Red Rum said:
Does anyone know how to unlock the view mode for Mileena's Flesh Pits Costume?
Go into view mode, and while there, press the pause button and choose "Select Player", then you can select any player in any given costume just like you would in arcade or versus mode.
Mooshi-Q said:
If the game developers can add these things then more power to them. I'm just saying that as a fighting game fan, you shouldn't exclude playing certain games because they don't include trivial things like alternative costumes.
I'm not excluding them. But it's about a lot more than just alternate costumes. I'm just saying that a game that doesn't have a developed story mode, or alternate costumes, or other gameplay modes or whatever, doesn't have as much replay value. To buy a fighting game JUST for good mechanics is like buying Halo or Call of Duty JUST for its multiplayer mode. I don't bother with it. Or games like TF2, or Battlefield 1943, or MAG. Whether it's a fighting game, or an FPS, or an RPG, or whatever, it makes no difference to me. It's about more than just one key feature. It's about the whole experience.
Mooshi-Q said:
I don't know how to phrase this without seeming like an elitist dick... Mortal Kombat has always been viewed as a garbage series by the fighting game community. It's nostalgic to almost everyone but it's never been taken seriously competitively. Well, UMK3 had some merit but that was the extent of it. So to tell me that the Mortal Kombat community have always really cared about story line doesn't mean much to me because they're a community for what was a terrible franchise. Meaning, that they're not the typical fighting game enthusiast. I know the story from the first few games and they're not well written. That's not exclusively a MK thing. It's just how fighting games go. They're a horrible medium for story telling.
That's funny, because I've always considered fighting game fans to be a bit of elitist dicks. And that's not aimed at you, believe me. It's just, when it comes to judging a game, it's always about one thing and one thing only. Balance this, gameplay that. Take a game like Mortal Kombat Deception, for instance, I don't know if you've played it, but yes, as a "fighting game" goes, the gameplay is terrible. There's no balance, or any of that. Some characters are overpowered, certain mechanics don't work properly. But you know what? It's still a very fun game. It's got several gameplay modes, and even the core fighting engine, in spite of being largely broken, is still fun to play. No, it's probably not suitable for tournaments. But getting together with a friend, and just playing one on one, it's still a lot of fun, just because of its features. Things like knocking your opponents through walls into different parts of the arena, or into death traps, ending the fights prematurely. It's fun. And even without another person, the story mode, endings and unlockables make it for a very lengthy single player experience.
I'm not saying that fighting games have a track record of having great narratives, but it's not always about HOW the story is told, as much as just the actual story. Sometimes I don't want to play as a certain character because their backstory is lame. I want to know the characters' motivations, what they're fighting for, etc. And I don't remember seeing that information anywhere in Street Fighter 2 (as one example). And yeah, obviously there was no "story mode" in the earlier MK games. But just letting us know who the characters are, why they're fighting, and why they're there at all, was a huge step in the right direction.
Mooshi-Q said:
I mean, it can be fun to play story mode through a character you really like to see how they act and how they interact with the other characters through the little dialogue cut scenes before you fight. Beyond that, story modes are almost always a short cut scene or huge block of text at the beginning and at the end of the game. That's just fundamentally bad story telling. As I said before, they're just an after thought thrown into the project. Liking fighting game for their stories is the equivalent of liking Silent Hill for its combat.
Yeah, but it's a never ending cycle. Maybe if fighting game fans cared more about the storyline, then developers would take greater care to implement better storylines. And Mortal Kombat has become increasingly better at this with time. Frankly, their current method, stringing cutscenes and fights together, I think works really well. It reminds me of Def Jam games, and honestly, I think those had awesome storylines. And yes, I know that Def Jam is technically a "wrestling" game, but it's still in the same shoes. It's still matches linked together by cutscenes. And it works well. There's nothing wrong with that format. It's the same thing as any other game. Look at tactical RPGs, where it's just grid fights linked together by story sequences.
I can't really accept that analogy, though. I mean, Mortal Kombat tries to give its characters, like I said, at least good backstories, to make sure that the player is aware of their motivations. So there is clear focus on that. And there is general plot development from game to game. And when they DO include a solid story mode, that's just gravy. And that's why I own and collect Mortal Kombat games, and rent all the others, or play them at a friend's house. Because after months or even a year, I'll want to revisit some of those Mortal Kombat games, and replay their storylines, just to experience them again, as I would with any other game.
Now, if the new Mortal Kombat had absolutely no storyline, I'd probably still get it, because I'm an MK fanboy. But I probably would only get 1/3 of the gameplay value out of it. I've beaten its story mode 3/5 times now, soon will finish my fourth. Still trying to finish the challenge tower. I've gotten more hours of gameplay out of it, than I have out of a single playthrough of an RPG like Mass Effect of Dragon Age, and I have yet to play it with another human being.
Mooshi-Q said:
Braid was a fantastic game. I've never played Mass Effect (I heard it was good?) so I can't comment on the comparison. I'll say that Indie games excel in taking games in new and interesting directions. Big budget games only get green lit if they follow the current gaming trends so that the producing companies have a higher chance at commercial success. They don't take any risks; basically releasing stale crap with pretty graphics majority of the time.
Mostly. But that doesn't change the fact that AAA games will most likely be polished at least. Which is a sentiment I've come to appreciate a hell of a lot since playing inspired, but crappy games like Red Ninja, where I really wanted to know what would happen next, but the gameplay made me want to drown things. So maybe AAA titles won't be seeing any amazing new ideas of innovations, but what they do deliver is solid, balanced, fun gamepaly, and more often than not, a more than decent storyline. And that's ultimately, what I look for in a game. And then there's games like Heavy Rain, or Brutal Legend. Big budget titles which step heavily away from the "norm" and still turn out really well.
Here's the thing, though. Indie games are no different. Yes, Braid may have been something new and original and awesome, but what happened then? Every other indie developer said, "Let's do a side scrolling platformer!" and a lot of them suck. And even the ones that don't, still don't feel all that inspired. Frankly, I'm kind of sick of indie side scrollers. The indie Market is like a microcosm of the AAA market. They still follow their own trends. But they don't charge as much, so it's okay.
So maybe Braid was a bad comparison. But let's compare games like Fallout 3 and Borderlands. The fact that Fallout 3 has a more fleshed out storyline, and a ridiculous amount of dialogue choices and the way you approach your missions. That you could side with the good and the bad. That you could explore abandoned buildings and tunnels that have no mission attached to them whatsoever. Those things make Fallout 3 infinitely better than Borderlands in my eyes. Where in borderlands, the missions are pretty much just, "Go there, kill those bad guys." And almost rely on the fact that you'll be playing them with other people. Meaning that as a single player experience, it's pretty poor.
And that's the thing. I value the game as a whole. With all its modes, features, and how much gameplay can I squeeze out of it, just by myself. And that's why Mortal Kombat is my favorite fighting game. And why I easily consider it the best of the current generation. Not only because it offers so many more features than the others, but because it IS balanced, and progressively tweaked. So I don't see why the hardcore fighting game fans would complain either?
