Tuesday
Mar082011
Mortal Kombat Demo Video Review: First Impressions
BY 
Aris ON Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 8:24PM
Aris ON Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 8:24PM 
Here are my initial impressions of the Mortal Kombat demo which is currently available exclusively on Playstation Plus. I will probably follow this up with a more gameplay oriented video review in the next few days.
Reader Comments (25)
It can't be a 8 button game..
The Tournament stick from PDP, has 6 buttons doesn't it??
The Madcatz MK panel has 6 buttons.. IIRC
Regarding flip stance.. it's probably like in Virtua Fighter where stance(Left foot forward or Right foot forward) effects combos.
More on RFF/LFF (open/closed stance):
http://virtuafighter.com/wiki/doku.php?id=vf5:system_part_1#stances
Frozen bitch is Frost. She was one of the newer generation MK's. The commands in terms of buttons are from what i remember were high/low punch, high/low kick, a block button and run (due to mk3) and stance changes. As far as I know, the terminology for the buttons, were just the abbreviations for what button. There was no throw button from what i remember in the older mk's, just press forward and HK. movement is def different than the older ones. Usually spears are def not safe on block if just thrown out there.
I cant think of anything else off the top of my head
the only inputs difficult iirc were jf versions of special moves which was in MK vs DC, but i dont know if this MK has any jf's. perhaps netherealms place playability over difficulty to enable player to focus more on the game than the input?
great job aris, its a great idea that you review newly released fighting games, i really enjoy it bro , i ll try the demo
Aris thanks man i am really looking forward to your words bring more stuff how the game system works. i like to know every shit like tekken, framedata,punisher,throwescape(window),crushes?,combobreaker.
i think fighting game becomes only fun if u know exactly what you do.
and you just answered one of my questions, i think mk is good to play with a pad.
Was keen on getting this day 1 but my godlike country of Australia has banned it >_______>. Amazon import will do.
I'm quite disappointed at how the game overtly encourages the fatalities as an important game element to the players. After every CPU victory a fatality ending is automatically done; I'm pretty sure that after playing the game for a month or so, they will inevitable become boring and there is no hype to them anymore. IMO they shoould remove the fatality practice mode from the final game, make the fatality commands way more difficult and also make more required conditions in order to perform one, for example that stage fatalities can be done most of the time but char-specific fatalities require you to maintain 40% of your own health and finally you need to do at least one flawless victory in a match to do the most awesome looking ones. In addition the game shouldn't reveal the inputs for the fatalities; they should be uncovered slowly by the hardcore community and later to casual players who are determined enough to find the inputs from the internet etc. Now you can literally pause the game right before a fatality and look at the input. Every scrub is going to be able to do them easily with little work. The reason why fatalities were awesome in the older games was because casual players didn't usually know how to do them especially before the time of the internets, instead they were performed only by hardcore players and CPU, but even the CPU didn't always do a fatality after every match.
@roncock
i dont think so. fatalitys friendship and brutality (this is what in mk2011 is) its more like an winingpose. this is more like "SHIT MAN DIE MOTHERFUCKER,DIE!" and its only fun against human players on cpu its not that funny. but i agree i wish there where no fatality trainer and no break on finish him.
and i think back in the days it was only that awsome because it was so brutal in a time where it was new in a game.
@ roncock!
You are an idiot! Everything you wrote is wrong and so arrogant! Who the fuck do you think you are?? Only hardcores should do fatalities?? Fucking idiot!! One must have over 40% health??!! It's a game!! Let everybody have fun!! With your conditions almost nobody would be able to perform fatalaty and if you have a life (job, friends, family, other hobbies) and don't want to put 20+ hours weekly in a videogame, you think those people shouldn't enjoy the game?? You are an fuckin' retarded idiot!!
That's all!
The new MK is looking nice!
If this is your first Mortal Kombat the movement seems clunky esoecially comapred to Tekken or Soul Calibur, but compared to previous MKs it looks 10x better and is much more fluid. Also, every hit string in MK is guaranteed after the first hit, and it does not look like that has changed in this game - strings are very un-Tekken-like.
I like that combo breakers cost 2 meters, I hope it stays that way. Breaking out of someone's combo should have a high cost, otherwise the game really favors the keep away and teleport/runaway characters who don't need big damage combos.
customizations? transportable customizations?
This game looks terrible, then again being a MK, I didn't expect much. Incoming rant.
