Hot takes

[RageBurner]

Touche , my friend . Touche .

If you'll humor me with a practical example of my own experience for a minute:

Monster Hunter is my favorite franchise, and it's interesting how those "in", that is, those that play regularly and know the series and those "out", those that look at the series from the outside both tend to complain that the series is becoming stale and far too accommodating to newcomers with each new iteration, haha.

I prefer the classic style, but heck, let people try it, see if they enjoy it. Those that enjoy the core loop will stay, maybe become true fans, those that don't will move on, milk what they can of the newness of the latest entry and then move on to the next big release. Isn't that the same with every game? no harm, no foul.

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

If you'll humor me with a practical example of my own experience for a minute:

Monster Hunter is my favorite franchise, and it's interesting how those "in", that is, those that play regularly and know the series and those "out", those that look at the series from the outside both tend to complain that the series is becoming stale and far too accommodating to newcomers with each new iteration, haha.

I prefer the classic style, but heck, let people try it, see if they enjoy it. Those that enjoy the core loop will stay, maybe become true fans, those that don't will move on, milk what they can of the newness of the latest entry and then move on to the next big release. Isn't that the same with every game? no harm, no foul.

I completly agree . Nothing to add from my side .

 

[miguk]

i like sloppy joes, but i'd rather just eat the stuff by itself, not on a hamburger bun. that ruins it in my opinion.

Sloppy Joes are to Mexican food what Little Caesars is to real pizza.❉ It's a bastard imitation of something that was designed properly for the same purpose. Burger buns were never made to hold those contents, while tortillas can do it perfectly fine.

❉ I never had a LC pizza that didn't fall apart upon opening the box. And I never had a pizza from an actual good pizza place that did that.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

May or may not be a hot take, depending on who you ask, but having played them a fair deal at a high level, I'll stand on the hill that classic Mortal Kombat, particularly UMK3, are good fighting games. I hear a fair bit of slander about them these days, but I think a lot of it comes from people that haven't taken the time to really learn the games, as they are very different both gameplay and meta-wise than Capcom and SNK fighters.

I wouldn't fault someone for simply not caring for the gameplay, given how different it is, but I still think they're good games.

 

[MasterEn]

Sloppy Joes are to Mexican food what Little Caesars is to real pizza.❉ It's a bastard imitation of something that was designed properly for the same purpose. Burger buns were never made to hold those contents, while tortillas can do it perfectly fine.

❉ I never had a LC pizza that didn't fall apart upon opening the box. And I never had a pizza from an actual good pizza place that did that.

i've never had little ceasars, so i'll take your word on that.
i don't particularly care what it is copying, it's just something i eat once in a while. not bad, but not great. i give it a B. i usually eat noodles and rice for most of my meals.

 

[RageBurner]

May or may not be a hot take, depending on who you ask, but having played them a fair deal at a high level, I'll stand on the hill that classic Mortal Kombat, particularly UMK3, are good fighting games. I hear a fair bit of slander about them these days, but I think a lot of it comes from people that haven't taken the time to really learn the games, as they are very different both gameplay and meta-wise than Capcom and SNK fighters.

I wouldn't fault someone for simply not caring for the gameplay, given how different it is, but I still think they're good games.

I'll be honest, I never took classic MK seriously enough to even think about it as anything more than a spammy laughfest, but it's cool to see a different perspective. I won't deny my brain is wired much more closely to Capcom and SNK fighting games, and that hasn't changed.

 

[AkiraSO4]

Yeah, or at least peaks and valleys when it comes to quality, although where the peaks and valleys actually are can be subjective to an extent.

Like you said, it's a subjective thing.
There's a bunch of things I'm not super into that many other people are, and vice-versa.

People might say a certain series is doing amazing but you might be absolutely burned out of them you wanna drop out and leave.

So in the end, I'd say what matters is "you". As in, are YOU enjoying it or not. If other people like it, let them like it. But if YOU feel let down, or disappointed, there's no harm in letting it go and enjoying other things.

 

[RageBurner]

So in the end, I'd say what matters is "you". As in, are YOU enjoying it or not.

Exactly. In the end this is the only metric a person can really measure.

