one more thing I want to add. I am a fanboy but I'ma honest fanboy. If I didn't like the way the game looked, trust me, I would hae said that but anyway, about the vf5 looking better and have better backgrounds/stages/fighting arenas, whatever you wanna call it. why in the hell would scorpion, sub-zero or any mk fighter would want to play in a dan garden with beautiful flowers and butterflys and shit. street fighter has clubs in the background and cars on rims. vf5 has fighters fighting inside of clubs with crazy lights falshing everywhere. the only reason the other games look good, is because of all the bright colors, which will look good on any high def tv. how would mk look with flowers and butterflys and candy makeup all over the fighters. NOT GOOD.

The character models in AC were more than good enough. The gameplay was stellar, that's really more than enough to make up for any perceived graphical shortcoming. That's the problem with a lot of current gen developers. Always focused on graphics, not gameplay. Look, I don't give a shit if my character has fully rendered nose hairs, as long as the gameplay is good and the animations are good, I'm satisfied. I have more fun playing WWF No Mercy on my N64 than I do playing many current gen games if that tells you anything about where my priorities lie.


Here:

#1. Gameplay

#2. Animation

#3. Story and Graphics

Hey, I'm all up for stellar gameplay too. Heck I'd play Mortal Kombat Trilogy over any fighting game out there. But in this particular thread, we're talking purely about visual appeal.

@ Animosity83: I fail to see what you're talking about. I guess you didn't see the render in which Kitana stood posed in front of a waterfall, palace and a rainbow? Pretty much the most perfect place imaginable. So much for that argument. And the other games look good because they are colorful? Ok, yet another failed argument. MK has been one of the most colorful fighters ever. Every character is in a bold, vibrant color. MK ninjas are pretty much every color of the rainbow. So yeah, what was your point again?

Right, and if you factor in animation as part of visual appeal, I really don't see how you could say that GTA4, SC4, or Assassin's Creed look worse than MKvsDC. See, the thing is, all of those games have a visual target they were going for and they all achieved that look. As for MK as of late, either they just don't know what they're going for, they're just not hitting it, or they just have no idea what looks good. I'm willing to cut them some slack, because maybe they don't have the right personnel, or enough manpower, or enough time and money, or whatever. If that's the case, they need to find a new sugar daddy, cuz Midway's obviously not cutting it.

mk has had sum great games to me maybe they need to step it up a bit

Well, when I talk about better graphics, I don't really factor in the animations, unless they're in cinematics. Otherwise, I see animations as part of gameplay mechanics, since animations often have a direct connection with performance. (Like with certain characters in MKDA or MKD, having wide fighting stances, so sometimes their punches don't reach the opponent. That's a gameplay mechanic flaw, not a graphical flaw, but it's all in the animation.
So when I'm talking about the graphics in Assassin's Creed, I'm talking about the way the characters were modeled and textured. Which was good. But if you took Altair as is, and stuck him into MK vs. DC, graphically, he wouldn't compare. But in general, I don't even think he'd stack up against most non-fighting games of the current generation.

when I ws talking about colorful, I didn't mean COLORS. mk is not a colorful game. put it this way, mk is not a bright colorful game. also, I should have this clear. when I say a colorful game, I mean colorful flowers all in the background while the fighters are fighting. never seen a mk game with BRIGHT lights flashing everywhere. mk has dark colors NOT BRIGHT colors. there you go. what do you have to say next

then how come u didnt say background effects

WarriorPrincess has become my new hero. Sorry Jack Burton.

I can't be bothered reading through five pages to see if anyone mentioned this, so I'm just going to say it in case somebody else missed it. What has been wrong with the animations of the last few games is that in their 'snappiness' or 'stiffness,' moves have had little to no start up delay. That's a large part of what has caused the game to break down into random mixups a lot of the time and sapped a lot of the depth and skill from the game at any kind of competitive level. If you don't see the move coming, you have nearly no chance of defending against it, and if you don't have much chance of defending against it, well, that's frankly retarded for a competitive game which is supposed to be about skill but breaks down in a fairly large part to luck no matter how good you become at it.

