Sully907

Mortal Kombat AKA The best story ever in a fighting game

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Surprised none of the Thumbs community is talking about this right now, game released on tuesday, and by all indications, met ever high expectation the gaming community set for it. The fighting system learned everything good from Street Fighter 4, and applied it to it's own mechanics for a fighting game, it has at least 20 hours of single player content, 4 minigames, and tons of online modes. I've been hooked on this lately just as much as portal, and as I mentioned in the title, a big reason is the story mode, which is pretty much everything everyone wanted in a new mortal kombat movie, but playable. It's hard to describe exactly why it's so good, but this is a game that needs to be played if you like fighters or have ever had any interest in the series. I hazard to say it might be THE best game in the series.

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As I don't want to spoil anything (that's how much I love this) I don't want to read anything you said, even if you aren't spoiling anything. That being said, this is the best Mortal Kombat game since the earlier days, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 days. It's truly amazing. They did everything right, especially considering it's a reboot more or less. Tell the story of the first 2-3 games and pack it into one modern fighting game with classic/retro characteristics.

I haven't truly enjoyed fighting games since 1996-ish until this game along.

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Hah, i'm glad somebody made this topic, i don't seem to have rights for topic-creation as a board newbie.

Anyways, MK9 is pretty fantastic.

Net code is pretty iffy, there's definitely a lot of latency, but MK9 is pretty low execution, and it's more or less playable to a satisfactory degree. Though, i am pretty pissed off about one thing. I was promised four player tag matches online, and there is, but only with two people on each end. You can only have two connections in any match. Kind of ruins the plans the group i play with had, bah.

Game has lots of great solo content, Ed Boon and his crew have always been good about that. The story mode is basically building off of what they were doing with MKvsDC, but with an even greater level of polish. It really almost makes Mortal Kombat's convoluted and goofy ass mythology respectable, heh. There's some cool twists in this continuity reboot too if you're a long-time fan of the series.

It's not just that story mode though, it's the Soul Calibur-style challenge mode, the krypt, and traditional arcade-mode endings on top of it all. Really a lot of content. (kontent?) Man, and so many dumb, awesome secrets. People are going to be digging through this game for quite a while, i bet.

The core fighting engine feels pretty solid, perhaps a little inflexible compared to some of the other top tier 2d fighters on the market, and probably a little teleport heavy. Though this makes for an aggressive game, turtling does not fly here, everybody has a lot of options for closing distances fast.

Combo breakers are back, and are still a thing more fighting games should do. Enhanced moves are actually very interesting in that they don't -just- give you a more powerful version of the basic specials, they radically change some variables for some moves, definitely something to play around with. X-rays especially though, can be completely devastating, but they're not a win button. You have to be really careful when your opponent has full meter, but X-rays are punishable if you take care. (Which is exactly the way it should be, of course.)

The characters all seem pretty cool, nobody seems egregiously broken. (Kung Lao has some merciless wall combos, Baraka seems kind of useless... That's about all i've noticed.)

Really been having a lot of fun with it, very much recommended. It's not just a return to UMK3 or MK2, it's definitely a new game, but it feels like they've taken the best elements from across the entire series, and a few ideas from other modern fighting games, and it just feels really, really good.

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Having not played a Mortal Kombat game since the SNES's MK2, I can say after playing the demo this fighter is fun as fuck and seems to have a ridiculous number of moves and options for each character. :tup:

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The almost seamless transitioning between story and gameplay is fucking great. It's a huge stride forward in making fighting games interesting to play alone. The story itself is the kind of drivel you'd expect, but I'm getting sucked in in spite of myself.

The actual fighting is fine; it's about as good as you could hope for a Mortal Kombat to be.

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The almost seamless transitioning between story and gameplay is fucking great. It's a huge stride forward in making fighting games interesting to play alone. The story itself is the kind of drivel you'd expect, but I'm getting sucked in in spite of myself.

The actual fighting is fine; it's about as good as you could hope for a Mortal Kombat to be.

Yea that's a good point right there. It's like they are loading the next fight or cutscene while you're in the the previous moment, so whatever happens next, whether it's a fight or the next conversation between characters, there's never a loading screen. It's all seamless. Really a great design achievement when you think about it.

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Yes, that is honestly what impressed me most about the story mode. In fact loading screens in general are very reasonable in the game, and I wonder how much that has to do with switching back to a fixed 2D camera plane. I really feel like this, MvC3 and Street Fighter 4 have shown that fighting games are just meant to be 2D, even now.