8 buttons? Really? That's just messed up. There's no reason to have separate button for every goddamn action. You don't need a throw, block, run, canned combo, whatever button, every other fighting game has done all of these just fine with two or more buttons plus possible directions. Call me oldschool, but I think throwing should be with two buttons (yes, I'm aware of the even more oldshool way of direciton + one button, but I think that's stupid), blocking should happen from holding back, since that way you can multitask by moving and trying to block at the same time and running should be three taps forward.. I honestly very much hoped that they would have changed the game for six or less buttons, or the very least remove button blocking. The button layout for MK has also always been really dumb, although I guess that doesn't matter much at home.
Movement also does look very clunky and generic. From the earlier trailers, I had the image that this new MK would be like fast paced, high mobility, lots of spacing type game, as in you can dash in quick succesion, double jump, super jump, whatnot, which personally got me very excited since I find spacing, zoning, footsies, etc. to be most enjoyable thing in fighting games. Shame on me for getting suckered into hype like that. You used the the same character to demonstrate this, so I'm not quite sure if this is correct ,but dash lenghts and jump arcs being the same with every character would be very dissapointing, I think every character should handle differently in all of those fields. That instant jump attack only while at the top height of a jump, otherwise you get that startup, is also just wrong. I also kind of didn't like the way you can apparently crossup with every attack since your character automatically turns to attack the direction your opponent is when you attack in the air.
Other small things that irked me we're how special moves we're overly easy, like just one or two directions plus a button. I can see this as convinience for newer players, just like the shortcuts in SF4, but in the end I think they'll just hurt the gameplay by making specials too easy to spam. On ther otherhand, I have no problems with canned comboes, they're pretty much the same as in Tekken anyway. Meter gain is also way too slow aside from that dumb one meter gain from first attack. Now that MK actually has meter for the first time, you should be able to gain it and utilize it, although those X-ray moves, which I assume are supers, do way too much damage. I also hope you can turn off the gore and fatalities. While I realize they're a part of MK, I personally really couldn't care less about seeing a character gush blood like a fountain, the character model getting damaged, getting your spine ripped out and whatnot, I'm pass that 14-year old stage where that was cool, or in other words, during the MK2 and 3 era. The combo counter should also be fixed, It's just weird.
What I did find interesting was a couple of things, such as the stance change button. Apparently, you can use this button to select whether your character is in open or closed stance, like in Virtua Fighter. In VF, o/c stance changed at least the tracking properties of moves, so you would actually have to think what moves to use if some move ended you in the opposite stance you were before you did that move, just like your opponent has to think which way he's going to try and move. But since MK is a 2d game, I've yet to figure out what this stance change does since it didn't seem to change the properties of the special moves. The other thing is how you can apparently face the opposite direction from your opponent, like what happens when your opponent jumps over you, you end up with your back toward your opponent. This could create some very interesting setups with teleport or crossover moves, and change comboes if a move flips the opponent over. Once again, you'd have to think a little what moves to use. It could also change what moves you can do while being back turned, like in Tekken. I just hope this won't create some kind of unblockable or other cheap setups. Dash canceling is also interesting, although I really wish you could wavedash or otherwise close space quickly. X-ray moves and EX specials being in the game seems good for diversity, but I hope they do change the meter gain and damage from the X-ray moves. The combo system looks also interesting with it's launchers and jump cancels, but I'm not hoping too much since previous MK's were broken as shit. The graphics look nice, characters are very fluidly animated and react to hits like you'd expect.
Overall, I'm dissapointed. I really thought this would be kinda good, but from this demo, I'm not so anymore. But that said, I realize this is a demo, not the final game, and they can polish certain things, but I very much doubt they're going to change the core mechanics this much at this point anymore. Such a shame.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Congratz for suffering through all the way to the end.
jizzmoon face, armor king crazy taxi
yeah, i guess its cool
i told you this game would fuckin suck
@ loldongs
If you had payed attention in class you wouldn't need to write a whole frikin' novel on false premesis.
Ed Boon has confirmed that this demo is one of the very very first builds made and many many changes including inputs commands have been changed. Also how you gain and how much you gain the supermeter.
Second, the final build of this game will NOT demand 8 buttons. That's just retarded to assume! The official tournament edition Mortal Kobat fightstick has 6 buttons! Why would they make an official stick that can't do everything the game needs?? Of course the game only demands 6 buttons!
My guess is 4 attack buttons (with or without directions), one block button and one tag button.
You wrote furthermore: "From the earlier trailers, I had the image that this new MK would be like fast paced, high mobility, lots of spacing type game, as in you can dash in quick succesion, double jump, super jump, whatnot, which personally got me very excited since I find spacing, zoning, footsies, etc. to be most enjoyable thing in fighting games."
And you couldn't be more wrong!! I am totally against everything you wrote!! I hate when people play like you, run away or twitch back and forth and just move around instead of fight in a fighting game. Everybody I know of, all my friends and every forum I have chatted in agrees with me. Your way of playing is boring and destroys good fighting games!
