Mortal Kombat 9

[Lenin]

http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y351/L514914/MORRRRRTAAAAAALKOOOOOMBAAAAAT.gif

 

EDIT

 

The game is out, we know:

- It is awesome, as predicted.

- Netkode has AIDS, as predicted has been fixed, kinda.

- Pretty balanced after two patches and two hotfixes.

Edited July 15, 2011 by Lenin

[Magnus]

Oh boy, the "epic series revival" game. Reminds me of Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

 

Yep.

[Adonael]

Always loved old school mortal combat. I'm looking forward to this very much.

[Lenin]

Obscure is missing the level of troll this game will allow the player to indulge in online.

[Magnus]

Oh, no. I know the exact level of trolling. I trolled hard in the old MK games.

 

It's just overdone. Hell, it even admits it by having 9 in the title.

[Adonael]

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k36/cikilla/umk3ermac2.gif

[Lenin]

It's just overdone. Hell, it even admits it by having 9 in the title.

 

Well, Mortal Kombat 9 is actually the unofficial title. Officially, this iteration is just known as Mortal Kombat.

 

It's retarded, but so is Midway. Still, I maintain that at it's very worst, this game will be as good as (S)SFIV.

 

That always was unfortunate. Mortal Kombat, despite probably being the most popular--at least the most well-known--fighting game in the states, never got any real love. And for a stupid reason at that. During the '90s, the game was every bit as 'good' as Street Fighter (which is like being tied for who's the best at having down syndrome), the system was cooler, it's characters were more badass, and goddammit, at least Midway didn't insult our intelligence by trying to convince us there was more character individualization than there really was, unlike Spam Fighter. Lost out on graphics, though.

 

(what follows is unrelated to Obscure's quote)

 

Granted, Mortal Kombat killed any shot at validity it had when it made the jump to 3D fighting, as everyone knows all 3D fighters are shitholes (you can argue Soul Calibur doesn't count, but fuck off). But it never got a fair shake in America because it wasn't Japanese, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese had no idea what this game is, especially because it isn't Japanese. The fact the game is made in America is the only reason people never considered it a "serious fighting title."

 

Will I be getting the game? Hell yes. Will I take it seriously? Hell no. I won't take it seriously for the same reason I don't take SSFIV seriously: it is not Guilty Gear. All but one other fighting engine is a total joke in comparison.

 

I'm saying this because I've read around and have seen this game get a lot of shit from various dickbags, most criticism seeming to center around how SSFIV is better than this game will be. My point here is just a reminder that anyone who thinks 2D Mortal Kombat is somehow on a lower tier of gaming than Street Fighter is a goddamn dumbass.

[Lenin]

Double post faggotry:

 

Jax confirmed for MK9. Sub-Zero's classic spine-rip fatality also in.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Lenin

[Adonael]

I wont be happy until I hear Ermac is in the game. Edited November 1, 2010 by Guest

[Magnus]

http://au.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.ph...84&skipmc=1

 

Sorry, Viv.

[Rachis]

This game is explicit.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Looks pretty neat!

[Lenin]

This game is explicit.

 

It's explicitness is made more explicit by the rampantly explicit explicitness of explicit explicitness.

 

Australia is explicit in their explicit hatred of all things explicit. Their press releases are filled with wordplay explicitly depicting failure of the most explicit kind.

[atdsutm]

http://shoryuken.com/content/australian-go...me-rating-3939/

[The Talentless]

I liked Reptile in Deadly Alliance.

[Magnus]

Haha. He pretended to be a crab...

[Lenin]

Game is out. Netcode sucks, big fucking surprise. If you want this game, hold off 'til when/if they fix netcode and matchmaking. Of course, if you don't buy the game new, you're going to have to pay 10~ bucks to access online PvP. Capitalism still sucks.

 

Block button really sucks after a thousand years of playing 2D fighters that run on back-to-block. With four attack buttons, a block button and a flip stance button, the fact you have to hit block + flip stance simultaneously to get a super/X-Ray makes finding an acceptable button layout extremely difficult. The blockbutton concept fails pretty hard, you end up entering block state like 2 frames late and eating a combo you should be blocking because of the time it takes to actually relocate your thumb. This happening once has a very high likelihood of showing itself to be very fatal. In combination with the input latency generated by this recockulously bad netcode, this is just AIDS inducing.

 

The game could also really benefit from a run mechanic, rather than the short slide dashes a la Capcom. The game both is and wants to be faster than it can really facilitate without all characters having some generic means of quickly closing gaps. It's really just resulting in a situation where characters that have any method of closing/creating distance and controlling space are a thousand fold stronger than they have any right to be. Characters who have teleports, dominate rush moves that close or open spaces quickly, or both should have short slides, where as characters who don't have these options should have block-cancelable runs for dashes.

