I’d just like to take a moment to mention that in
my first match of Mortal Kombat X, I
managed to pull off a Fatality just by mashing a couple of directions and
hitting a button. It was complete luck,
but somehow I found Jax ripping open Reptile’s head and stuffing a cigar into
it like an ashtray. Almost immediately,
my brother accused me of looking it up on the internet beforehand -- the
greatest of sins to be committed when trying out a fighting game raw. (Though it’s worth noting he spent a fair
amount of time with vanilla Marvel 3
before our inaugural match.)
I think at that stage, he drastically
overestimated how much I cared about winning.
As I’ve said, I’ve never cared about Mortal
Kombat, and anyone who assumes that I hate it is justified in doing
so. I’m not saying that anyone who does
like it is wrong; it’s just that it isn’t for me. I’ve got an armada’s worth of biases, and
unfortunately they’ve kept MK from
even setting sail on the metaphorical ocean.
But hope springs eternal. Maybe this, NetherRealm’s latest attempt to
bring in new fans and old loyalists, and
offer up the TRUE next-gen fighting game, is the chosen one. Does it have what it takes? If nothing else, can it win me over at last?
Well, let me say this to start: I think I get Mortal Kombat now.
Here’s something I noticed right off the bat. See, it’s no secret that fighting games
aren’t exactly the easiest to get into; the mere mention of them brings out
droves of people saying “I’m no good at fighting games” or something along
those lines (and I’m assuming that talking about one here will ensure negative
pageviews). So there’s been an effort on
all fronts -- i.e. from plenty of fighter devs and their PR sentinels -- to
reassure everyone that their new game will be easy to play. Easy to learn. Easy to understand. “Beginner-friendly”, more or less.
I seriously doubt they’re succeeding, though. I mean, how many iterations have there been
of Street Fighter IV, and how many of
them have a built-in tutorial that explains the mere existence of links, let alone how to land them consistently? And for that matter, why make it so that
links, a key component of the combo system, is a lost cause for the
layman? Street Fighter X Tekken makes things even harder on players,
because they have to learn TWO characters at a bare minimum, plus the concept
of team synergy, plus a bunch of other systems tied into to the combo system. And then there’s the gem system, so you can
system while you system.
It’s true that other fighters offer extensive
tutorials (Skullgirls and Killer Instinct are good examples, as
are the ArcSys games), but that demands players to swallow their pride and give
them the time of day. Plus, there’s a
difference between knowing what buttons do what and which systems go where, and
knowing how to apply that knowledge.
Chalk it up as an intangible, but the feel of a game is more important than the know-how behind it.
Where am I going with this? Well, here’s my point: if you ask me, MKX -- and maybe all of the MK games before it -- feels terrible unless you know what you’re doing. It’s to the point where I wonder how the
franchise ever took off in the first place.
I actually played a compilation of the older MK games a while back, and I managed to
cheese my way through most of its single-player by A) mashing the punches in
sequence to make 40% damage combos, and B) abusing the running/grabbing
mechanics to make a faux-infinite combo.
It could’ve taken me to the end, but I got bored before long…though I
still played it more than Deadly Alliance. MK9 and
Injustice fare better mechanically,
but the fact that neither of those had the ability to rely on iterations like
the Capcom/ArcSys fighters did doesn’t paint the best picture -- irrespective
of the fact that I dropped it before long.
So by default, MKX is the best
game yet…and it’ll earn that title by more than just the default as soon as I
figure out how the hell it’s supposed to work.
When I played Injustice,
I had an epiphany. Just like that game,
and MK9 before it, MKX gives each character dedicated
strings to remember -- the “kombos” that have you pressing buttons in sequence
to unleash multiple attacks instead of bare-bones single hits. In that sense, it’s a lot like the Tekken games; pick a character, learn
the strings, then use the strings in fights to score some big damage. Sounds simple enough, though it exposes a
major issue early: speaking personally, there are few things more frustrating
than not knowing what to do with a character.
It’s not just about the moves (though that obviously factors in); it’s
about the combos, the tools, and the strategies. What do you do in any given situation, and
how? It’s a complex question, but at the
very least, the comparisons to Tekken remain.
