Netcode Bad, Game Dying

The other day I happened to overhear a conversation between some of my coworkers. One man walked away from the other, and I could’ve sworn he said, “… or MKX.”

“Do you play MKX?” I asked.

Turns out he did. Awesome. I exchanged gamer tags with him so that we could find each other on the PlayStation network. A few days later when I logged in, we were friends. But he wasn’t playing MKX. He was playing Street Fighter.

When I asked him why, he said it had to do with the terrible netcode. He complained about how impossible it was to do combos. At first I thought he didn’t know what he was talking about. But the more his words rang around in my mind, and the more I played MKX with those words in mind, the more I realized that he was right.

Kotal Kahn, my main character, actually has some pretty easy combos to execute, all things considered. Compared to some other characters combos, his are downright easy. B122DB2. It’s doing a combo move with a special move at the end of it.

Whenever I go into the practice mode and try out his combos, I can do them amazingly easily. I can land them every time. It’s trivial. But landing them in a match, that’s another matter entirely. For every bit of confidence I gain doing his combos in training, I am unsure in actual net play.

Then I think of some Tweet I read about how the netcode for Street Fighter V is better than MKX. And then it makes sense to me why MKX is doing so bad on Twitch.

I mean, I had been scared that StarCraft was losing viewers, but MKX makes StarCraft look like it’s doing great.

I have bittersweet feelings about all of this. Because I really love Sonic Fox. I think me really makes the sport, and I love to watch him fight in tournaments. But there doesn’t seem to be much in the game department to support a thriving community. I guess what I’m trying to type here is that, there won’t be much more of Maul’s MKX blog. The game support just isn’t there. But I want Sonic Fox and Dab to know that I’ll be watching them, and cheering for them in many tournaments to come. 

Jacqui Revisited

So I’ve come to an impasse of sorts in Mortal Kombat X. I’m kinda bored of playing as Kotal Kahn. But all of the other characters I want to play are unavailable.

You already know that the next character I’d most like to learn is Tanya. But she’s DLC and the only way for me to play as her is to *buy* her for a second time, or else to simply play as her on the PC version. But one does not simply *play* the PC version of MKX. So scratch Tanya off the list.

Next I’d pick Shinnok. But Shinnock is locked until you beat the game. Guess who absolutely *hates* to play single player anything on a computer? This guy. Again, I have him available on the DLC on my PC, but I can’t play as him on the only working copy of MKX that I have, the PS4, unless I either beat the game, or buy a costume for him. What shit is this?

So now, jump one character further down the list, and you have Jacqui Briggs. I hopped back into the training with her, and learned a few more combos that I thought I could work into my play. I’m getting a little better about using back dashes, and armored attacks. But most importantly, I’ve watched my boy, Dab, play as Jacqui, so I have a great example to learn from.

Like always, my Jacqui play is *off the hook* compared to my Kotal Kahn play. When you mix up a few combos, in addition to her projectile, and specials, she really is a force to be reckoned with. Of course, Tanya is a character practically designed to kick Jacqui’s ass. But as long as I’m not facing Tanya, I think I’ll do pretty good.

As a matter of fact, I find that she does especially well against the newest DLC character, Predator. Don’t get me wrong, True is right when he says that the Predator is really a high pressure character. When played correctly, there’s very few and short opportunities to Punish him. But what you don’t hear about so much is that Predator doesn’t have any kind of teleporting ability. He can only come *at* you. Which means Jacqui has the best projectile in the game for stopping him.

I’m no expert on Predator’s moves, but he must have some sort of charge that can be armored. It’s not match for full auto Jacqui. She will break that armor and leave the beast wondering WTF happened.

When I play as Jacqui now, it’s not spam so much as the mixup of her gun. She has the bullet attack. But she can also shoot a rocket down or up. Like Dab, I’ve mastered the art of keeping an opponent on the far side of the screen, and *thinking* I’m a spammer. Then I run up and down the down cannon and they never knew what hit them. I find that jumping over her projectile is a loser's bet, but if someone tries it, I’m fast enough now with her up cannon to punish that, too.

Add to that her special move, with is a run up and uppercut, and you can really get some good mixups going.

Now here’s the bad part about playing as full auto Jacqui. People trash talk you. More than other characters. *Way more*. I don’t know how to describe it. And I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that she’s one of the younger characters, a girl, and black. But I won’t be surprised if all of those were factors in the way people trash talk me.

I wound up getting matched with this one guy three times in a row. He really talked shit. “You’re a spammer,” he said.

“I was hitting you with combos,” I said.

“No you weren’t.”

“I was! If you don’t know that, you don’t even know what’s up!”

It’s like, I’ve spammed as Sun God many games, just trying to do his stupid Brutality. Nobody ever called me a spammer. But play a beautiful mix up game with full auto Jacqui, and the shit will hit the fan.