 

On the netcode, when it works, it's honestly pretty goddamn good. It's just unbelievably inconsistent, and when it is working and you're winning, you're basically guaranteed a ragequit from your opponent. Honestly, I've had this game since launch and my win/loss is uberpiss because I either get stomped through Tekken-6-on-heroin levels of lag, or I get into a non/less-laggy room, dominate, and force a ragequit that doesn't count as a win for me. The ragequitting is a community issue, though. The fact it doesn't count as a win for whoever forced it is annoying though. I measure success in ragequits and I want that reflected. I'd be a douchebag and ragequit too, but the plug for my Xbox is like four feet from my gaming station and that's just too far to travel to preserve a healthy sized e-penis. Turning the box off from my controller takes too long as well. Laziness victoriously fails again.

 

As for characters, Scorpion is made of disappointment. He's so mediocre it pains me. He has all the tools, but some doucher at NRS decided he should be reasonable and all his moves have too much start up and are too embarrassing on block for him to know any excellence in this game. He's fine to play, you can win with him, but to dominate you need a clueless opponent or you need to be so en pointe for the match you just predict their movements outright. If your domination situation is the latter, you might as well play anyone else and you'll do infinitely better.

 

To paint a picture of the metagame in a broader brush: Kitana, Reptile, Ermac, Kabal, Sub-Zero, Kano, Mileena, Kung Lao, Raiden and Jade are going to be the basis of MK9 competitive. It's probably a little disingenuous to say that without clarifying that Ermac has no legitimate basis to be there over Nightwolf or Sindel, who are both better characters. It's essentially just a matter of Ermac being a fantard magnet and how nobody likes Nightwolf or Sindel. So Ermac will be a common sight, where you will watch him stomp scrubs and pull teeth to win against people playing better characters.

 

I play mostly Kabal and Jade in this game, and I'll tell you flat out if you want to dominate in this game, your options on the character select screen boil down to five options: Kung Lao, Raiden, Kabal, Reptile, or Jade. This isn't a skill-conquers all game, your character either has options or they're an abortion to the genre. If there's no means of spacial control you're just going to get embarrassed. An exception here is that it's extremely possibly almost as well with Sub-Zero as long as you don't get out-tanked. ...This is MK9, though. Turtling knows no bounds here.

 

Currently, AIDS/10, primarily because of netcode and matchmaking. Would and will be decent when it's fixed, however.

[Niji Superfan]

I skimmed that post because it was an unimaginable amount of stupid, but I'll comment on the few details that stood out.

 

First off, Scorpion is a hell of a lot better than mediocre, especially considering his spear is the most potent combo linker in the game. He also has one of the easiest X-Rays in the game, considering you can punish anything longer than two or three frames without a second thought. The character balance is good enough that any character can hold their own competitively outside of Baraka and Sheeva, who are wholly unredeemable. Zoning can easily be countered via dash-block-dash-block to get in close, so unless you're fighting someone who can attack high and low easily (Noob Saibot, for instance), there's nothing stopping you from beating on them, and they still need to be damn good at that to slow you down. The fact that you didn't even think to mention Johnny Cage (who is all but unstoppable for some characters) and Sub Zero (who is arguably the best character in the entire game) in your big five only goes to show that you're just looking for any opportunity to sound knowledgeable. Just about every character "has options" in almost every matchup, so apparently, you just aren't good enough to take advantage of them.

 

And now, for some actually sensible commentary on the game!

 

Sub Zero is a monster, holy shit. He didn't really stand out to me at first, especially in the demo, but I was blown away when I saw his potential for mixups. He has easy access to a lot of 30, 40 and 50 percent combos (2 1 4 + EX Slide is a solid 30% with minimal effort required), and three different ways to immobilize your opponent. If any one of them hits, voila, you have an opening for one of these combos, and the other guy loses a third of his life in the blink of an eye. The only issue with Subs is that he has no standing launchers, limiting him to the basic launcher every character has (straight jump + 1 or 2). This launcher is completely useless without some kind of setup, but Subs has these in spades.

 

Cyber Sub Zero is not far beyond classic Subs, and he still has most of what makes the other Subs dominant. His dive kick is SSF2T Akuma all over again, and is easily one of the best punishes/shutdowns in the game. On top of that, he has several standing launchers in his strings, which make juggles much more natural for him than classic Subs. The downside is that he'll wind up relying a lot more on the EX freeze to keep a chain going.

 

Raiden. Torpedo. Man, fuck the torpedo. I don't need to say anything else.

