A Casuals Guide to Mortal Kombat by ZeroSymbolic7188

V1.1: Just added some images and videos. Still need help with the places Ive noted if someone with motion capture would be so kind. Help me out with providing images, movies, and comments on how I can improve it. THANK YOU AND ENJOY.



I.Intro
II.Selecting a main.
III.Universal Basics
IV.Spacing
V.Learning Your Character
VI.Progressive Difficulty
VII.Advanced Techniques
VIII.Online
IX.Tournament Level

INTRO:
What we have here is what I have termed “A Casuals Guide to Mortal Kombat.” I felt this was the perfect sort of guide for our community here at MKO. Users here do not have an overwhelming desire to compete at the tournament level. Its a community more concerned with playing for fun. However, getting your butt whupped is not fun, and whats worse is getting your butt whupped and not understanding why or what to do about it. The idea of this thread is to provide simple advice that anyone can take and instantly improve their game without devoting hours and hours of time.

I was inspired to write this by my girlfriend (DisturbedKittenCosette) while teaching her the game so we could play online tag together. She isn't there yet, but her game improves daily. Maybe you have someone that you'd like to teach the game to. This guide is also written with that in mind.

I myself am not a super-high level player. Id consider myself to be at the upper end of casual play. Meaning that I can beat most casuals, but I don't have the X-factors needed to play at the tournament level. In other words I understand the game play thoroughly, I'm just not good enough to play with the big dogs. I feel that makes me an ideal writer for a guide like this. I hope you will find it informative, useful, and maybe, just maybe entertaining. Anyway, your probably like “GET ON WITH THE DAMN GUIDE BRO!” So lets do this.

GETTING STARTED/SELECTING A MAIN:
To start off with, your going to want to select a main character. Eventually you will want to learn them all, but once you learn 1 character you can take what you learn and apply it to everyone else. There are many different philosophies to choosing a main. For simplicities sake I am going to recommend that you learn Scorpion first.
Why Scorpion? Well, Scorpion is generally regarded as the easiest character to use. In addition to that I like Scorpion as a training character because he is versatile or capable of playing a of different strategies. His moves also have all the different properties (teleport, projectile, and unblockable). He is also High-Risk, High-Reward, so playing as him will show you how to punish, and not be careless. Both of his fatalities are short and simple distancing. Lastly, there are a ton of Scorpion players online, so you can watch them and learn what to do and not to do with his character. Scorpion is going to be the demo character for this guide.

UNIVERSAL BASICS:
Hit the practice mode now. I want to show you Universal Moves. Universal moves are moves that are shared by every character. Pull up your move list from the start menu and you'll see that the basic attack buttons are Front Punch (FP), Back Punch (BP), Front Kick (FK), and Back Kick (BK). That holds true for every character in the game. Additionally Down+BP is always an uppercut, Back+BK is always sweep kick, and down+any thing but BP is some kind of quick and low attack (also known as a poke). This is very important.

MORTAL KOMBAT (2011) - Universal - XBOX 360/PS3 MOVE LIST
U= Up/Jump
D = Down/Crouch
F = Forward/Toward
B = Back/Away
Dash: F,F
Back Dash: B,B
Uppercut: D+(BP)
Sweep: B+(BK)
Pause/Movelist: (START)

XBOX 360:
(X) = (FP) = Front Punch
(Y) = (BP) = Back Punch
(A) = (FK) = Front Kick
(B) = (BK) = Back Kick
(LB) = [TG] = Tag (
RB) / (X)+(A) = [TH] = Throw (Away)
F+(RB) / F+(X)+(A) = [TH] = Throw (Towards)
F+(X)+(A) = Throw Reversal
(LT) / (A)+(B) = [FS] = Flip Stance
(RT) = [BL] = Block

PS3:
(□) = (FP) = Front Punch
(Δ) = (BP) = Back Punch
(X) = (FK) = Front Kick
(O) = (BK) = Back Kick
(L1) = [TG] = Tag
(R1) / (□)+(X) = [TH] = Throw (Away)
F+(R1) / F+(□)+(X) = [TH] = Throw (Towards)
F+(□)+(X) = Throw Reversal
(L2) / (X)+(O) = [FS] = Flip Stance
(R2) = [BL] = Block

SPACING:
Spacing is another important concept regardless of what character your playing as. The game uses 4 distances: Close, Sweep, Jump, and Full Screen.
Close: Touching your opponent.
Sweep: The maximum Distance that you can be from your opponent and still connect a sweep.
Jump: One jump away from touching your opponent.
Full Screen: All the way across the screen.



Learn these distances because different types of moves are good at different distances. Also you have to do fatalities at the correct distance.

LEARNING YOUR CHARACTER:
Again there is no perfect way to go about this, but this is my way. If your not in practice mode, grab Scorpion and go there.
The first thing I look at with a Character are special moves. (Press Start-->Move List-->FK).
Scorpion has:
Spear: Back, Back+FP
Teleport Punch: Down, Back+ FP
Hellfire: Down, Back+BP
and a leg take down whose motion escapes me at the time of this writing.