Broken Tanya

So lately, I’ve been playing MKX on my PC a lot more. Why? In a word, Tanya. It’s one of those things where she’s pretty much the only new character I want to learn how to play, and the only way I can play her is to fire up my PC which has the Kombat Pack on it.

But there’s a big problem with that plan. The PC version, to put it like Takeda would, “You kinda suck, dude.”

I’m very tempted to make a youtube video, because of how well my setup can illustrate this point. I have dual monitors side by side. One of them can run the PC and the other can run the PS4 version.

So I pick Tanya and I que for a few ranked matches. Everything seems to be going fine -- until I get to the actual match. Then it’s laggy as hell, and I wind up dropping before we can finish the game. What shit is that? Just to prove that it isn’t the connection, I fire up the PS4 version and play a match straight through, just fine. How fucked up is that?

I’ve ever exited out of the PC version after the netcode is unplayable, fired up StarCraft 2 Legacy of the Void, and played a game of *that* without incident. So for all of you people asking if the PC version is fixed yet. While it largely depends on your hardware and connection, the short answer is that no, it’s not.

But I really hate the idea that to truly play the one new character I’m interested in, I’m  going to have to buy *her* twice.

One of the things that interests me in Tanya in the first place is what Sonic Fox tweeted about her. That she’s so broken. At first I didn’t quite understand. But now that I’ve seen him play a few games with her, I understand. The problem is two fold. It’s her teleport, and it’s her air fireballs.

Because she can throw two trajectories of fireballs while in the air, she’s got a *completely* different timing than any other character. It is an offensive move that can be used for defense. Because if you do a jump and your opponent is about to catch you with a fireball, you can also throw one of your own, which will change the timing on your landing and allow you to not get hit by their projectile while launching one of your own at the same time.

It’s the reason why I was so taken aback when I saw Sonic Fox play with Tonya for the first time. All he did was jump and teleport and shoot fireballs. Tanya may well have replaced Jacqui as the best projectile spammer in the game. True story.

But she also has that teleport. Which means she can similarly teleport through projectiles. Sometimes, if you’re a little too slow in MKX, you can know that you’re about to get hit with a projectile without being able to get out of the way. Not so with Tanya. She can go right through that shit, in the air or on the ground. It’s like she’s the one character who gets to fight in Matrix bullet time, while everyone else has to jump and run like mortals.

But the real reason why Sonic Fox think’s she’s broken, I think, is because of cornering. You know, when you trap your opponent in the corner and are able to hit him with way more combos than if he was able to backdash and escape? Well all Tanya needs is that wake up move, and bam, she just teleported out of the corner -- while putting you in it!

In another fighting game, where the *other* fighters had more variety, I could easily see Tanya fitting in. But with the ability to attack from the air *and* teleport wherever the fuck she wants, she really is  broken in that fighting her is inherently different from fighting *any* one else.

At the time of this writing, Predator has just dropped. Please don’t even get me started on him, because as oOoTrueoOo says, he’s got a mad game of constant pressure that seems to hard counter my main, Kotal Kahn.

And while I’m on the subject of Kotal Kahn, I remember a few people asking about why he gets the Kahn subtitle. Like how does it tie into Shao Kahn? Well I think I have an answer. Maybe the guy who plays Kotal Kahn, as in the RL human being who does the model for Kahn, maybe he’s the reason why the Kahn title exists. Like he’s obviously a big body builder type of dude. Maybe whoever he models for gets the Kahn title. Just a thought I had.

Kotal Sonic Fox Kahn

First off, I’m still playing as Kotal Kahn. I must say, of all the Brutalities in MKX, I think his Sun God variation Brutality is both the best in terms of spectacle, and the easiest to pull off. I’ve also done his *other* Brutality a few times now. The one where he kills his opponent by impaling them with his discus projectile.

There’s something that’s quite satisfying about winning with projectile spam. First of all, I can now do it with characters other than full auto Jacqui. But what really makes the Brutality work for me, is that right around the time your opponent would rightfully think, “This guy’s just spamming,” is when the Brutality kicks in and gives the strategy a bit of validation.

What Kotal Kahn has going for him is that his projectile is one of the few that you can’t duck under. That’s important, because it’s hidden within an ill used variation of the character. In other words, any non-professional player would be put in a position where he could easily make the mistake of thinking that he *could* duck under it, and wind up getting hit an extra time.

If you know me, you know that I pride myself on always factoring in for the magic that is time and timing. Normally, Kotal Kahn’s projectile sucks, because it’s so slow. So he lends himself to play where you keep that projectile as your ace in the hole. You keep that special move as the one move that you *don’t* use. Until the end of a match, or until you’re in a pinch and really need to throw your opponent off.

