Tag: nrs

  • Street Fighter 6 Wins the Fighting Game War

    If you saw me at a fighting game event, it wouldn’t be in the main hall watching Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, or Mortal Kombat 1 finals. Instead, I’d be getting in games of Street Fighter: the Movie or Survival Arts in the BYOC area. That being said, I do play all of the popular games from time to time. Every few years, I consider picking up one of the “big three” to see what is happening on the other side of the tracks, but more often than not, I’m playing these games years after their heyday has come and gone. This last release cycle was one where I felt compelled to jump on board with all the normies on day 1.

    Given my preference for Tekken 7 over Mortal Kombat 11 and Street Fighter V, I was surprised to find myself excited when the Mortal Kombat 1 trailer initially dropped. It seemed like a return to the pre-MKX area of silliness and fun combos with a welcome influx of brightness and color that had been lacking in previous titles of the NRS era. Kameo fighters were especially intriguing to me, given that similar tag-style modes had been available in other games, but had never been given their time to shine.

    Tekken 8 lost my interest from the get-go with Paul Phoenix’s redesign, the introduction of the Heat system, and the addition of exploding walls, something I thought was stupid in Dead or Alive decades ago. I couldn’t take the Heat Dash animation seriously, which served a death blow to my intentions of buying into the newest version of Tekken before it was released.

    Capcom metaphorically said “wait, hold my beer” by releasing Luke as part of the last DLC package for Street Fighter V in an attempt to build interest (or acceptance) to his involvement in the sequel. They lost my money before work had even finished on the latest Street Fighter, largely due to the design of their latest “white guy doing martial arts” that they slapped on the cover to attract folks who watch UFC and listen to Joe Rogan.

    Initially, I was pretty happy playing Mortal Kombat and ignoring the more vocal parts of the community whinging about the lack of singleplayer features, kameo fighters, and changes to the storyline. Then Khaos Reigns dropped.

    Oof.

    In total, I spent $70 for the base game and then $40 for the first Kombat Pack then $40 for Khaos Reigns… twice. Once for my PS5 and again for my PC once I had a good enough gaming laptop to play it. Little did I know that Khaos Reigns would introduce several hiccups into its performance on my laptop (and some of my friends’) such that gameplay was unplayable. I waited months before giving up and removing the bloated 155 GB slab of crap from my harddrive.

    I still play Mortal Kombat 1 from time to time on my PS5, but I feel like I’ve gotten my fair share out of that version. It’s a great game, but it’s not a great product and never was, making it hard to recommend to others.

    Now, I’m watching what’s happening over in the Tekken 8 community and can’t help but compare it to the many mistakes made by Netherrealm Studios over the last few years. Both games aimed to change their own formulas significantly and caught flak for it, never seeming to get away from a cloud of negativity that haunts them.

    Then there’s Street Fighter VI. Capcom’s worst crime this time around is asking players to embrace a Jake Paul-lookalike as the new face of Street Fighter. This is a far cry from shipping Root Kits with updates to Street Fighter V.

    I don’t particularly like the concept of Drive Rush or Burnout, but I do wish I had skipped Mortal Kombat 1 last year, saved $200 and bought Street Fighter 6 for PS5 instead. I could have been going to my local, Button Club, each week and competing in a game that everyone else wants to play. I could have bought two other copies of the game for friends with the money I saved.

    Damn.

    What do you think about the big three? What does the future of the fighting game community hold? Let me know in the comments section below.

  • Mortal Kombat 1: Refreshing the Multiverse & Upsetting the “Fans”

    There’s no pleasing some people. That being said, Mortal Kombat 1 has received a remarkable amount of criticism compared to its contemporaries like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8. As a total refresh of the canonical timeline, MK1 was a chance to change up the franchise and try something new. This experiment has paid off in many ways, but has also left subsections of the community feeling aliened and taken advantage of. At the risk of providing a bit of a history lesson, here are some of my thoughts on why Mortal Kombat 1 is way better than folks give it credit for.