So if the move animations are anything in MKvDC like they were in the past few MK games, then yes, I'd say there is plenty technically wrong with them, which would make them bad. I mean they look fine as far as a kick looking like a kick and a punch looking like a punch, but we're not watching this game, we're playing it, and these moves are supposed to be functional, not just aesthetic.

lol. I HAVE A CONFESSION. I just thought I'll take a look at VF5. ANDDDDD, so far it looks better than mk vs dcu. lol. slightly, just slightly don't get your hopes up. lol. BUT, BUT, mk vs dcu does look better than everyother next-gen fighting game.

here it comes

I'm not even going to bother lambasting you.

mk is holding on to a long legacy this game can turn ou big

Well, personally, I don't like to ease into my punches. I think it works for Tekken, but if Mortal Kombat was animated like Tekken, then people would say, "It's just another tekken."
It's not like MK has super fast punches that take away half the energy bar, they all deal fairly similar amount of damage. So I don't think I need to spend 3 seconds winding for an uppercut.

LOL. up, wait a minute. I was looking more at VF5 and it SEEMS that the characters look shiny and plastic. certain arenas and gameplay didn't look that good, but the game does look good overall. BUT, that's a finish version of the game. guess we will see when we have a finish version of mk vs dcu

@ Animosity83: Of course you' haven't and never will see flashing lights and flowers in MK because that's not what MK is about. MK isn't set in a modern world like street fighter or tekken, so of course they are gonna have clubs and all that sort of stuff. MK is based on magic and fantasy and that's what we get. So where is all this flowers and lights stuff coming from when we are talking about the graphics of MK vs DC? you mentioned colors, I proved that MK is just as colorful as any other fighter. Stop contradicting yourself with every post man.

It's not like MK has super fast punches that take away half the energy bar, but it is like MK has super fast punches that take away far too much of the energy bar. When you look at Scorpion in MKDA, hitting his 3/4 mixup hardly did the damage of an 8 frame Tekken jab. You don't need to spend three seconds winding up an uppercut, but in the interest of a playable competitive game, you should definitely need to spend more than a tenth of a second speeding through the startup animation for a nicely damaging unblockable ∞ range attack like Dairou's tombstone drop. The 3D incarnation of MK has been riddled with that shit. I hardly think that many people would be put off buying the game because they can see what their opponent is throwing at them. Every other fighter with logical move startup doesn't get compared to Tekken on that basis alone, I don't see why MK would. Or should.

The animation has been terrible for a 3D fighter. From what I've seen, it doesn't appear to be much better in MKvDC, but it's hard to tell for sure just yet, so here's hoping, but I'm not optimistic. Honestly I think it's probably looking like the worst next gen fighting game so far, on almost every level, which is a shame.

Well, MK games have been best sellers, so obviously people aren't getting put off by the fast attacks.

If sales equaled quality then McDonalds would be the most critically acclaimed restaurant in history. Besides, they're obviously not selling well enough if Midway has to borrow one hundred and thirty million dollars from their majority sheerholder just to manufacture the games they already have in the pipeline. I'm sure Mortal Kombat games would sell a lot better if Tekken's audience were rushing out to buy them because they were interesting, gory, AND competitively playable, rather than just being gory abominations of competitive game design.

Well, publishers don't look at "quality" they look at sales. So it doesn't matter what the previous MK game was like, if it sold well, the publishers would see it as worth owning.

I'm struggling to see what this has to do with MKvDC being the 'best looking next-gen fighting game.'

By far best looking,unless u like the cartoonish look or maybe u have lil wii kiddy system.

You don't have to apologize to Jack Burton at all; she's on my buddy list, and I value her opinions as well!

You know...I've actually wondered what it would be like if we did away with the traditional health bars and replaced them with...like...a spirit gauge or something...like in the wrestling games. Granted, this would be a radical change in the way the game would be played, and the whole mechanics of the game would probably have to be changed for it to be truly effective. Possible benefits I would see with the spirit gauges would be lengthened battles and more time to just kick the other person's ass. I'm all about decimating the opponent, which is why I like the wrestling games out there. I like to use guys like The Undertaker to just totally overwhelm and cripple other people I face. The lengthened battles would give us all a chance to flex our "gaming endurances" so-to-speak. There are so many ways to enhance this idea; I know I wouldn't be able to do it on my own. My current thoughts behind the idea would be weakening the other to a point where you could execute a fatality, like a finisher in a wrestling game, and it would end there. Maybe give the opponent a fleeting chance to halt the fatality as well, to give them a fighting chance to avoid defeat. However, since there are so many skilled players out there, battles would probably rage for INSANE amounts of time. Therefore, I would probably throw in a fatality gauge instead, and maybe give a set number of fatality reversals or something...ummmmm...I'm lost in my own idea. On second thought, keep the health bars; there is no way I could propose this without turning MK into another wrestling game, and I wouldn't want to do that. Although I wouldn't mind seeing submissions in the franchise one day...that would be cool. Jack Burton is going to go clear his mind...food sounds like the remedy he needs. TO THE MICROWAVE!!!