This game fucking sucks. You build meter by making the opponent block attacks but dont gain anything if they hit? okay...
why is this at evo?
@Jack Daniels
You should learn to write before you call someone retarded.
The original intention of the fatalities (in my eyes) was to be a rewarding way to humiliate your opponent - rewarding in the sense that you both had to have the skill to pull it off and that you took the time find out how to input it. Now in MK9 both of those qualities are lost. You're talking about letting everyone have fun with the game - I never even disputed that. We'll see when the game is few months old and everyone are doing fatalities; we'll then see how fun (boring) it is to see the same end animations done over and over again. I'm already bored with the fatalities featured in the demo except for the forest stage fatality because I haven't seen many players yet able to pull it off. This exact reason is why I also want the other fatalities to be more challenging.
The original MK games had much secret content hidden in the game (such as the original Reptile IIRC) which would be uncovered when very difficult conditions were met. This spawned lots of rumors around and created much interest towards the game, and it became a very FUN and FASCINATING aspect, possibly extending the longetivity of the game. If this is "arrogant" and "wrong" in your opinion, then please go and fuck yourself.
@ Roncock
English isn't my first language you jackass, the world is bigger than your America!! That's your arrogance again right there!! I speak almost 5 languages, how about you??
Anyway, in the interview the devs said there are a lot of hidden content in the game and if you look at the trophies there is a great chance that there are alot of more fatalities that first reveald. "Perform all the ...ities by all the characters."
Plus even if fatalities are easy is doesn't mean everybody would do them every fuckin time?? Aris already forgot in his demo.
In this internet age, nothing is that difficult to find out how to do or implement. The biggest part of a fighting game should be the fun gameplay and the mindgames and the skill to do what you plan and escape what your opponent is planning/ doing.
Having all these secrets doesn't make a game more fun, or making things so difficult that nobody can do them. Then you alienate people and the game which is supposed to be fun has suddenly become a fuckin chore!!
You sound like a spoiled kid don't wanting everybody who doesn't spend 20+ hours learning the game to have any fun. It sound to me like you don't think they deserve to have fun doing fatalities bacuse they didn't discover them or it wasnæt skill involved doing it... why???
You feel me now, cock??
@roncock
its called nostalgia. if mk2 was released in a time the internet is big like it is now there are not much secrets anymore.
even the "freaks" just read the gamecodes and read whats in it and whats not. its nothing new in this days. but back in 90´s it was.
even ed boon said there are so many hidden stuff we dont know now so why so much against the game?
i dont get it.
for me i played mk 1 2 a little bit 3 and from there an no more it was all crap but the new mk looks fun for me in a time tekken is so big.
@Jack Daniels
Well guess what? I'm not American and english isn't my native language either. You're calling someone else arrongant based on your own false assumptions. If that's not retarded then I don't know what is.
Just because we have the internet in our times doesn't mean things cannot be made secret in a game. Look at a game series like Serious Sam. That is a game which is literally loaded with secrets, and that game was released well in the years of the internet. Surprise, that game is actually considered a FUN by many. Especially when a game is released on console like PS3, third-party hacking isn't exactly as straightforward as you would assume.
Basically what you're saying is that noob-friendly is equivalent with fun; but for me, rewarding challenge is fun. You say having secrets in a game left to be uncovered isn't great, but speak for yourself. Take for an example, King's multi-throw in Tekken. Ryan Hart said in his interview that the multi-throws were the single gameplay element that attracted him the most to the game. Now the inputs for those moves are more complicated than any fatality in MK, but with your logic performing the mixups for the throws should be just as easy as pressing 1, 2, 1+2 between every chain. Sure it still maintains the mindgames and the competitive -aspects of the game, but does the easy input and accessibility make it more fun; that's really debatable, I think not. That is a perfect example of how a visually appealing but technically difficult gameplay elements draws even casual players towards the game and motivates them to learn it. The same applies to fatalities.
Well. this game looks good for a demo IMO. As far as the meter filling up and the amount of damage goes, i think it might be because of the level Aris selected (which was beginner). I hope those get scaled as you select harder level of play (also assuming you fight the CPU and not a person). From this vid, it gives me the impression MK9 is like the way MK2 and MK3 were, purposely clunky in order to make the gameplay unique. I think this is important. I want to play a game not because its like SFIV or Tekken 6, but because its a different fighting game. If not why buy it? I'm gonna keep waiting until i can test it myself.
Thanks for the vid Aris
P.S People post too much garbage on here sometimes, instead of sharing interesting comments or valuable input relating to the topic. Why go so far off tangent? LOL