The other thing that Kotal has going for him is the ability to EX projectile, which  throws faster than his normal. It means you can condition your opponent to reacting to one timing, and then catch him by throwing even faster. It works, like a charm, and I love it.

That being said, I’ve grown a bit tired of hearing Sun God say, “On your knees!” And I feel like playing Sun God for the past week or so has really given me a great feel for Kotal Kahn’s normal and combo attacks. It’s shown me how to use the character without using special moves, essentially.

Which is why I feel strong than ever, now that I’ve gone back to War God. It means I can use War God, and know how to fist fight with him, while keeping the special move sword attacks as my ace in the hole. But of course, War God has his own slow projectile that can be sped up by burning a bar of meter. So now I’m really on fire.

One of the things that prompted me to change back to War God? Sub-fucking-zero. Specifically his Grandmaster variation, the one where he can make an ice clone of himself. I mean, really, people complain about full auto Jacqui all the time. But the truth is that Subzero clone spam is way worse. If you play MKX, then you know what I’m talking about. He makes the clone and hides behind it like it’s a shield. Then he throws an ice ball. If neither of those have caught you, he can throw the clone, or shatter it, or simply use normal attacks through the clone. It’s kinda OP, especially if he gets you in the corner with that shit.

In truth, Sun God has no counter to Grandmaster Subzero. None. I now feel safe saying that not all variations are equal (hello Captain Obvious). But War God can take him. War God can do a sword smash that destroys the clone and can even hit Subzero in the bargain. It’s absolutely a game changer, and from here on out, you won’t see me ever knowingly pick Sun God against Grandmaster.

***

Let me switch topics here and talk about the tournament that’s being broadcast on Twitch this weekend. CEO. I’m pissed! How is it that this big tournament is here in Orlando, and I didn’t know about it. The tickets are sold out, the venue is *packed* and it’s just a short drive away and I totally missed out on it. Still, no big deal. It’s not like they have big name people there. Oh wait, Sonic Fox *is* there. I missed my chance to see Sonic Fox. Fuck!

Seriously, am I wrong to want more promotion of these things? Next time, I want a bigger venue, I want a ticket, and I want to see Sonic-motherfucking-Fox.

***

Meanwhile in Scorpion’s intro. Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that he quotes a James Bond villain when he says, “I expect you to die.”

***

So we’ve all noticed how Sonic Fox switched to Tanya, yes? He defeated my fan favorite, Dab, in the last tournament I saw on Twitch. For me, it was lovely to see how the best player in the world tackled a new character like that. He definitely liked to stay in the air and spam fireballs. Another validation for spamming strategies.

So after getting a little bored of Kotal Kahn play, I went ahead and fired up my PC, where I have the Kombat Pack so that I could play as Tanya. Let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it looks to player her and stay in the air shooting fireballs all the time. But I won my first game with her, which I guess is a good sign. Especially considering I don’t know any Kombos, I was pretty much just using special moves.

You also noticed that during this week’s tournament, Sonic Fox finally lost a match as Tanya against Shinnok. He immediately changed back to Erron Black and mopped the floor with the guy. Which goes into what I said in an earlier post. You do something and it works, you tend to keep on doing that thing until it stops working. Tanya worked great until he lost a match. Then back to Erron Black.

Blood God, God Ray, Sonic Fox Loses

Let me type a little about my number one toon to play, Kotal Kahn. I’ve used the War God variation the most, but I also really like the ability to command grab and do Brutalities with the Sun God. Meanwhile, Blood God, the red variation, is easily the least used variation.

But I remember that in a recent patch, they buffed the Blood God’s totem that allows him to do more damage. That’s pretty much the only thing going for Blood God. It’s kind of like as if Kotal Kahn was a wrestler, and he doesn’t even have any special moves (yes yes, I know he has the air grab and he can throw a slow projectile). But I was hungry for a change yesterday, and I tried out the red variation.

To my surprise, I found that I was able to win several games with him. Mostly because he hits like a schoolbus. Before I tried him out, I was scared because I thought it might be too hard for him to get down his totems. But I realize that was probably my own bias, due to the way I had been playing the War God variation.

You see, Kotal Kahn is the type of character who utilizes a lot of throws. Every throw is another chance to get down that damn totem. His projectile is also strong enough so that most of the time you can throw down a totem immediately after a projectile, if you can manage to get that one out.

As Kotal Kahn, one of my favorite Kombos, the F122, makes him do a shoulder charge forward and follow it up with a punch that knocks your opponent one screen back. I find this tends to be a very safe way to open up a match, because his shoulder move is one of the few fast startup normal attacks he has.

Often times, if I can knock the opponent back with the first F122, I can follow it up with another F122, and sometimes even a third, and by then he’s in the corner.

