at peace with the just defending with the only differencing being that you must press backward instead of forward, but learning feints and breaks might provide some interesting tools for you to mess around with if you experiment.

Addictiveness: 7

This is where I personally feel Garou loses to Street Fighter III, but in truth, for others, it could probably depend on what company you are a fan of or what type of fighting games you like. For me, I find myself coming back to MOTW on occasions. Though the characters are fun and unique, I feel compared to Street Fighter III, it just didn't have that nice roster of characters to expand your training limits, and in my opinion, it just didn't charm me the way SFIII did. I guess the best way to put it would be that the characters just didn't satisfy me in the way that Fatal Fury Special or King of Fighters did.

Graphics: 9

If I were to review Third Strike Street Fighter III right after this, I'd give the graphics in that game an 8. The character animations, special effects, and color, really look nice. MOTW built on and implemented ideas from plenty of games, especially its brethren, and this graphic style was most certainly influenced off of "Art of Fighting 3." Many of the character animations are very fluid and smooth, not to mention, believable. When I see Terry perform a "Crack Shoot" or "Power Dunk," I feel like I could perform it myself with how well designed the moves are.

Art of Fighting 3 was the first "fighting" game to use motion capture in designing character attack sprites, but it wasn't the very first game to use this technique (Prince of Persia did). MOTW didn't used motion capture, but the way they drew the characters and choreographed their movements brings it very close to what Art of Fighting 3 did. Fighting really looks wonderful in the game in short.

The background stage design is simply splendid in short. However, Street Fighter III and MOTW are both unique in how they make their background designs. Some of the stages are believable to look like real places, fighting in a parking lot outside a bar by apartment buildings, outside a casino, Korean shopping district, a Harbor, NYC Time Square, and in the ghetto under a train bridge. Then you have others that match the character's possible location of where they'd train, visit, or reside.

An interesting factor added to the stages from previous Fatal Fury games is how the setting in the background, people, or what not change with each round depending on the stage. Though naturally most would be concentrating on the fight, at least you won't get bored seeing the same exact background for certain stages, or background people doing the same thing.

Sound: 8

The overall sound of the game is literally just fine. There is nothing bad about it and nothing I can possibly think to criticize. However, it's not anything pure amazing either because the sound development was very efficient.

To start off, the music matches each character well as well as the stage. There is a variety of genres so there should at least be one you like if you hate all the rest for whatever reason. Overall, every theme has a cool feel to it and meant to make you feel awesome when beating your friend down to a pulp.

The character voice acting is pretty good, and funny enough, Terry Bogard's English had improved, but the confusion of the certain words he uses has increased (I still question what he means by "ROCK YOU!") Regardless, everyone sounds as cool as their theme does, especially Rock Howard and Marco/Butt.

One little Easter egg I might mention is, in Rock Howards theme "Spread the Wings," the melody from Robert Miles' "Children" is included after the main melody of Rock's theme. It truly makes his song sound strong and emotional. Listen to the song on youtube or hear it out when you play the game, it's pretty cool.

Overall: 9 out of 10

Take a break from Street Fighter III, try this instead. It most certainly will interest you, especially in the SNK fighting games if you've been avoiding it.

Shogun Gamer : this is a really awesome and high quailty review that is full of great depth  im sure the mods wont mind if i add this excellent review to the game page Keep up the good work

Wow.. this is... a really stunning review.  Great job!  I'd say it's much better than my own... I'm impressed and can see why you have the position you do.    Keep up the great work.  The quality and detail involved are absolutely awesome.  Thanks for blessing us with this!

SuperCrash64 : Yeah, I fell asleep before I could place it on the game page. Thanks.

Phew, SNK fighting games I hate to say are harder for me to review than Capcom Fighting games since I grew up on Capcom early in my life before switching between both.

Singelli: Thanks man. I'm driven by the fact that I feel some critics on sites like gamespot or what not don't do their job to their fullest and actually look in depth into the game than just a simple play for an hour and review without a care.