[Wii] Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

[DavidStallard]

When it comes to fighting games, I'm old-school. The last fighting game I was heavily into was Street Fighter 2, the arcade version. I generally hated the games that came after that because of the ridiculously complex and undocumented moves. I especially hated Mortal Kombat.

Well, I just bought Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for the Wii and I love it!

That said, I'm only scratching the surface of what the various characters can do. The only special moves I use are the ones that you get from the Wii motion control, and there are typically only 4 or 5 of those per character. But each character actually has around 40 moves! Most of them require control sequences that I haven't attempted to learn.

I'm curious...do players actually memorize all those special moves? It seems kinda crazy to go to that much work. Maybe a typical player picks one or two characters to master, and never attempts to learn the rest? I could never do that, because the variety of all the different characters is a big part of the appeal.

I may...MAY...look through the moves list for my favorites and try to commit a few of the additional moves to memory. But really, I suspect that I'll be sticking to the regular attacks and the Wii motion control specials...memorizing those is already plenty of brain activity for me. :) I'm just not sure if most players are like me, or if most players actually do the "homework" of memorizing the huge number of moves in the game.

I know that MK:A actually has a small number of moves per character compared to some other fighters...I'm told that Virtua Fighter has about 100 moves per character. That actually turns me OFF of that game, because it sounds too much like work to learn how to play.

[nonsense]

Hehe.

You have NO idea.

Y'know those 100+ attacks all the Virtua Fighter characters have? Not only do some players know them all, they also know the maximum damage combo opportunities that flow from them (depending, among other things, on foot position and the target's weight class), and how many milliseconds of advantage and disadvantage you'll be facing based on how those attacks hit.

VF is CRAZILY intricate, even for people like myself, who've been playing pretty faithfully since the first one. But that's also a strength - it's deeply strategic and a lot of fun. With the more complex fighters (VF included), people tend to stick to one or two characters and learn them inside out. They'll still fool around with the others, if only to learn what sorts of things they're capable of. It's a bigger learning curve, but it's not insurmountable.

As for MK.. I don't like MK. It's too simple and dull. To each, as they say, his own. :p

[DavidStallard]

I understand there's a distinction between "button masher" and "skill" fighting games, which are probably terms generated by fans of the latter since it seems to deride the former. :) Anyway, to me the "skill" fighters don't sound appealing at all because of the amount of learning required. But still, Mortal Kombat has 40+ moves per character and I'm used to only 4-5 special moves per character in Street Fighter 2. :)

[nonsense]

I understand there's a distinction between "button masher" and "skill" fighting games, which are probably terms generated by fans of the latter since it seems to deride the former. :) Anyway, to me the "skill" fighters don't sound appealing at all because of the amount of learning required. But still, Mortal Kombat has 40+ moves per character and I'm used to only 4-5 special moves per character in Street Fighter 2. :)

Eh, the whole "button mashing" thing is a dead end anyway. Street Fighter (especially the third iteration) is deceptive. It SEEMS straightforward, but if you just go in mashing buttons against somebody who knows what they're doing, you're going to lose.

The problem with games like Virtua Fighter is that you really do have to dedicate some time to them, because they're not terribly satisfying in the pick-up-and-play sense. That's a balance I feel Street Fighter captured very, very well. Everybody knows how to play Ken and Ryu, but not everybody knows how to really play Ken and Ryu. It managed to simultaneously capture the "Hey, how do I do a Sonic Boom" crowd and the competitive players.

MK, by contrast, always felt a bit unpolished to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're enjoying it, but it's never really clicked with me. Well, except Scorpion. Everybody loves Scorpion.

[Stephenls]

I always preferred Sub-Zero.

[Mr. Sanity]

What? Liu Kang is teh one!1 ;)

EDIT:
As an aside, how is the Wii version? I've been considering picking it up for nostalgia's sake.

[DavidStallard]

What? Liu Kang is teh one!1 ;)

Liu Kang is...not the same as he used to be. I don't want to spoil anything. :)

As an aside, how is the Wii version? I've been considering picking it up for nostalgia's sake.

Well, I can't compare MK:Armageddon to the previous titles because this is my first MK experience since the original arcade version, but as a fan of Street Fighter 2, I'm really liking this game. It's not as complex as I remember the MK series being...not sure if this is simplified or if my memory is faulty.

Anyway, there are basically 8 different possibilities for the Wii motion control:

1) left-right
2) right-left
3) up-down
4) down-up
5) semi-circle down and away
6) semi-circle down and toward
7) semi-circle up and away
8) semi-circle up and toward

You do one of these moves while holding the B button down, and it executes a special move if your character has a move mapped to that motion. The characters have 4-5 moves based on those motions. You can also play with a classic controller without any of the motion control if you want.

You play the game with the nun-chuk controller in addition to the regular controller, and on it you use the Z button to block and the C button to switch fighting styles (from barehanded to weapon and back).

Probably my favorite part of MK:A is the Konquest mode, which is basically a whole different game. You guide your character through a story, fighting multiple mook baddies at the same time. At certain points in the story another MK character shows up and you usually have to fight them -- when that happens, the game switches back to the main fighting engine for detailed combat. The fighting engine you use against mooks is simplified, with a lot fewer special moves. In Konquest mode you can unlock 4 additional characters, alternate costumes for various characters, and also gather Koins which you can spend as an alternate way to unlock things. I've probably put at least 2 hours into Konquest and I'm less than halfway through the story.

The one exception to those 8 motion controls I mentioned is the Fatality system. It uses several other motion controls, such as poking toward the screen or lifting both controls at the same time. I only know this because I read it online somewhere...the fatality stuff is completely undocumented so you have to figure out it yourself or go online for some cheats.

So I really like the game, but like I said, I haven't played a fighting game since Street Fighter 2 so I'm really out of touch with what fighters are like these days...I can't really compare MK:A to other modern fighters.

MK:A has 63 different fighters to choose from...apparently that's an impressive number still. Well, the Wii version has 63...all the other versions have 62. Oh! MK:A also has a Kreate function where you can build your own fighter! You can customize quite a few things about how he looks, and then pick his fighting styles and whatnot. I haven't really gotten into that yet.