Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Could Be The Best Fighter On The Steam Deck - Open Beta Impressions

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I know that 2D fighters like Street Fighter and Tekken are not the best to play with a controller, especially if you are going into competitive spaces, but I love playing on my Steam Deck. I feel I can handle fighters a lot better with a gamepad, and having the portable experience is awesome for single-player or local multiplayer fighting. While newer fighters like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 are playable on the Deck, they do need some compromise to get running at 60 FPS. However, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves may be the best fighter you can get on the Steam Deck if the full game is anything like its open beta.

Recently, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was running an open beta from February 20th until the 24th. It allowed us to try out eight different fighters in online matches, testing out the mechanics and multiplayer connection. There are tutorial modes but no offline matches to play around with except for the three fights to determine your online rank. I had a blast playing my matches, and I love the mechanics, but I want to take a moment to highlight just how great the game plays on the Steam Deck.

I did those three offline matches and a couple of online ones to test just how well it is running on Deck, and it is fantastic. I was easily able to get the game at 60 FPS solid at low-quality settings with 100% render scale, and other than a little bit of sharpness, the game looks vibrant and beautiful. I would rather it be too sharp over blurry for a game like this, and it truly looks amazing.

I also tried the game at Medium settings with both an offline and online match, and it also ran at 60 FPS! It does drain a bit more than low settings, but it looks much better. There were also some slight drops when doing some moves, but the lowest I saw it go to was 58 FPS. It wasn't really noticeable though, and I would say it is definitely enjoyable.

I also want to commend the online infrastructure. I played against someone who's connection was quite poor, over 200 millisecond ping, but I didn't feel it at all while playing. My character was responsive, I was able to block accordingly, and I ended up winning the match!

If the Open Beta is indicative of the full release, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is going to be a fantastic Steam Deck experience. I knew they were working on getting the game playable on the Deck, but I am delighted to see just how little we will have to compromise to get it at 60 FPS. I can't wait for the game to launch to test it fully, but I can definitely see it being a perfect fit for portable play.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves can be pre-purchased for $59.99 ahead of its April 24th release date.

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