But it’s probably common knowledge at this point
that MK was made to try and compete
with Street Fighter -- and it
shows. So not only do you have to know
what a character’s kombos are (so you can make bigger, more important combos),
but you also have to know what their
special moves are. It’s vital if you
want to give yourself a fighting chance, because even the humble fireball -- or
the lack thereof -- can make the difference in a match. So considering that said matches take place
on a 2D plane, the comparisons to Tekken kind
of break down…but not really. MKX is neither Street Fighter nor Tekken.
It’s both.
So. If you
want to get the most out of your character -- if you want to enter the heat of
battle, and experience the bliss the genre regularly allows -- then you have to
know what you’re doing. You have to know
the single hits. You have to know the
kombos. You have to know the
specials. And on top of all that, you
have to know how to bring all of those together into your combos -- either your
BnBs (bread and butter), or your optimized, big-damage tricks. The question at hand is this: do you know how
to make a good MK combo? If you don’t, good luck -- because it’s not
exactly the most obvious.
I mean, I know the basics of good combos from
other fighting games, so I can do okay-ish. Using Tekken’s
Paul Phoenix as an example: you
can launch an opponent into the air with one of his basic single hits. From there, you add in some filler with a
couple of jabs (or another string, if possible). And then one of Paul’s two-hit strings puts
the opponent in a bound state, i.e. they get knocked down and left vulnerable
temporarily. From there, you can go for
a combo ender; Paul’s got a three-hit string that tacks on some big damage, so
I tend to opt for that.
Now, was I doing that straight out of the gate
with Tekken? No, of course not, because you have to pick
and choose your repertoire out of more than a hundred moves. But once you grasp the concepts, the rest
falls into place. Unfortunately, those
concepts don’t necessarily translate into MKX,
at least not in an obvious form. So yes,
there are ground bounces (a staple of games like Marvel 3), launchers (any number of fighters), and juggles (allllllllllllllllll of the fighters),
but you have to be on-point. A ground
bounce in Marvel 3 gives you time to
do practically anything, but a ground bounce in this game gives you a brief
window of opportunity. And that’s if you
even use them at all.
Of course, none of that is to say that MKX is worse by nature. It’s just…different. As far as I can tell, timing is EXTREMELY
important in this game; not only is it needed to take advantage of the states
your kombos leave your opponent in, but it’s also needed just to make sure your
kombos even finish (unless you LIKE looking like a doof that says “why won’t
this work?” every three seconds). The
pace of move execution in this game is something very close to blistering, and to some extent that
carries over to the rest of the game.
That’s why it’s so important to know the moves beforehand; if you don’t,
you’re flailing helplessly. You’re
failing to get the most out of your character, your match, and the game at
large.
So as a guy who’s been playing those
button-bashers for years, I have a hard time imagining how people could just
play MKX at a surface, beginner level
and enjoy themselves. I don’t mean that
as an insult; it’s actually a testament to the potential that MKX has.
It did its job and convinced me to spend time (time I could use to finally play Bloodborne) to try and learn some combos -- to do more than just
rely on universal sweeps and uppercuts, and not
have to constantly go into the menu to look up this kombo or that
kombo. Chalk that up as a win.
I think the variations play a part in that -- and
beyond that, are just a good idea in general.
For the uninitiated: the playable characters in this game each come with
three styles you choose at the select screen.
The three styles alter your characters in ways that change their game
plan and archetype. For example, Jax can
gain a greater emphasis on grappling with his Wrestler variation, become a
zoner with Heavy Weapons, or go for rushdown and mixups with Pumped Up. It’s a smart move, because it keeps a
character fresh and lets a player adjust for the fights ahead.
But there’s another benefit, and not just heading
into training mode to figure the variations out. Let’s say you’re like me and you want to try
out a new character. In my case, I decided
to give Cassie Cage a shot…and almost dropped her after taking her into training
mode. It’s not that she’s a terrible
character (who knows what the tier lists will look like a couple of months from
now), but her style didn’t click for me.