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In fact loading screens in general are very reasonable in the game, and I wonder how much that has to do with switching back to a fixed 2D camera plane.

I wouldn't expect that it has anything to do with that, the engine is still a 3D one after all, Unreal 3 in fact. Probably just very optimized, Midway Chicago/Netherrealm has been working with that engine for at least four years now. (MKvsDC was also Unreal 3, and had a very similar story mode too.)

I do find it interesting that fighting games in general seem to have shifted back to 2D so strongly though, 3D fighters seem to be in the minority again.

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Got this as a random present today. :tup: What a game!

This is definitely the best fighting game I've ever played. Admittedly my experience is limited to Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter 2, Tekken, and Soul Calibre, but this shits on them all.

The reason I like it so much is because I usually find fighting games incredibly boring to play alone. With friends they're always superb, but alone? Fuck that shit.

Mortal Kombat solves this by effectively building a superior Mortal Kombat movie to the actual Mortal Kombat movie right into the game, except you can actually control the fight scenes. It works tremendously well even if the story is about as contrived as it gets — yet it seems like Mortal Kombat deserves to get away with such madness.

What surprises me if I didn't hear a thing about this absolutely superb story mode until reading this thread. It's a good 8+ hours too as I understand, although I think it'll be longer for me because I keep getting fuckin' wasted.

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I wouldn't expect that it has anything to do with that, the engine is still a 3D one after all, Unreal 3 in fact. Probably just very optimized, Midway Chicago/Netherrealm has been working with that engine for at least four years now. (MKvsDC was also Unreal 3, and had a very similar story mode too.)

I think you underestimate the benefit of having a very small environment to load that you know exactly what angle it will be viewed from at all times. For example, only what you see actually ever IS rendered or loaded into the game, if you turned the camera around there would be nothing there.

This is also how God of War managed to have such beautiful environments and set pieces - they employed non-adjustable camera angles to make sure you could only see the bits they wanted you to see, meaning that everything from corners to around the sides of pillars just never had to be loaded or rendered.

All of this cuts down on disc space needed, amount of data needed to be loaded in, memory used and rendering time.

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While I agree that the payload of data to download is likely much lower due to the 2D plane allowing surfaces to be strategically left undrawn, I think the story cutscenes are actually all in-engine pre-recorded videos as we've already seen in games like Uncharted 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. They may look real-time — and they probably were during development — but they're not.

So while the next level/arena is probably preloaded while the video plays, the cutscenes are unlikely to be getting loaded in while fighting. This'd be impractical as the ending of a battle can't be predicted, and loading it too early would result in poor performance.

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Oh dear.

I have to disagree with all of you on this thread. The story is hokum nonsense, the characters are nailed perfectly right, as in they look like their original designs. These were universally cringe worthy back in 1994 and now they are embarrassingly anachronistic.

The game fighting engine is as bad as it always with the combat being jerky and unresponsive, sure there are combos but these are the kind dial-a-combo shit that Mortal Kombat has always been notorious for. I think that saying it takes it back to the 'hey day' of UMK3 is just right, if you liked it fair enough, but really it was terrible back then and is still terrible now.

For all the stance that people take about Bayonetta, and Duke Nukem Forever. Mortal Kombat is probably the most exploitative of its female characters. I don't even want to link it but there is a video on Eurogamer that was used to promote the women of MK and it made me physically ill.

MK fever has exploded all over North America and there are constant updates on Facebook and it makes me sad that this dross is being peddled.

It is nice that there is a 20 hour campaign (as horrible as it is) for the fans but really it needs someone who can design a fighting game (or if Shaolin Monks and the other spin offs attest to I think the series might need some one who can design a game).

Not that I want them to do that because then I might have to take MK seriously.

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While I agree that the payload of data to download is likely much lower due to the 2D plane allowing surfaces to be strategically left undrawn, I think the story cutscenes are actually all in-engine pre-recorded videos as we've already seen in games like Uncharted 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. They may look real-time — and they probably were during development — but they're not.

So while the next level/arena is probably preloaded while the video plays, the cutscenes are unlikely to be getting loaded in while fighting. This'd be impractical as the ending of a battle can't be predicted, and loading it too early would result in poor performance.