 

Ermac has some tough combos, but good lord does he ever rock the shit. He's been my favorite character since I was seven years old, so you can bet your ass I was relieved to find this out. He can build a lot of really impressive strings off of a single teleport punish (as long as it launches), and his force push is such a good keepaway. I don't think he's good enough to be in the top ten, but he has the benefit of both adequate zoning and solid combos.

 

Stryker is still the king of zoning in MK, even if he's a little one-dimensional. He doesn't have a lot of great strings, so 99% of the time, it'll come down to gun/bomb/roll. I feel this is going to make him extremely predictable no matter how safe these moves are, and I think he'll start to decline as the tiers flesh themselves out with time.

 

Noob Saibot is a good character, but he's about ten times as good against a bad player and this is going to give him a reputation for being god-tier. He's truthfully not as good at zoning as Stryker is, but he does have a lot more options and (arguably) better close-in potential. He also has a much, much better X-ray than Stryker does.

 

Johnny Cage is a dick. His shadow kick and flip kick will absolutely rape anyone without a quick way of shutting this down, and having a counter X-ray makes him something to fear. I really wasn't expecting him to be THIS good.

 

Nightwolf is also really good. I don't like Nightwolf. Fuck him.

 

Kabal is still a good groundpounder and his dash can punish air so easily, but I feel he's going to wind up being extremely limited in the long run. He just isn't what he was in MK3.

 

Kano and Reptile are two characters that are going to push their way into the top tier pretty quickly, I feel. Reptile is good for most of the reasons than Subs is, and while he doesn't have any of his traps or easy setups, he has much more expansive and accessible combos. Kano, well, he has a Blanka ball and a solid projectile, as well as a strong command throw; what more do I need to say?

 

Kung Lao is overrated as fuck. He's a good character, but like, his spin is so ridiculously punishable and so his dive kick, which just doesn't stand up to Cyber Sub's. All in all, if he's not played very carefully, he creates so many openings that he'll be quickly dispatched. I'm getting really tired of hearing about how broken he is, especially since he doesn't have a whole lot of (accessible) combos that break 30%. There was a rumor that he has a 60%, but it's a corner combo that only works against Sheeva (lol who's really going to fucking use her), and is extremely impractical. When you consider that Subs can 4 1 2 Freeze 4 1 2 X-Ray to ANYONE in the corner for the easiest 52% combo in the game, welll, Kung Lao doesn't seem quite so impressive anymore.

 

Annnnd that's all I've got for today. I'm sure I missed someone, but whatever. I want to say something about Smoke, but I'm just not feeling inspired enough.

[Niji Superfan]

huge post bro

 

though you should play more street street

 

Street Street is a thing of the past for me. I'm never going to want to touch it again at the rate MK9 is going.

 

Even if I wasn't playing this, I'd just be playing MvC3 xfd

 

Oh, wait. I forgot Cyrax and Sektor, what the fuck?

 

Cyrax is easily in the top ten, if not top five. In fact, I'd say the top five is something like Subs > Raiden > Cage > Cyrax > Cyber Subs. He felt really awkward to me at first, but he's got a lot of great chains and the most beastly anti-air in the game. His command grab is fucking monstrous, at that. Overall, I'd say he's the most expansive character.

 

Sektor disappoints the fuck out of me. He was my boy back in vanilla MK3, before UMK3 came out and Ermac was my thing. Now, he has boring projectiles, boring combos and no juggle potential whatsoever. His flamethrower is such a dull move, and if it weren't for his teleport punch, he'd probably be skimming the low-tier.

 

And NOW I'm about wrapped up.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

You didn't talk about Smoke.

[Niji Superfan]

You didn't talk about Smoke.

 

Well, like, I will!

 

Smoke I'm not too sure how to feel about. His parry is fucking awesome, considering it even works on projectiles, and he can build meter really easily with his shadow dash. This is handy when you consider that his EX tele punch is badass and his X-ray is as easy to use as Scorpion's is. The only issue is that he's extremely one-dimensional; his only real projectile is the smoke ball (which does no chip whatsoever), and outside of that, all he has for direct offense is his tele punch. None of his strings launch either, which really doesn't help. All in all, Smoke is more so a punisher than anything else, and in all fairness, he's extremely good at that.

[LlamaHumper]

Akuma didn't have a dive kick in SSF2T

[Gay Uncle]

I'm uncertain about this game at this point. I'd like to play it some more before I offer any opinions. Edited April 29, 2011 by Sandra Bullock

[Lenin]

The netkode is still sooo bad.

 

I'm liking lots of Smoke and Sub-Zero to go along with my Kabal. Kano is really fun to lame people out with too. This game is only good for trolling right now, though. Matchmaking and netkode need a serious overhaul.

[Vincent210]

All I needed to know before looking into this game was that stryker can still zone and Noob's name remains ironic.

 

I am pleased.