 

[AkiraSO4]

May or may not be a hot take, depending on who you ask, but having played them a fair deal at a high level, I'll stand on the hill that classic Mortal Kombat, particularly UMK3, are good fighting games. I hear a fair bit of slander about them these days, but I think a lot of it comes from people that haven't taken the time to really learn the games, as they are very different both gameplay and meta-wise than Capcom and SNK fighters.

I wouldn't fault someone for simply not caring for the gameplay, given how different it is, but I still think they're good games.

It's not often I hear people badmouth classic MK apart from 4, which isn't even that bad actually.
UMK3 is pretty good, so is MK2.
The only truly outdated of the classic ones would be the first one, and that's basically because it's the first attempt and a lot of things aren't there yet.

 

[miguk]

May or may not be a hot take, depending on who you ask, but having played them a fair deal at a high level, I'll stand on the hill that classic Mortal Kombat, particularly UMK3, are good fighting games. I hear a fair bit of slander about them these days, but I think a lot of it comes from people that haven't taken the time to really learn the games, as they are very different both gameplay and meta-wise than Capcom and SNK fighters.

I wouldn't fault someone for simply not caring for the gameplay, given how different it is, but I still think they're good games.

The first 2 games were not bad for their times. Fighting games were still pretty simple and MK offered a similar experience. The only things they got wrong was standardizing the normals to the point that only a few characters had any unique ones. (Though the single player game had a lot of balance issues and cheating, albeit less than later on. That also existed in other fighting games of the time, but MK was always the king of unfair single player mode.)

MK3 is where it fell apart. Gameplay got too complex; you had to memorize too many moves with unique inputs to the point that gameplay was confusing. And certain moves would often just not work; Sheeva looked like she would be OP, but she whiffed 90% of the moves that Goro & Kintaro would never have at that rate. Anything teleportation based either unbalanced the fight, threw you into the opponent's attack, or both. And then there's the roster: Tons of fan favorites thrown out for dull newcomers, and even returning characters felt wrong. (Sub-Zero being turned into discount Henry Rollins and Shang Tsung being a white guy were some weird ones.) And single player got worse: the CPU abused the Run button and combo system (always perfectly done with the best combo for them, but not you) to kill you in seconds.

And you'd think UMK3 would fix everything, but it didn't. Yes, the roster added back in some fan favorites. But old characters weren't rebalanced, and the single player difficulty was actually made even more unfair. Which brings us to the worst thing in the game: Jade. She was the culmination of everything wrong with MK gameplay. Cheater CPU, cheat move to invalidate your moves, and unfair priority on her moves. One match against her, and you were convinced the whole game sucked. I had taken the time and abuse to play through MK3; I refused to complete UMK3.

Other than that, MKT was an interesting novelty, but not worth more than a rental. The games never matched the quality of MK2 again.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

It's not often I hear people badmouth classic MK apart from 4, which isn't even that bad actually.
UMK3 is pretty good, so is MK2.
The only truly outdated of the classic ones would be the first one, and that's basically because it's the first attempt and a lot of things aren't there yet.

It might just be a fandom rivalry thing, as I mostly hear fans of other fighting games rag on MK. I used to be one of them, to be honest, until I started really deep diving into competitive UMK3.

I guess I'd add another (not so hot) take here in that I find game series tribalism really weird and a bit embarrassing nowadays.

 

[RageBurner]

I could only look at MK as a serious fighting game again by the time of 10 or so, and even then, just eagle eyeing comment boards around gamefaqs, it seems that balance continues to be poor even on iterations as new as 11 and 1 Reboot. Not that the GF crowd is a surefire metric of a game's real situation, but it raises some flags.

 

[RageBurner]

It might just be a fandom rivalry thing, as I mostly hear fans of other fighting games rag on MK. I used to be one of them, to be honest, until I started really deep diving into competitive UMK3.

I guess I'd add another (not so hot) take here in that I find game series tribalism really weird and a bit embarrassing nowadays.

It is strange, but I think at least in part, people miss this kind of tribalism because for many, it speaks of happier, simpler times. It was enough to make one's day to bash the game/console they perceived as inferior and move on. An acrid, passive aggressive kind of nostalgia? sure, but was there, for better or worse.