It felt like there was a hole in her move set; her zoning tool in one
variation felt situational and gimmicky, while her default one failed to give
her a special move to reliably use as a combo ender. BUT once I switched her to Brawler and she
got a ground-and-pound tackle (not unlike Third
Strike’s Sean), everything clicked.
That’s the beauty of variations. You can be a character loyalist, but you can
also be a specialist; there’s a saving grace that makes the learning process
that much more enticing.
Still, I’m not convinced that MKX is necessarily noob-friendly.
With a lot of fighting games, you can make a simple combo just by
pressing buttons in order of weakest to strongest and ending in a special
move. To put it in BlazBlue’s terms? It’s ABC
Special (or if you want the proper notation, 5A>5B>5C>236C). Depending on the character, you can add a D
attack, or just use D to start a combo, or just get in a single hit, or just use it to alter the playing
field somehow. It makes more sense when
you play it, especially since the original game shipped with a tutorial
DVD. That’s some dedication.
With MKX,
the four face buttons are front punch, back punch, front kick, and back kick;
good luck intuiting which buttons to press for kombos -- which is a complaint
you could lob at Tekken, but the
inputs needed are more lenient, and the pace less speedy. On top of that, the whole thing feels
esoteric, especially for those who have put in their time with non-NetherRealm
fighters…and given how many there are?
That’s pretty freakin’ easy.
I’ve always hated the MK-style directional inputs, so I switched them to have diagonals
(and by extension make things feel more like SF). That still means that
you have to know the kombos and be
wary of the strict timing needed to do anything more than the basics. And taken alone, a fair number of the special
moves can’t really be used to extend combos; you have to spend meter and use
their EX forms, some of which still don’t necessarily ensure longer
combos.
Put simply, there’s a level of complexity that
makes even a training session only so helpful unless you’ve got a tutorial
video playing nearby. Comparatively, one
training session with Under Night In-Birth
is all it takes to not only learn the basics, but also put together some good (if not great) combos.
I can’t stress enough that the potential is there
for MKX, and it does have what it
takes to make anyone want to learn more…buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut
I have to be honest here. MKX seems to me like the sort of fighter
you’d play on the side, not as a main game.
Or to put it a different way, why would you EVER choose MKX over Guilty Gear Xrd? Or Under Night In-Birth? Or (inevitably) Street Fighter V?
I ask this because (besides signaling that it’s
time to go into Negative Criticism Downer Mode) I’m confused as to what,
exactly, MKX’s purpose is. Does it have the chops to become a major
player in the fighting game scene? Sure,
potentially. But this is a franchise
built on drawing in spectators and attention with what happens in it as much as
the actual fights. It’s about the
spectacle -- the shock factor, and the proposed awesomeness tied into it. So with that in mind, why does so much of MKX feel so boring?
Part of it plays into the underlying mechanics, I
think. The speed of the game is a real
sticking point (it almost feels like you have to mash just to do a 3-hit kombo with nothing but the Square button), but
it’s not insurmountable; it just takes a crapload of getting used to, if
anything. But the issues crop up
elsewhere; I cannot fathom why anyone thought this game needed a block button,
especially with that pace in mind.
And sure, other fighters have block buttons (Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, Soul Calibur),
but those have their blocks on one of the face buttons; by default, you have to
hold one of the triggers to block, and it feels so awkward and alien. The games with block buttons, as you may have
noted, also have a full range of 3D
motion, meaning that you can weave in and out to avoid attacks and rely less on
stationary blocking. With MKX, you can only move forward and back,
which puts greater emphasis on using a mechanic that doesn’t mesh as well as it
could. I guess you could change it so that blocking is set to Square, but that
would mean putting the basic punch on one of the triggers -- and that doesn’t seem ideal.
My big issue comes with the addition of the
stamina meter -- and by extension, running.
So for a game like SF,
pressing forward twice rapidly makes your character dash forward a short
distance; same goes for Tekken. But in Tekken,
you can also hold down a direction on the second input to break into a run, and
close the gap quickly. In MKX, you can still do that dash, but in
order to run, you have to tap a direction twice and then press the block button
(and running takes up your stamina).
