daryui Wrote:
Anyone else certain on bringing back their character for another Tourney?
I would encourage everyone to try something different for the next time.
I think a fair criticism of a wide assortment of the 2011 entries is that they're needlessly overwritten and self-indulgent. Making a project of a single character over several years probably isn't going to help that, assuming the next contest
is a year away.
It would probably struggle to win the crowd vote, but I was disappointed not to see more characters getting back to basics, grounding themselves in a simple, single premise. It's a tough ask to introduce a character into an existing heirarchy with
too much or
too little info -- it's
that balance that a lot of characters were lacking.
Without wanting to kick that particular hornet's nest, I think this is the moral people should take away from Krustacean's shortlived successes. We all know that joke characters aren't the aim of the game, but there comes a point where a choice between implausibilities will favour the knowingly and delightfully absurd over presumptuous additions to the canon, and other unnatural and serious designs.
Based on this year's contest, I think there is still a lot of margin for working within the parameters set by MK, whilst looking at what archetypes it lacks. For my tastes, I would've enjoyed seeing some more attempts to approach it from the pop oriented, comic book/martial arts influences that gave us the original broad strokes of characters who were built on. Granted, that hasn't been done to great effect in recent editions of the games, but it's where the best characters started.
Of course, I would stress that this is a bit of discussion, food for thought, and not a platinum measure of judgment. It certainly doesn't represent the opinions of the other judges, or any strict prejudice against characters.
I would add that I think creating new characters for the next contest will both keep it fresh for frequent observers, and represent the challenges and strengths of the genre and medium. Fighting games are generally a serialized format, which always benefits from the barod accumulation of interesting, vivid characters.
Creating new concepts plays to that nature and will give you a chance to play around with new things and see what might work. Of course, again, by that very nature, returning characters are also very welcome.