 

[AkiraSO4]

The first 2 games were not bad for their times. Fighting games were still pretty simple and MK offered a similar experience. The only things they got wrong was standardizing the normals to the point that only a few characters had any unique ones. (Though the single player game had a lot of balance issues and cheating, albeit less than later on. That also existed in other fighting games of the time, but MK was always the king of unfair single player mode.)

MK3 is where it fell apart. Gameplay got too complex; you had to memorize too many moves with unique inputs to the point that gameplay was confusing. And certain moves would often just not work; Sheeva looked like she would be OP, but she whiffed 90% of the moves that Goro & Kintaro would never have at that rate. Anything teleportation based either unbalanced the fight, threw you into the opponent's attack, or both. And then there's the roster: Tons of fan favorites thrown out for dull newcomers, and even returning characters felt wrong. (Sub-Zero being turned into discount Henry Rollins and Shang Tsung being a white guy were some weird ones.) And single player got worse: the CPU abused the Run button and combo system (always perfectly done with the best combo for them, but not you) to kill you in seconds.

And you'd think UMK3 would fix everything, but it didn't. Yes, the roster added back in some fan favorites. But old characters weren't rebalanced, and the single player difficulty was actually made even more unfair. Which brings us to the worst thing in the game: Jade. She was the culmination of everything wrong with MK gameplay. Cheater CPU, cheat move to invalidate your moves, and unfair priority on her moves. One match against her, and you were convinced the whole game sucked. I had taken the time and abuse to play through MK3; I refused to complete UMK3.

Other than that, MKT was an interesting novelty, but not worth more than a rental. The games never matched the quality of MK2 again.

You're spot on when it comes to MK3 vanilla. Dial-a-combos got a bit too extra early on, and it's not like nowadays where the strings don't go for more than five hits. The ninjas being gone didn't help the matter, either.

As far as UMK3 being rebalanced, it actually was... for the most part. Sub-Zero lost his many infinites from vanilla 3 (he was top 1 there), they got rid of the bomb infinites Cyrax had, Stryker got better thanks to the gun (not much though), and Kabal got hit with a ton of nerfs, his buzzsaw is one of the worst moves in the game (however the new UMK3 mechanics made him the strongest character in the game). That being said, Liu Kang still does low damage in strings, Sheeva is somehow worse and Shang Tsung benefits from the new character but only in a way where you ditch him to morph into the top tiers, so why even pick him?

I would say Jade (and most of UMK3 for that matter) becomes easier once you find out the Sektor/Smoke exploit, but that's classic MK in general. The AI was designed to be unfair. It's just the way it is. Honestly? It's no hot take when I say MK2 has the most unfair AI out of all classic games.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

The first 2 games were not bad for their times. Fighting games were still pretty simple and MK offered a similar experience. The only things they got wrong was standardizing the normals to the point that only a few characters had any unique ones. (Though the single player game had a lot of balance issues and cheating, albeit less than later on. That also existed in other fighting games of the time, but MK was always the king of unfair single player mode.)

MK3 is where it fell apart. Gameplay got too complex; you had to memorize too many moves with unique inputs to the point that gameplay was confusing. And certain moves would often just not work; Sheeva looked like she would be OP, but she whiffed 90% of the moves that Goro & Kintaro would never have at that rate. Anything teleportation based either unbalanced the fight, threw you into the opponent's attack, or both. And then there's the roster: Tons of fan favorites thrown out for dull newcomers, and even returning characters felt wrong. (Sub-Zero being turned into discount Henry Rollins and Shang Tsung being a white guy were some weird ones.) And single player got worse: the CPU abused the Run button and combo system (always perfectly done with the best combo for them, but not you) to kill you in seconds.

And you'd think UMK3 would fix everything, but it didn't. Yes, the roster added back in some fan favorites. But old characters weren't rebalanced, and the single player difficulty was actually made even more unfair. Which brings us to the worst thing in the game: Jade. She was the culmination of everything wrong with MK gameplay. Cheater CPU, cheat move to invalidate your moves, and unfair priority on her moves. One match against her, and you were convinced the whole game sucked. I had taken the time and abuse to play through MK3; I refused to complete UMK3.