Agreed, but my original quote wasn't to do with story sequences. I just said loading in general was quick in the game and that I suspected that one part of that was to do with the 2D camera angle meaning less data had to be loaded. I'm sure the 2D angle also helps with loading the next fight during the story sequences, but I'm not sure exactly what allowed them to load the next cutscene so fast. The only thing I've noticed is that there will be a real-time rendered moment at the end of a fight in which your player will briefly taunt the other one or say something else, and then it'll switch into the pre-rendered cutscene you described. It's only a few seconds, but perhaps that is enough time to start streaming the video or something to that effect.

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Aye. Whatever the case it's all very smooth, which makes it a little disappointing there're excessive loading screens in other parts of the game like the challenge mode and the extras (often unnecessarily).

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I can't play fighting games, my hands just ache too much from the stress and strain of having to press all those buttons so fast, but I do enjoy watching it.

And boy, is Mortal Kombat fun. Is it a good fighting game? I do not know. But it beats the shit out of Streetfighter and Marvel vs Capcom in sheer entertainment as a spectator. The x-ray moves are gruesome to behold, and the story is ridiculous and entertaining. Just the opening bits with Johnny Cage are pretty priceless. I don't think it's meant to be taken serious.

I find it amusing when games like MK (and Soul Calibur, Bayonetta, whatever) try to exploit the sexuality of females. The result is invariably a huge turn-off for me, as the women always look like laughable hookers.

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I find it amusing when games like MK (and Soul Calibur, Bayonetta, whatever) try to exploit the sexuality of females. The result is invariably a huge turn-off for me, as the women always look like laughable hookers.

I generally feel the same way, but I think with this being a semi-reboot for the series they were just trying to graphically update the look of the characters from the first three games, rather than change their look to suit current tastes.

That said, there are characters who have different, even more retro skins for the purposes of showing change between their original look in the story mode and a new look later in the story (eg. Jax's arms, the human ninjas becoming cyborg ninjas). That makes me wonder whether anyone ever considered the idea of having the women look the way they do now in the story mode and then having updated (ie. 21st century sensibilities) versions of the skins not for later in the story mode but rather for the rest of the game.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was indeed considered, but rejected because of likely fan backlash.

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I think you underestimate the benefit of having a very small environment to load that you know exactly what angle it will be viewed from at all times. For example, only what you see actually ever IS rendered or loaded into the game, if you turned the camera around there would be nothing there.

Heh, alright, I hadn't really ever considered that, point taken.

The game fighting engine is as bad as it always with the combat being jerky and unresponsive, sure there are combos but these are the kind dial-a-combo shit that Mortal Kombat has always been notorious for. I think that saying it takes it back to the 'hey day' of UMK3 is just right, if you liked it fair enough, but really it was terrible back then and is still terrible now.

Jerky and unresponsive? I feel like we're playing different games. Recovery is pretty slow in this game, it really punishes whiffs and dropped inputs, but... What else could you be talking about?

There's a lot of canned basic strings, normal combos aren't flexible at all, but if you start playing into special cancels and juggles, the fighting system in MK9 feels like something with a lot of room to play around in. I think it's probably the best an MK game has ever felt, and I don't really think it's fair to condemn a brand new fighting engine after only a week or two. It takes time for people to figure out the mechanics or otherwise educate themselves about them. That whole meta game element has to be considered, the way people play a fighting game can shift dramatically as they come to understand it better.

While i don't think i've been as hyperbolic about MK9 as some have, i do think it's a pretty amazing game, but it'll take some time to work out whether or not Netherrealm has succeeded in their goal of creating a tournament level fighting game. (It's at Evo this year, so that should be interesting to see play out.)

But hey, you don't agree and that's cool. Everybody is allowed to have opinions.

I can't play fighting games, my hands just ache too much from the stress and strain of having to press all those buttons so fast, but I do enjoy watching it.

What you would find is that most people are pretty shit at fighting games. Myself included, to be honest. Even if you're lacking in that controller discipline, as long as you can have a basic understanding of the game systems and a group of similarly skilled people, you can have amazing fun in spite of yourself.

And boy, is Mortal Kombat fun. Is it a good fighting game? I do not know. But it beats the shit out of Streetfighter and Marvel vs Capcom in sheer entertainment as a spectator.

Even though i found that it just really didn't hold my attention as a player, MvC3 is pretty spectacular to see played competitively.

I find it amusing when games like MK (and Soul Calibur, Bayonetta, whatever) try to exploit the sexuality of females. The result is invariably a huge turn-off for me, as the women always look like laughable hookers.