    After the release of Mortal Kombat 9, there was no question as to whether NetherRealm Studios was going to do the series justice after the collapse of Midway. Creating a second wave of enthusiasm for traditional 2D fighting, the ninth entry in the series put Mortal Kombat back on the map after a half a decade of substantially different 3D fighters. New and veteran fans alike appreciated the returning cast of characters, over-the-top action, and a story that returned the canon to its roots.

    The second Mortal Kombat entry in the NRS era brought back flavors of MK3 and a faster pace to boot. What it failed to do was embrace the comic nature of the series, instead marketing the release with a Wiz Khalifa music video while focusing on overly dark stages and hyper-violent fatalities. The arcade silliness of old suffered at the hands of updated graphics and a shift towards taking the game too seriously. Downloadable content focused on bringing in horror movie icons from various franchises kept a trend going from MK9’s Freddy Kruger alongside some fan favorites from previous titles.

    Mortal Kombat 11 upped the presentation that the NRS era had become known for with improved graphical fidelity and even more gruesome displays of brutality. Again, the downloadable characters varied between classic kombatants and 80s movie icons like Rambo and Robo Cop. Overall, the community response to MK11 seems to be mixed, comparing it to its predecessors unfavorably in a myriad of ways. That being said, the Mortal Kombat fans who are vocal online seem to be prone to whingeing about whatever gets them the most views on Youtube.

    After a decade of alternating between the Injustice series and Mortal Kombat, the twelfth entry was a chance for NetherRealm to respond to some of the criticism from the previous game more promptly than usual. Mortal Kombat 1 (what an awful name) seemed to embrace “fun” in a way that the previous two games didn’t. As a fan of the more cartoony 2D Kombat of the 90s, I appreciated that color, brightness, and interesting character designs were allowed to return to the realms. The Kameo system fully embraced the tag mechanics from other entries that were previously treated like bonus modes, letting players create dynamic team compositions and extended combos.

    The downloadable fighters from Kombat Pack 1.

    Now that Mortal Kombat 1 has been out for almost a year, it seems the vocal community is back to its own game of publicly pissing on their favorite franchise for pitifully low ad revenue. What changed? Downloadable content released, promising new fighters and cameos every few weeks. Still, content grifters don’t have enough Mortal Kombat to talk about it seems. The resounding sentiment seems to be that the game appears to be rushed, lacking content, and full of over-priced micro-transactions on behalf of Warner Bros. While it is clearly lacking in substance, the quality of the product has undeniably increased.

    The game lacks some of the special features for casual players that Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 have launched with, but outside of a cinematic story mode, challenge towers, and the admittedly half-assed Invasion mode, what do players expect? No fighting game franchise has come close to the casual/competitive cross over appeal that the Smash Bros. series has and Mortal Kombat already has more mainstream success than most video game franchises in the West. From a minimum viable product perspective, Warner Bros. doesn’t need to push NetherRealm to cater to the casual market any more than they already do.

    The plot for Mortal Kombat 1 didn’t give NetherRealm much room to work with, to be fair. As an IP-reset of sorts, Mortal Kombat 1 was always going to have to get over the hurdle of winning over invested Mortal Kombat fans in addition to bringing in new attention. Changes to both aesthetics and gameplay for traditional kombatants were bound to alienate some just as much as the addition of kameos despite them being a point of interest for others. To its credit, MK1 has done a great job of reimagining an otherwise forgettable story with absurdly silly characters into something actually worth getting invested in.

    As the anniversary of its initial launch approaches, an expansion named Khaos Reigns is scheduled to release with three returning characters and three new crossover fighters from others franchises. A full menu of options allow new players plenty of ways to gain access to the features. Needless to say, there’s a lot to be happy about, but it’s too early to say whether NetherRealm Studios will be able to escape the cloud of negativity that more vocal parts of their community seem to thrive on.