"What will it take to get you to stop crying?"

A good MK game.

My two cents on the fan request stuff: Boon and co. half-listen, half-don't listen.

I remember reading about how fans outspokenly wanted certain characters to be in some of the more recent games, so they threw them in there to appease the fans. But at the same time, several good MK and fighting fans, such as myself, compiled a laundry list of broken gameplay mechanics that the previous game had, from unbalanced characters to infinites, and had the info delivered to the MK crew.

Next MK game that came about had the characters people bitched and complained about, but addressed almost none of the gameplay flaws the true fighting fans had, with several infinites actually returning with quite a few new ones.

MK has become a window-dressing game that keeps slapping band-aids over gaping wounds and taking baby-steps into the 21st century fighting genre. Even WITH the addition of wake-ups, the elimination of 50/50 attacks, dial-a-combos, and user-created combo strings, what on earth makes anyone think that their simple existence will magically turn the game into a top tier fighter again? Having those modes and making sure those modes work WELL are two seperate things.

I mean, when every other fighting game has wake-ups, what would MK do to make it special? How is its parry system really competative? Tekken and even Bloody Roar already had "Rage" mode in their games too, with Tekken 6 have just that: "Rage mode", while Bloody Roar had "Beast Mode", both of which appear to do the exact same thing. I even read that Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur IV had every single one of their characters' moves completely redone, frame by frame, while I see that MK vs. DC has the same stilted moves as ever.... despite it being the 4th game to use the same basic combat engine.

It appears that the presentation is top-notch however, but that the time, money, and effort spent on useless modes like Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat, and Motor Kombat is instead being spent on the story mode... instead of the fighting engine.

From what I've seen, I think Smash Bros. will still be put in fighting tournaments over this game. The fans will always have SOMETHING to complain about, but refusing to rectify mistakes that have gone uncorrected since MK:DA would test any true fighting game fan's loyalty.

I'm going to say this again seeing as the last time I posted it everyone else was in a completely pointless arguement:
All you people super pissed about the fatalities, just hope the game sells, a pc port is released, and learn how to mod. I doubt Midway actually took the time to remove the content this late in production, there HAS to be some leftover code.
Also, I'm pretty sure the ESRB is just biased against MK. There are lots of T rated games I can think of where you have the ability to shoot someone in the head at close range with blood showing.

it'll take the rage..THE RAAAAAAGE!!

A little while ago I read mastermalone say something really interesting reagarding the shitty, jerky, snappy move animation. Now I've been the first person to get on Midway's case over this because it has been absolutely appalling, but basically, it might not be all that bad in this particular game. The reason is that if this game is essentially returning to a more 2D style of play, then basically, few frames of animation on startup is almost in keeping with the style of 2D games. 2D fighting games have almost never had smooth transitions between frames and large startup times on regular moves like Tekken does nowdays. Shit, even Virtua Fighter's animation can be dodgy at times. So if MKvDC has move animation the equivalent of Street Fighter II... who cares? SFII was a great game.

I think this also renders the criticisms about MKvDC using the "same moves" as previous games invalid. If it doesn't affect how the game is played, then it's just an aesthetic complaint. Street Fighter games have been essentially using much the same move animations for fifteen years. As have Tekken games, though the animations have been speed up or slowed down and whathaveyou. So, big deal. Not all that relevant.

I think people are still criticising this game like it's a failed 3D game. I don't think that's necessarily the case here. It might be some weird half failed 3D game / half successful 2D game hybrid. If it's a different style of game to MKD or MKA, I don't think it makes sense to hold this game to the standards we held those games to. It doesn't make sense to write it off just yet when we really don't know much about it. Granted SSBB is still going to make it to Evo before MKvDC does, and it's basically a certainty that this game isn't going to be as good as Tekken 6, Street Fighter IV, etc, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be worth playing just because it isn't quite as good. Tekken 6 isn't quite as good of a game as Virtua Fighter 5 yet people find enough reason to play it. Same thing applies I think.

We need to play this game before we condemn it because of this or that. If MKvDC turns out to be complete garbage, then fine, but at least we'll know we didn't write it off without playing it like complete retards and miss out on something which might have gone on to be a playable and enjoyable game.

tl:dr -- a Mortal Kombat game for the first time in YEARS looks to make some semblance of sense in terms of playability. "Playable but unremarkable" is a perfectly acceptable standard given Midway's suckitude.