So like, why?
First off, it doesn’t even feel like running is an essential part of
this game, because it means you risk running into a fireball at the very least,
and the normal dash works fine. Second,
why the obtuse control scheme? Why map
that feature to the block button so that if you try to block an incoming attack
during a dash, you end up running straight into it instead?
To be fair, the stamina meter kicks in so that
players won’t spam stuff like backdashes (which come with invincibility frames
for a safe retreat) or the items in stages you can interact with for cheap/easy
advantages. But overall, it doesn’t
really feel necessary. I mean sure,
using the stage to jump out of corners is useful, but does anyone need all of
that extra stuff when the core gameplay mechanics are strong enough? And why add in other stuff that feels like a
borderline gimmick? Why complicate a
game that’s complicated enough by design?
The point of a fighting game -- or any game,
really -- is to create illusions. You
can’t punch your opponent in real life, but you can do it in a game. And while being in a fight in real life has
to be absolutely terrifying for the uninitiated, a fight in a game might as
well be a giant bug zapper; it pulls you in, as if you’re stuck in a
trance. The underlying mechanics are a
part of that, in the sense that once you can do moves without going “oh wait,
what’s a combo?” you can get lost in the beat.
You feel it right down to your soul.
Unless you’re playing MKX. Even after all these
years, it’s still WAY behind in terms of spectacle…which is kind of a problem
when your franchise is built on spectacle.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Yes, this is easily the best-looking game
NetherRealm has put out yet. The models
are better (they’ve vastly improved
in terms of making female faces), the stages are better, and the level of
intricacy in both is pretty impressive. So
yes, everything looks good…but it doesn’t look
good.
We live in a world where Guilty
Gear Xrd happened -- at a bare minimum -- and it just goes to show how
important style is over raw graphical power.
MKX has a style, I guess, but
it doesn’t reach out from the screen and grab me. It’s a dirty and dingy game in a dirty and
dingy world, with death and decay, skulls and sorcery, blood and brutality
everywhere you look. And for me? It’s just not enough.
What absolutely cripples this game is the sound design, just as it always has. Once more, there isn’t a single song in the
soundtrack worth remembering, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s
no music that plays during fights. You
can pick up on some guitar notes here and there, but it’s the most generic
thing you could imagine -- and that just won’t fly in light of the unreasonably
good (and ever improving) Killer Instinct
soundtrack.
Whereas most attacks in Under Night In-Birth boom like the thunder of the gods, I don’t
feel the force or the feedback from even the meatiest of punches in MKX; it’s more like I’m slapping a slice
of bologna. I picked Wrestler Jax in the
hopes of seeing some sick grapples, but his command grab is one of the most
unfulfilling moves I’ve ever encountered.
Hell, even in his intro when he’s pounding his METAL FISTS together, it
feels so tinny and distant it’s as if he’s tapping a porcelain bowl with a
spoon. That’s game-breaking in a game so
heavily dependent on violence.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about the violence.
There was a
post on Destructoid not too long ago that talked about whether or not it
was okay for kids to be exposed to the franchise’s distinct brand of video game
violence -- especially since this new installment features bodies ripping in
half and guts spewing all over the place for gargoyles to devour. We can spin our wheels all day about whether
or not it’s harmful, but in light of MKX? I’m not too concerned about it…mostly because
the hyper-violence on display is boring.
There’s some gruesome stuff in there, no question;
the game’s take on Super Combos from SF is
the X-Ray, which has combatants attacking with the bloodiest moves available
outside of Fatalities. The problem is
that it doesn’t amount to much. These
are attacks that regularly feature eyes getting shot, bodies getting slashed or
stabbed, and bones getting broken, but outside of heavy damage it has no effect
on what happens in a match. The one on
the receiving end just gets up and fights normally, unimpeded by what happened
just seconds prior. You can’t just add
that into a game and expect players to shrug that off. It breaks the game’s illusion in half.
