Another game rumination. (cross-posted from RPGamer)
So black friday meant a new copy of Mortal Kombat: Deception for my brother and I for a whopping 5 bucks. I gotta say, it's probably the best bang for 5 bucks I've ever seen.. between the nifty puzzle mode, the RPGish mode, and a silly chess game that's still an interesting inclusion, there's a lot of damn things to do rather than the usual arcade modes I'm used to. So, I'm enjoying it.. and again, new for 5 bucks? It even sold well and got good reviews.
I haven't played a current-gen mortal kombat since I think 4, which was pretty much the same as 1-3 + weapons and a useless 3-D sidestep option. So the one thing that's astounded me though... is -this- all they've been able to do with the fighting itself after all these years? I mean wow, it's possibly even more clunky than I remember...
It's always been a shallow fighter of course, where all fighters used to have the same basic moves, and you'd base combos/technique off their special moves. Now they've given them two fighting stances and one weapon stance, and in doing so, given them tons of useless and crappy moves, as well as extremely limited combination options. They all have several attacks that don't combo into anything, don't do any significant damage, and don't change positioning at all. Blocking, sidestepping, ground maneuvering are all just awful... and combo breakers? You get a few each round where you can just immediately stop their combos, with no personal consequence or requirements to do so?
I'm really surprised at with how well so many popular fighters are aged, that they didn't take a page from any of these on things like sensible comboing, sensible defense options, or even sensible manuevering. It's almost embarassing o_O
I mean, they still kept the sense of some mean looking attacks and some pretty stylish fatalities, but I saw a while back when I saw multiple fighting stances on the newer versions, thinking they'd added a lot of depth to gameplay... I had no idea they'd actually made their stylistic flaws far more apparent and clunky.
I mean, seriously. I play this thinking how some fighters 10 years back were better designed and executed.
I haven't played a current-gen mortal kombat since I think 4, which was pretty much the same as 1-3 + weapons and a useless 3-D sidestep option. So the one thing that's astounded me though... is -this- all they've been able to do with the fighting itself after all these years? I mean wow, it's possibly even more clunky than I remember...
It's always been a shallow fighter of course, where all fighters used to have the same basic moves, and you'd base combos/technique off their special moves. Now they've given them two fighting stances and one weapon stance, and in doing so, given them tons of useless and crappy moves, as well as extremely limited combination options. They all have several attacks that don't combo into anything, don't do any significant damage, and don't change positioning at all. Blocking, sidestepping, ground maneuvering are all just awful... and combo breakers? You get a few each round where you can just immediately stop their combos, with no personal consequence or requirements to do so?
I'm really surprised at with how well so many popular fighters are aged, that they didn't take a page from any of these on things like sensible comboing, sensible defense options, or even sensible manuevering. It's almost embarassing o_O
I mean, they still kept the sense of some mean looking attacks and some pretty stylish fatalities, but I saw a while back when I saw multiple fighting stances on the newer versions, thinking they'd added a lot of depth to gameplay... I had no idea they'd actually made their stylistic flaws far more apparent and clunky.
I mean, seriously. I play this thinking how some fighters 10 years back were better designed and executed.