It’s not shocking that the main character of SNK’s Garou: Mark of the Wolves game, Rock Howard, has returned for its sequel Garou: City of the Wolves, he’s been featured since the very first reveal trailer after all. It is a bit shocking that he hasn’t had a trailer until right now, though. But here it is, in all its glory.
Rock Howard, son of the infamous Fatal Fury villain Geese Howard, officially makes his return to Garou alongside his foster father Terry Bogard. Rock is equipped with all of his iconic moves from his previous appearances, with a moveset consisting mainly of a combination of Geese and Terry’s moves, such as Geese’s famous toss throw, as well as the Rising Tackle from Terry into Geese’s air slash, Terry’s Crackshoot, Geese’s Reppuken, and of course the energy attacks from both of his father figures: Geese’s Raging Storm and Terry’s Power Geyser.
From what little we’re able to glean from City of the Wolves’ story so far, it looks like Rock is working alongside his uncle and Mark of the Wolves final boss Kain Heinlein (who should also be making a trailer appearance soon) towards an as of yet unknown goal. Though considering Rock is a generally nice guy, and Kain is pretty morally light, they’re probably working towards some greater good.
As far as playstyle goes, these previews do a good job to highlight the character strengths and playstyles. If Terry is the game’s Ryu then expect Rock to be the game’s Ken, a more rushdown oriented fighter to contrast Terry’s more solid game, but with both being tuned to be easily accessible by new players as they’re the face of the game.
Now with the main characters finally having been revealed, it’s to the future to anticipate when future guarantees like Kain or hopefuls like Mai get a surprise trailer, though personally we wouldn’t mind just a full version of that trailer song.