Predator 151, I think you nailed Mortal Kombat's problem directly on the head when you said that mk has been teen rated ever since mk4 despite the M rating.

The blood and fatalities have been very cartoonish and comical. The series has been lacking a realism and grittiness. It was there with mk1, mk2, and mk4.

The humor of the series has gotten slightly out of hand in my opinion, making the last few entries feel T rated but with blood and gore.

Now let me state that I like humor in the series, I'm not against it. Mk2 had a nice blend. Reptile rubbing his belly after eating your head, Shang Tsung disappearing in your ear and then breaking out of you from the inside.

Mk4 had some dark humor that worked too. I love Quan Chi ripping your leg off and beating you to death with it. Brutal, violent, dark, and funny.

Then you get to mkda and you've got Bo rai cho puking and farting, and even lighting his farts on fire to kill somebody. I cringe every time I think about it.

I think instead of watering mk down or shooting for the teen audience with a flashy and pretty gimmick oriented product, give us something with more substance. I firmly believe in substance over style, especially since the style and flash is already there with the story and characters. It wouldn't take much.

I mean the first mk game was very simple but the visuals, music, story, and the CHARACTERS took a good but solid game engine and launched the most popular but not the most repected fighting game franchise in video game history.

One final point, I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of mk vs dc since one of the things that has kept mk from fading away like so many other fighting games is that Ed Boon is not afraid to try something new and different so I understand completely why he did this. Hell, he even said so in his interviews, this mk8 and we felt we needed to do something fresh.

For better or worse, this is certainly a new and differnt concept for mk.

Truer words have never been spoken on these boards.

I have read on SRK that there are tournament level players that have added thier input for the gameplay and have made the team rebalance the game. The task was not placed squarely upon the shoulders of Jason Wilson. Apparently, the game has gone through lots of incarnations due to play testing and rebalancing. The final buzz has been more than positive from the people who have played it recently as well. I think it's safe to say the game will be much better than the previous MK's. By how far a margine remains to be determined by us.

ONe thing that people here keep forgetting is that this game is not built upon the same engine as MKD/A. How some guys have determined that the game will play exactly the same is beyond me. Move properties will be different, there are not fighting styles or weapons for most characters and there is no air combat menchanic. The similarities between the two games end at special moves, punch and kick.

Just as a heads up, Klose Kombat has taken the place of the old throw mechanic in MKvsDC. The other throw is to position the opponent for the free fall and test your might mechanics. The two aforementioned mecanics can be chalked up as aesthetics in my book and are not necessary. But they will still play a role in the outcome of a match.



Peace

i agree with everything u 100% because don't care how good the fatality is after u seen them so many times after u win you don't do them no more anyway

No problem Predator, that was actually a very nice read! It flowed very well while being clear and concise. That said, if I had my own development staff for e-learning, I would hire you in a heart-beat, no joke, You hit on some very fine points regarding the fact that you don't need a T rating to produce a great MK game. But in that respect, I still stand by my opinion that you don't need an M rating to make a fine MK game either.

The point that I was trying to make was that the T rating forced the developers to focus on gameplay instead of gory aesthetics. They no longer have to cheezeball the story in order to apease the ESRB. We all know they thought they had to in past MK games because of the gore. I guess they just did not want to go through another media blasting like they did in the 90's with MK 1-4.

Whether you and everyone else here dissagrees with me, that's fine. I respect all of your opinions as you all have valid points to make. I believe I too have valid points but many of you saw fit to basically basically bastardize my opinions. Again, this if fine too as it is a free country .

The formation of my opinion is based mainly on other fighting games ESRB ratings. No other fighting game has an M rating, yet all of them seem to be more accepted than MK. Why you ask? Because the gore should never be a fighting game's main selling point, which has been MK's main forte since day one. The Samurai Showdown series has fatalities and gore, but that is not it's main selling point. Yet, the game is widely more accepted by fighting game affictionados worldwide than MK is.

Going back to the T rating, I guess I just saw the limitation of the gore as a chance for the team to focus their attention on where the game counted the most. Game play Mechanics. The new game play mechanics cannot be judged by anyone here who has not yet played the game. If you or anyone else here can say with certainty that this game plays like shit or, plays exactly like MKA, then I need to know the process in which you arrived to this conclusion. Am I saying that this game is going to beat the pants off of Tekken or Street Fighter IV?

Hell No!