When your learning special moves, watch them closely and think about what distance they would be best at.
For example: The Spear takes a while to throw and also has a long animation, so it would not be a good idea to perform this move in close. However at full screen it can be used and the opponent cannot return fire before Scorpion recovers. So its very good at full screen. Also try your moves on different opponent positions (Practice Menu-AI Options). You will find that the Teleport Punch is very bad if the opponent blocks it (Unsafe on Block), and that the Hellfire can hit an opponent even when the opponent is blocking (Unblockable).
Practice the special move motions until you can do any special move on the fly. Timing in this game is fairly lax so you don't need to perform the motion to quickly.

Next go back in the move list to your basic moves. There are 2 very important things to consider here:
Speed: How fast an attack is.
Hit level: Does the attack hit Low, Medium, or High. Take special note of mid hits. Again put play with the AI options to see what attacks hit the opponent in different positions. I think of this as the Mortal Kombat Rock, Paper, Scissors:
Low Hits-Beat Standing Block-Lose to Low Block
Medium Hits-Beat Crouching Block-Lose to High Block
High Hits-Loose to all Blocks
Throws- Beat all Blocks-Loose to any attack.

You can clearly see why Mid Hits are of special note over High Hits, you may be asking “Why would I even use a high hit?”

Some players choose not to, and Scorpion can get away with that mentality. You can combine his sweep or low poke with Forward+FK to create what is called a 50/50mix up. 50/50s are very strong in close because the opponent has to guess whether to block high or low. Throws can be added to make the mix up even stronger.
.

... Yet high hits have their place as well. High hits are generally string starters. A string is a sequence of attacks that flow together. Scorpion has a simple string with FP, FP, FP (strings are located after basic moves in your move list). This particular Scorpion string is great because all of the attacks in the sequence hit Mid. Most characters are not gifted with such a strong string, most hit high or at least begin high. So High hits belong in sequences. You will also notice that when Scorpion performs this string on a blocking opponent, the last hit pushes him away and out of distance of retaliation. So this string is said to be “Safe on Block.”

Video Illustrating the concepts of mix ups and safe normals

All told this string has 3 Mid hits and is safe on Block, which makes it excellent. Take note of things like that because it tells you which strings are the most effective. In this case, USE THIS STRING OFTEN.

What if this string wasn't so excellent? Luckily there is a way to start any string with a mid hit. Jump in at your opponent and throw a punch close to them (a jump-in punch) this attack hits mid and starts strings. A simple universal string to demonstrate this principal is: Jump-In Punch, Uppercut. If you do it right you will see 2hitcombo come up in the corner of the screen under the life bars. Practice hitting the jump-in punch at different distances. Once you can land it consistently you can substitute a string in place of the uppercut. In Scorpion's case : Jump-In Punch, FP, FP, FP for a 4hit combo.

Jump-In Punch, Uppercut Universal String

One last concept is called Launching and Juggling. Stand right next to your opponent and jump straight up and hit them with a punch in mid air (A NJP-Neutral Jump Punch). You will see your opponent bounce into the air, while he is in the air your can connect your string freely: NJP, FP, FP, FP for 4 hits. The NJP is the launcher, and the FP, FP, FP combo is the juggle. Scorpion can also launch with Back+BP which is another normal to remember.

Authors Note: Would also like a video of this.



PROGRESSIVE DIFFICULTY:
After you spent a little bit of time in practice mode and think your ready to fight, I recommend that you play the Single player ladder on beginner, and gradually increase the difficulty until you can defeat the expert ladder. You will take losses, and learn as you climb the difficulties.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUES:
This is a casual guide, but Im going to drop in a couple advanced ideas here:

X Rays, Enhanced Specials, Meter Management: You probably know how to do an XRAY already, but do take note of EX specials as well. Sometimes there are oddities, like Sheeva's XRAY does around 36% damage, but here EX Grab and Toss does 20% and you can use It 3 times for what an XRAY costs. So you could have 60% or 36%, easy choice right? Watch for things like that.

Wake up Engine: Experiment with getting knocked down (you can record the AI uppercutting) then hitting diferent buttons, moves, and directions. You will discover a wide variety of ways to get up from being knocked down. This is very important at the high level of playing.

Authors note: Video please.

Armor: Most XRAYS, Some Enhanced specials, and some moves on wake up have armor. When a move has armor it can't be interrupted, damage will be taken but the move will continue. With Hyper Armor damage is not taken.

Authors note: Video please.

ONLINE:
After you beat the Expert Ladder, and understand some of these ideas you can take your game online and work on your game against human competition. Learn what you can from every match, and don't let people rattle you. Also read guides to learn more (Like you did just now). TestYourMight.com has help for in-depth guides. I recommend it.

TOURNAMENT LEVEL:
If you think your really good, play for money. I haven't reached this echelon, but maybe you will. Good Luck.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

Watch your opponents character, not your own when you fight.