I've always felt Bayonetta was a bit of an odd case in that Bayonetta is not so much objectified as is completely a dominant force, but generally i agree with this kind of sentiment.

Seriously.

Sonya Blade's bullet proof vest in MK9 has cleavage.

what.

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Not that I want them to do that because then I might have to take MK seriously.

Taking MK seriously is quite the fallacy in it's own right. The game always has strived to be over the top both with sexuality and gore, exploiting the taboo of the given generation. Even in the story, there's a certain preposterousness to it all, but that doesn't stop it from telling it, in the best possible way. There's always been that underlying humor and sarcasm to MK and it's still here now (ala, nobody can survive an X-Ray move). I don't think they want to make MK a fully serious game, ever, they just want to explain the lore without the distraction of the gameplay. And who knows, like most have said, they have accomplished this better than any fighting game has before.

The game fighting engine is as bad as it always with the combat being jerky and unresponsive, sure there are combos but these are the kind dial-a-combo shit that Mortal Kombat has always been notorious for. I think that saying it takes it back to the 'hey day' of UMK3 is just right, if you liked it fair enough, but really it was terrible back then and is still terrible now.

I'm not really sure about this comment, considering this is the one of the smoothest fighting games in recent memory that I've played. I've played Tekken 6 and Soul Caliber 4 and this definitely stacks up above it in terms of responsiveness. I'm not really sure about your combo comments either; if anything, there's a lot less chaining of combos in this MK then stuff from the UMK3 era+.

I'm not really a fan of MK, or rather, wasn't until this game, so i'm not speaking out of fanboy-ism or nostalgia here.

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Taking MK seriously is quite the fallacy in it's own right.

Mortal Kombat is a fighting game for people who laugh at horror movies, that's the kind of mentality here. Those guys know it's dumb, and they've known it right from the start, it's been the intent.

That said, it's not really right to dismiss MK9 as just a silly and goofy toy, Ed Boon wants MK9 to be played at tournaments, and those guys have talked a lot of game about how they want MK9 to be competitively balanced. They want to be taken seriously in that scene, which is something they've never really achieved in the past. (Aside from, arguably, UMK3.)

That high-level metagame is largely invisible to most people, but i feel competitive balance makes the experience better for everybody, and I think MK9 seems like it has some solid foundations, but i would also say it's just too early to see how that will all pan out. (Being a new fighting engine, there will be infinites and bugs people find, Netherrealm's response to those issues will be the real test of how MK9 pans out in the end.)

But as for people like Twmac who just outright HATE the game, i don't know what to say, i think he's in the minority though. If you want to take the position that MK9 is a horrible broken game, i think you'll find that hard when most people seem to really be having a blast with the game. So might i recommend the "I guess it's just not for me" stance? I am a firm believer in the idea that what works for one person won't necessarily work for somebody else.

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That said, it's not really right to dismiss MK9 as just a silly and goofy toy, Ed Boon wants MK9 to be played at tournaments, and those guys have talked a lot of game about how they want MK9 to be competitively balanced. They want to be taken seriously in that scene, which is something they've never really achieved in the past. (Aside from, arguably, UMK3.)

I should of clarified further, aesthetically and gameplay-element wise it's the same old MK humor. You are right though, this is the most seriously an MK has been in terms of tournament/competitive gameplay since UMK3 (after playing in some online matches).

By the way, anybody else find it very lengthy to find an opponent online? Even after that, the gameplay is laggy? I'm on XBOX 360. Maybe it's just Canada.

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How anyone finds fighting games enjoyable is beyond me, I must admit. I enjoyed a round or two of MK (3, maybe?) back in the day, I've played a round of MvC on the giant honking arcade machines they occasionally have at places, but I've never gotten the appeal. Not sure what I'm missing about them, but none of them have managed to spark that yet.

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By the way, anybody else find it very lengthy to find an opponent online? Even after that, the gameplay is laggy? I'm on XBOX 360. Maybe it's just Canada.

If you're just doing player matches, i recommend just trying to find matches in the chat lobbies instead, it'd be much faster. If you're doing ranked... Well, i dunno.

... And no, the netcode is not great. 1v1 is passable, but if you find yourself in a packed king of the hill lobby, it's kind of fucked

I think it's mostly playable though, MK9 isn't too demanding, and most of the fighting games I've played online have always been much worse than this. The latency is disappointing though, it can still mess up your timing pretty awfully. Honestly though, the only netcode i've ever seen in a fighting game that i've really been happy with is that of BlazBlue. (Which is nearly perfect online, it's wonderful. I strongly recommend BB: Continuum Shift, it's been very well supported, and has probably the best in-game tutorials i've ever seen. That stuff made me better at fighting games. Period.)

