My Thoughts aka MK9-IMO
Mortal Kombat 9... even the sound of this phrase is hard to take serious. MK has been trying to cash in on its name with the past few titles, and it has been successful in doing so. What i think the MK development team needs to do is stop trying to appeal to the casual gamer and put in the work/thought/cash into making a DEEP and LEGIT oldschool fighter, and there is no better time than now.
Fighting games are being taken very seriously by even the casual fighting game player because of the recent trend set by HDR/SF4/T6/BB. People are looking at the genre differently and more critically for a few main reasons.
1. Online Play. What online play has basically done is made competition level play available to everyone at any time. People are seeing what makes these games great and what it takes to be great, and get the most from the game the way it was meant to be played. Plus different styles you would only see very rarely by traveling.
2. Tournaments, Online and Off, plus coverage of results/players, streams, etc. Its like the old SF2 days except this time we have the internet, and it IS a weapon. Players are made familiar with the rules, strategies, and settings of a tournament without leaving their house. SF4 has done major things by teaching even the scrub how the shit really goes with its Online tournament series and so forth. Players are getting a peak at what only the top couple of players in your crew/area were seeing at these events by traveling. Back in the day, you had to get this experience second hand from the best couple of players at the arcade/gaming spot or whatever, because only the elite was going to put the money up to travel. Now your traveling everytime you cut your PC on.
3. A new standard. Todays scrub is more educated and advanced than the scrub 10 years ago. We are hearing words like cheap and cheese less and less in the past year or so and in reference to less basic situations. Tactics once labeled as cheap are now being recognized by the scrubs and noobs and whatever else you call em as just what they are, basic tactics to take advantage of less experienced players. The mental block, so to speak, that seperates the scrub from the top player is being pushed forward, even tho it remains to a degree.
So with this taken into account, Midway or whoever is making MK nowadays, needs to adjust their shit accordingly. Look at the reception of Tekken 6, its been labeled as scrubby. "WOW People finally realize Tekken is a scubby button masher outside of the top level" Players want more from their games, they want depth. Its time for MK to take advantage of this primed market while it lasts, and give us some hardcore shit. They already got the rep, even tho it has faded with the 3D releases, its still there and us oldschoolers have sorta been waiting on it the whole time.
Down to the nitty gritty - Take it back to 2D style with sexy 3D graphics, play test the fuck out of it, listen to the players and give us the one most important thing. DEPTH
Hope someone on the MK dev team at least glances at that.
Peace.
