KOF XV Is The Only Rightful Winner Of The Best Fighting Game At TGA

2022 has been an excellent year for gaming, and we’ve seen many great titles. But, if we cast a lens on all the fighting games that were released in 2022, these games were quite underwhelming for The Best Fighting game at TGA.

If I had to pick one game that was the least underwhelming, I’d go with KOF XV. The King of Fighters XV was the better game out of all the traditional fighting games released this year.

The Game Awards 2022 is less than a month away. We’ve got nominees for each category, but the category that looked the dullest was the “Best Fighting” one. Let’s take a look at the nominations, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

In short, out of the five nominees of 2022, we have three traditional fighting games, one platformer fighter, and a single-player action game.

DNF Duel

Let’s start with DNF Duel. The game was released in June and is fun to play with friends. But it’s not something you’d want to play competitively. It has questionable gameplay mechanics, and the devs don’t care about fixing broken characters.

The game comes from the creators of Guilty Gear -Strive-, which won The Game Awards’ Best Fighting Game last year. But DNF Duel doesn’t appear to be half as great of a game as Guilty Gear -Strive- is.

DNF Duel also has the lowest concurrent player count out of all the nominees in the Best Fighting Game category, and so are its chances of winning the award.

Jojo: All-Star Battle R

We also have Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: All-Star Battle R in our nominees. The game was recently released in September. It had great potential but also had the biggest weakness a fighting game could have—the lack of rollback netcode.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: All-Star Battle R doesn’t feature a rollback netcode, which drastically limits its audience. Constant network communication issues are the biggest hurdle while playing this game with anyone that doesn’t live next door. 

Despite all of it, the game features very interesting characters from the popular Jojo franchise. Each character is interesting and has a unique moveset that has its own appeal. It is also an excellent game to play offline in every aspect, as you don’t have to worry about those communication error pop-ups every millisecond.

MultiVersus

Next, we have MultiVersus – A smash-like platform fighter game that was released in July this year. MultiVersus features characters from different franchises. You can play as Shaggy or Batman, which is funny, considering they both are playable in the same game.

Like KOF XV, MultiVersus has also made its way to EVO. The game is great and a lot of fun, but as many fighting game fans would argue, it is not a true fighting game.

Despite what many fans of the genre might think, it is a strong candidate that can easily snatch the award away from KOF XV due to its popularity and appeal.

Sifu

Then, we have Sifu. Technically, Sifu is a fighting game but not one where you play against other human players. Instead, you have to face tough enemies and bosses in close combat.

While Sifu may fall into the “Fightings Games” category, it isn’t a traditional fighting game. However, the title is a highly-rated action-adventure game featuring hand-to-hand martial arts combat.

The combat mechanics in Sifu are smooth and interesting. The game is sometimes hard and might remind you of the FromSoftware games’ difficulty level.

But, with difficulty comes the feeling of achieving something great, and that’s precisely what makes Sifu an interesting yet controversial addition to the Game Awards’ Best Fighting nominees of 2022.

It has all the ingredients of a great game, even if it isn’t a traditional fighting game. Amidst all these titles, it is a possibility that Sifu might be the one to snatch the award from KOF XV which rightly deserves it. 

The King of Fighters XV

Last, we have KOF XV. The King of Fighters XV is the latest addition to one of the most iconic fighting game franchises. KOF XV came out in February. The game also made its way to EVO, which is the biggest fighting game event of the year.

KOF XV is a great title to play, but it has a really messed up matchmaking. Playing this game online is a dream for many new players since the matchmaking appears to be broken with no fix in sight.

The active player count is small, so finding a game online would be difficult, even if the matchmaking worked as intended. 

The online crossplay patch might fix the matchmaking issues, but we might have to wait till the game’s first anniversary in February 2023 for that.

Other than the online matchmaking issues, you can still play this game just fine with lobbies.

It is a great game with excellent characters and gameplay mechanics. It has flaws, but they aren’t as much of an issue compared to the flaws of other fighting games that came out in 2022. Other than that, the game is a fine addition to the long-running KOF franchise and does justice to its predecessors.

Out of all the nominees, KOF XV is the one that rightly deserves to win the Best Fighting Game at TGA 2022. But just because it deserves to be the winner doesn’t mean it will actually be one.

Regardless of what the final results are, and whoever manages to win the Best Fighting Game at TGA 2022, it is quite clear that the only game that deserves it this year is KOF XV out of all the other nominees.

The year has been dry for the fighting genre, as the nominees only have three traditional fighting games. But out of those three, KOF XV is the better game, and by all rights, should be the one to win the Best Fighting Game at TGA 2022.