How anyone finds fighting games enjoyable is beyond me, I must admit. I enjoyed a round or two of MK (3, maybe?) back in the day, I've played a round of MvC on the giant honking arcade machines they occasionally have at places, but I've never gotten the appeal. Not sure what I'm missing about them, but none of them have managed to spark that yet.

The two things i would say that would make a fighting game click are:

1. Have a group of similarly skilled people to play with.

2. Read some fan guides. Seriously.

Fighting games typically bring layers and layers of depth to the table and are notoriously awful at making themselves accessible. Just don't be intimidated by videos that show guys banging out 20 hit combos with long complex command strings, virtually nobody is at that level. Focus more on understanding the systems and the strategies, build your own small four or five hit strings that you can bang out reliably, learn the character match-ups and the options available to your preferred character, and have an understanding of basic strategy, like anti-air moves, punishing whiffs, countering pressure or zoning, etc.

If you really want to get something out of a fighting game, you have to be willing to invest some time into it, but don't take that to mean you have to master the game, just find a crowd that is at your level.

MK9, in particular, is a very straight forward and accessible game mechanically, but its efforts to tutorialize are fairly flimsy and it really only explains the most basic elements. (Which is still more than most fighting games, which often don't even try. MvC3, for example, was shockingly bare bones, but the community around that game really stepped up and put together some amazing guides and tutorials.)

So beyond that, Shoryuken.com is slowly putting together a wiki guide for MK9 that might be worth looking at, but it's very much a work in progress, being that the game is brand new.

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I personally love the fighting in this game. I've dipped my toes in most other big titles and haven't particularly enjoyed them, but this new MK is extremely satisfying to play. I think it's a combination of ridiculous theatrics and the fact that it's quite easy to discover moves by button mashing due to the sheer abundance of them — and as time goes on you remember them and start playing more tactically. To me it seems considerably less awkward as a newbie than Soul Calibre and Tekken.

While I'm sure the combat isn't as sophisticated as the latest and greatest from Japan or whatever, I don't think it's remotely fair to condemn this MK game's fighting. It manages to be accessible, loaded with depth (with regards to both number and complexity of moves), and it's simply great fuckin' fun to play due to how OTT everything is. MK does a perfect job of pleasing its target audience, which is showy fighting that's not too unforgiving for newbies but has enough depth to make investing time in it worthwhile. SSF4 seems tame and boring in comparison, even if the technical fighting superstars out there love it.

As for the characters being outdated and anachronistic? Absolute bollocks. Have you seen the characters in games like SSF4, TTT, and the superhero-filled titles in recent years? I'd hardly say they ooze sophistication and relevance over Mortal Kombat. If anything I'd say the new MK has done an excellent job of taking very old character concepts and modernising them a bit. Plus let's not forget that seeing these old favourites is exactly what the fans want, while cutting out all the unnecessary shitty characters that've appeared over the years. Like it or not, the MK cast is iconic — arguably more so than Street Fighter's in the West.

Even the women aren't as bad as is made out. Sonya is fairly well-balanced as a woman who's strong-minded and smart, and even though most female characters are dropping flesh this isn't exactly inconsistent with how women act and dress in real-life extreme sports — I can attest to this personally.

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I am definitely in the minority about MK9 and it saddens me.

As for the fighting game it plays, well it is just a case of the fact that the low level game is completely unispiring, it doesn't feel like there is much to play around with and instead it suffers from what Tekken always has, that spamming buttons works fine and then there is a massive divide in the mid level game (I cannot comment on the high level stuff alluded to) where you just learn the scripted, prescribed combos and then you are done.

I am not great at fighting games (my days of Streetfighter 2 obsession are way behind me), but it was easy to see the limitations of the low level game when it becomes so transparent in a matter or minutes.

As for the spectator aspect, that has always been Mortal Kombat's 'strength'. It has very pleasing finishers but once you have seen them about 5 times it starts getting really old.

MK9 may be the strongest in the series (it is certainly better than MK2), but it is not exactly indicative of a strong franchise.

Whatever, I am just bitching about people enjoying a game. If you do, fair enough, I will leave this thread for people celebrate Boon et al's return to form.

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