So you’ve got these lavishly-rendered attacks, but
it’s all just a bunch of smoke and mirrors -- but by getting so much focus, it
ends up becoming even weaker. Setting aside the fact that the impact factor
still isn’t really there (it feels more like someone’s crushing a bag of chips
than ribcages being shattered), I can think of any number of attacks in any
number of fighters that have more punch with a fraction of the violence. Practically all of Akira’s
attacks in Virtua Fighter 5 feel like they’re strong enough to
shatter reality, but they’re done in such a way so as to keep the pace of a
fight going. No frills, no tricks. Just fighting.
Meanwhile, you look at the X-Ray attacks, and it
slows the game down to a crawl. Not just
because the frame rate goes from 60fps to 30; suddenly, every attack has to go
in slooooooooooooooow
moooooooooooooooooootion so we can see every hit -- hits which, need I
remind you, don’t amount to much -- and so we can see all the bones and guts
and blood getting #rekt. It’s quaint,
but it’s not all that interesting, especially because the novelty wears off
really quickly. You might pick a
character to see their X-Ray or Fatality (or do the smart thing and watch a
YouTube compilation), but once you do, it’s hard to feel like you have to see
that again. Comparatively…
For me it’s like, “All right, each character has a
Fatality, and another Fatality they can unlock.
So what?” Do some people find
those things cool? Sure, probably. But for me, the hyper-violence doesn’t have
much of an impact; it’ll make me sick for a second or two, but when it’s over
I’m just left saying “Oh, that’s it?
How…uh…violent.” Sonya Blade
calling in a drone to cut Scorpion’s arms off with a laser before blowing off
his head should prompt a stronger reaction, but it’s just so far-removed from
anything that it’s hard to feel…well, anything.
Or rather, the fact that it ISN’T far-removed is the problem. When hyper-violence is the expected norm, it
takes something on a level well beyond that to justify even a single move. MKX doesn’t
really do that -- so what should feel special ultimately isn’t.
To the game’s credit, its X-Ray attacks are a lot
more diverse than Injustice’s constant
“knock you up into the air, then smash you back down” Supers. But thus far, there are only two I’ve seen
that I actually like -- and one of those is just Jax doing a power bomb, so
that’s debatable by virtue of it being a cool wrestling move. Personally, I think Liu Kang has the best of
the bunch; he’s still got those flow-breaking effects, but his is less about
showing off extreme, life-ending violence, and more about doing what you’d
expect: attacking an opponent with a flurry of kung fu strikes. And because of that, it feels more
honest. I don’t need to see bones
breaking or blood flying to signal that an attack hurts; just do the attack and
be done with it.
But it’s fine.
My biggest takeaway from this game is that I should play more Under Night In-Birth.
I’m not just saying that because “LOL, JAPANESE
GAMES ARE SOOOOO MUCH BETTER!” I’m
saying that because between the two games, the one from the land of the rising
sun makes a better argument as to what I should learn first (if at all). I can think of at least six Under Night characters I want to mess
around with; I’m struggling to see the appeal of any more than three members of
the MKX cast. Shocker: I haven’t exactly been won over by
creepy bug woman, asshole gunslinger, the ninja, the other ninja, or the other other ninja.
So, bottom line.
Is MKX good? Yeah, mostly.
Would I play it as much as I’ve played other fighters? Hell no.
Would I recommend it? For fans of
the franchise or hardened fighting fans, yes -- but that’s about it. And is this the game that justifies
eighth-gen consoles not named the Wii U?
Noooooooooooooooooooo. It’s a step forward for sure, but I still
don’t think it’s there yet. I’m
concerned about the game’s longevity (and the reportedly-abysmal netcode
doesn’t help matters), and while it doesn’t do anything to make it bad, it still doesn’t necessarily do
enough to make it stand out. It’s
just…there. It does its thing, and putts
on out of sight.
Who knows?
Maybe MKXI will be the one to
win me over. It’s possible. But for now?
Even if I get MKX, I’m not
sure I want to get with it.
And so ends this needlessly-elaborate look at the
gameplay systems. Next time, let’s talk
about something no one really cares about: the story.
Because relevance.
Waning relevance, but hey, I’ll take it.
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