Other than that, MKT was an interesting novelty, but not worth more than a rental. The games never matched the quality of MK2 again.

Not certain I can agree with gameplay getting too complex. If anything MK3's gameplay felt a bit behind the times on release as Capcom and SNK were beginning to dabble in super meter and desperation super moves. It's used to be something of a meme in the FGC that Midway and MK were terrified of the concept of Super moves.

I wholeheartedly agree with matters of presentation and roster, however. MK2 had such a great art direction and classic roster, MK3 got pulled through the ringer on this even on release. No Scorpion, really? Single Player UMK3 is a complete mess too, and I say that as someone who can 1cc MK2. Just complete nonsense CPU.

Despite all this, I still think it holds up reasonably well when played at a high level. It's a bit busted balance-wise, but that's pretty par for the course for 90s arcade fighting games. Run jab meta lends itself to some surprising fun Yomi, and the combo system is pretty player expressive once mastered. I don't think it's the greatest by any means, I just feel it's got more potential then people often see.

 

[Ravl]

They could at least use the gyroscope! It's so cretinous I can play rdr2 on pc with the ps4 controller gyro aim but not on the actual ps4
And that the controller costs 50-80 for functions you cant even use

You can make it work with external software. Gyro aiming is underrated, it's better than just using the analog stick if you practice.

 

[Adrastia]

Honestly I like Indigo League mostly for the 90's nostalgia and the craziness of the early seasons like that one episode with guns or when they show real life fishes in a world with pokémons or

View attachment 37955View attachment 37956

Gasmask wearing weasel would make a cool pokemon though.

 

[GuyZero32k4]

I generally dislike people who only play FPS. The second they ask what genres you play, they always put down your favorite genres. EVERY SINGLE PERSON I've met is like this. "Oh that's STUPID..." "OK, well, UP YOURS and your Halo then."
I HATE SVC Chaos. "It's so broken it's fun!" HARD NO. Shitty music, bad controls, bad game system.
Mortal Kombat is only popular and relevant cause of the gore. Nothing else. Covering up the women was another stupid ass decision. "Women would go out and fight like that.." Shut Up.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

You can make it work with external software. Gyro aiming is underrated, it's better than just using the analog stick if you practice.

Its absurd to me how people can play fps games with the analog stick, it feels like shit
Gyro's so much better, its like a controller mouse, you can make so many tiny adjustiments
It's perfect for 3rd person shooters because it makes them feel like Biohazard 4 Wii, where I can move the characters with the stick which I prefer to WASD but I can also do motion aiming

I dont get why its not an option on every ps4 game, its there! Its an option on the switch! This damn controller costs 30 bucks more than it should because of the gyro n stuff!

 

[Ikagura]

Gasmask wearing weasel would make a cool pokemon though.

I agree.


But it feels more Digimon-esque than Pokémon to me.

 

[Kyyo]

DMC2 isn't so bad.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter had a similarity: only first 2 games are good. The rest are pretty much garbage except the crossover ones.

 

[miguk]

Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter had a similarity: only first 2 games are good. The rest are pretty much garbage except the crossover ones.

Fair enough for MK, but I'm puzzled as to what you mean by "first 2" for Street Fighter. SF1 is utter garbage, and the next 2 games are SF2 and SF2CE. Or are we de-canonizing SF1 and the SF2 updates (and, possibly the Alpha games) and calling SF2 & SF3 "the first 2"?

 

[Kamako]

Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter had a similarity: only first 2 games are good. The rest are pretty much garbage except the crossover ones.

MK: Deadly Alliance, Deception and X slander?! I may faint...

 

[AkiraSO4]

Fair enough for MK, but I'm puzzled as to what you mean by "first 2" for Street Fighter. SF1 is utter garbage, and the next 2 games are SF2 and SF2CE. Or are we de-canonizing SF1 and the SF2 updates (and, possibly the Alpha games) and calling SF2 & SF3 "the first 2"?

That's what I was thinking, LMAO. But to be fair, everyone seems to forget SF1 existed.