I haven't played MKvsDC yet so it's impossible for me to make a statement like that. What I am saying is that this game looks to be very playable in a Darkstalkers/Nightwarriors kind of way. Will the game have it's problems? Indeed it will, no doubt about it. All fighting games have their share of B.S. Midway has a bad track record with gameplay but so far, the guys who have played this game the most (i.e Jason WIlson and the tournament level play testers) have indicated that this game is worthy of mentioning. There is already a tournament in the works for this game once everyone gets up to a decent level next year.

If they're worng, hey, they're wrong. But having known Jason when we both lived in CA., I can tell you that he knows his shit concerning fighting games. I played him numerous times at a high level in games like SF:A2, Cvs2, SFII:3rd Strike etc. If he says this game has the goods, I trust his judgement. There's so much about this game that he is not willing to realease publicly but hints that we are going to like the way it plays.

I have a feeling that we will all be pleasantly suprised once we buy/rent it. Just the fact that we now have bufferable specials and custom combos is a huge plus in my book. The throw escapes and the counterable hits in Klose Kombat prevents it from being overpowered like throws in MKD/A

As far as the T rating setting limits to the artists abilities, no, that is not what I was getting at. I make plenty of T rated art and I am not limited in the least with my ability to create and convey a solid message with my art. Neither are they. In my opinion, the new fatalities are infinitely more eloquent than past efforts.

They are far more cinematic as well. There's more of a psycological feel to them. There was no gratuitous "popcorn" explosions in any of them, nor a bevy of skulls released form an exlpoding victim.

In closing, I still stand by my beliefs, but I also respect and enjoy reading everyone's opinions, be they negative or positive. Your opinion is pretty vaid Predator, I believe mine is too. Good post man.


Peace

First, thank you. I'm glad to see we're about on the same page here. You also bring up a really good point. Humor.

Humor in Mk is not a bad thing, I like it too as a matter of fact. But I think the misinterpretation is that they actually have to strive to get the appropriate type of humor in-to MK. Not the case.

I think the humor in MK, is that of a consequence of the events that occur in a fight. So, I kinda feel like now, they over embellish in order to "meet the goal" of purposely putting something funny in Mortal Kombat. Which is wrong, actually.

My feeling on it, is that "fighting" sees funny things happen. Like, an unfortunate sequence of events for an opponent. THAT's funny because, it's what makes combos a fun thing to get into. Or like Reptiles early fatality that you mentioned where he politely rubs his tummy after securing victory through committing a heinous crime....that's funny. Because there's a certain irony to it, and there's a certain "Fuck You" about it at the same time. lol

I gotta be as clear as you were though, slap-stick humor is not something I welcome though. The humor in MK has to:

1.) be engaging = I have control of punishing my opponent, and the reaction to that punishment, should fit the act of being punished. More specific, my interest in seeing a character actually "pop-up" has lessened because in previous games, it seems to have been abused as a reaction to a given attack. For instance: Uppercuts should result in a pop-up, not a jab or straight kick, or what ever. They haven't done terrible with this, but the fact that I noticed it speaks volumes.

2.) be entertaining = Is it fun to see that reaction from my opponent 1000 times over? If the answer is yes, Success!

3.) serve it's purpose = if you got people bouncing all over the place, and I'm a greater ground fighter, what's the point of using the pop-up moves?...ect

Anyway, quirky pauses in reaction to a certain type of punch are funny. Irony, coincidence, and those sorts of unrealistically unfortunate things, are funny. I'd welcome these things in the form of MK humor.



I gotcha loud and clear. And I guess if this is what they felt they had to do in order to concentrate on the games' mechanism, then I'm all for it too I guess.

That makes our disagreement over necessity then, yea?

I know game development takes a long time, and alot of people now days. I also know that a necessity debate itemizes things a little too much for my typing taste right now, so I'll digress. haha...

I didn't intend to carry the conversation other places. But hey, you go with the flow sometimes right?

Good talkin'

151

Predator 151 if I led you to believe in my previous post that I think they have to or should inclulde humor then that was not my intention. I don't think that they should strive for humor at all, but rather as you stated that it should happen as a consequence of the actions and fights themselves. Johnny Cage's nut punch being a prime example of this, painful, humilating, brutal and funny.

I keep coming back to Reptiles mk2 head chomp fatality and Quan Chi's leg rip fatality as the prime examples of this.

I also COMPLETELY agree that slapstick humor should never be utilized in a mk game, ever, as I stated above most notably represented by the dreadful inclusion of Bo Rai Cho.

I believe we are in agreement on the general use of humor in mk being not necessarily or conscious part of the game but happening as a result of events and situations.

I appreciate the reasoned response.

anyone can beat anyone in these worlds, all it takes is a writer with a good story