Hmm, a good improvement in some areas, but some still need work.

- "Johnny Cage is now Charcoal grey". That's lovely but where is he? Lol, he can't even be seen. You can just about see his legs, but not very easily.
- The effect. Well, it's better, but it is in excess. There is too much there. An applying phrase here is "Less is more", use it as a blueprint .
- Speaking if less is more, the smoke. There is a little too much here, which also makes it hard to see what's under it, meaning we have no chance of seeing Cage.
- That timer, my lord it's huge! Just resize it, and if possible, make it less blocky, it's kinda squarish now.
- You're right, that logo is HUGE!!!!!
- Text in the lifebars could be more interesting.
- Perhaps some wins texts would be a nice addition too.
- Background has indeed dimmed, however, it hasn't dimmed much. You should've made it a little more darker. Makes it more obvious.


Good things:
+ Good improvement.
+ Better effect (just remember a bit less of it)
+ I think I can see some shadows, I think. At least when I invert the colours anyway.
+ Lifebars. Very nice! 'Cept for that timer, they are really good, lol (just work with the text, it's a little dull).
+ I guess it's good you're taking into account more of the "little" things.

A decent fake, that isn't just sprites slapped onto a background, you actually did something yourself. Good job.

Hmm... well this is defiantly much better than your first attempt at this fake. Good BG dim, but give it a little more, as I think it would dim slightly more than this in the game. I love your lifebars though! These are very cool, nothing wrong with them at all. The timer doesn't seem to fit in though. To me, it looks too large for them, I would make it smaller and give it a similar effect as the lifebars have. I can see the shadows if I look closely, but they don't seem to be angled right. If you are using paint to make them, skew them a bit more so they have that 'shadowy' feel to them.

Ok, well the effect is defiantly improved, but this is a bit in excess. I would have liked to see this much smaller, the effect that is, and not all in this big 'circle' shape. It would be nice to see Cage, as you could last time, just make the effect a little smaller, and give it more of an oblonged look to it. The smoke as well, I see 3 smoke pastes, one will do in my opinion, or maybe a little more if you edit the smoke a bit.

And about your logo... its just huge like you said. I have a suggestion about it actually, you should make it 'blend' into the fake, it shouldn't have its own BG like that. Just drop the text size a little, and take that BG away, and it would look fine as a sig I think. Just my opinion on that, good job though, seems like you actually took some time to work with this one.