But the beauty of the F122, is that it’s great in *every* variation. Because the pushback is ideal for you to throw down that damn crystal totem. So Kotal Kahn has no trouble getting the totem down, and once it’s down he hits hard enough to make the variation probably worth it.

One of the things I don’t like about the Blood God is that I’m not entirely sure what the other totems do, and at this point, I’m too afraid to ask. It’s poor game design, in my opinion, because why should I have to google what this move does? I mean, they have a menu that tells me how to throw down the totem, and what the totem is called. But they don’t tell me what the fuck it does, and it isn’t immediately obvious.

My guess is that one of them gives armor, and that guess is based on knowing that one of Quan Chi’s special moves is a buff that does the same. For personal reasons, I really wanted to do his Brutality where you throw down the totem and then uppercut the other guy’s head off. But I don’t think I’d unlocked it in the Krypt yet.

Or wait! Upon further inspection, I *had* unlocked it in the Krypt. The problem was that we were playing two player at one point last night. And we were passing around the controllers willy nilly. So I was playing as Kotal Kahn as Player 2. In other words, I hadn’t unlocked jack shit, and as such, I couldn’t do the move.

Again, I feel a shitty design choice for the devs. Because of the way they chose to make their game unlock, I can’t enjoy it to it’s fullest. Please listen, Ed Boon.

Somewhere, during all of this fooling around with Kotal Kahn, I realized I had playing him a bit wrong. Remember that F122 I had mentioned earlier. Well I used to always follow that up with either a projectile, or the unblockable ground stomp that the War God has. But now I realize, Kotal Kahn has a way better option, and no one, not even the pros, are using it.

I’m talking about his god ray, of course. The one that looks like a beam of sunshine from the heavens. If you stand in your own beam, it heals you. If your enemy stands in it, it does DOT chip damage to him. What a fool I’ve been.

Nowadays, in whatever variation, if I connect a F122 in the middle of the match, I’m way more likely to do the god ray. Because you can have it land mid screen, or on top of you, or on top of an opponent.

So if my health is low, I’ll cast it on myself and start to heal. Even if your opponent is a full auto, Jacqui Briggs spammer, worst case scenario is you’ll come up even with the chip damage they do. Best case, like against a Shinnok spammer, you can pretty much heal back up to full health.

But you can also cast the god ray over *them*. That usually gets them to move, or at least stop fucking spamming. So all this time, I was almost angry at the game design, because they made this Kotal Kahn character who is fucking helpless against spammers. Turns out, he has a great tool in his toolbox.

I don’t know why the pros aren’t doing more of this now, but I would expect to see them adopt it, like yesterday.

I can’t finish today’s post without talking about the tournament that I saw on Twitch last night. I’m mentioning this because I saw Sonic Fox lose. For like the first time, ever. Yeah, I know he’s lost before. But this is just the first time that *I’ve* seen it.

One of the reasons why he’s lost, I think, was because he was going up against an off character. I believe the man was Michaelangelo and the toon was Quan Chi. Some matchups just don’t jive like that. Either way, Sonic Fox went on to lose again, later on in the bracket.

It was kind of sad to see. Because the story of so many great legends goes down just like that. They enter the scene, they kick ass, they have a streak. But once they’re beaten, often it opens the floodgates to their return to mere mortality.

Let’s be honest here. Sonic Fox was always somewhat of a risky player. I mean, he made very good use of the slide, which for Erron Black, *looks* very similar to his high attack. And against many opponents, he was able to land it. But the truth is that he really shouldn’t have been able to. It’s fair to say that a professional, playing at the top level of the game, should be able to punch the use of a slide. I had always thought that’s what separates the men from the boys. I mean, I’d fall for the slide. But I’m not playing at the top level.

So good for him. I also saw that Sonic Fox was playing a few games as Tonya. I really like that decision. Since Sonic won the first tournament as Erron, I understand why he would continue to play as Erron. Because once anyone finds a formula for victory, why change it? I mean, as long as it keeps working, your best move is to keep using it. And that’s exactly what Sonic Fox did. But now that we’ve had more time to play MKX, I’m willing to bet that Sonic has another toon he would prefer to main, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him switch to that toon. Tanya is as likely as any.

Dab v Perfect Legend

So first off, let me say that I absolutely *love* the era of gaming that we’re in now. For lack of a better word, it’s the Twitch Era. That time in gaming where we can actually watch our favorite video games or related celebrity in a way never previously seen.

I love the fact that I don’t have to watch old fashioned boob tube, seeing the same over produced commercials designed to keep the corporate juggernaughts rich. Finally, there’s a show for me, and that show is playing on Twitch.tv.

Last night was another Mortal Kombat X tournament. What I really like, is that there are regular MKX tournaments. What I don’t like is that, despite followiing everyone whose anyone on Instagram and Twitter, these tournaments still manage to come as a surprise to me. I had no fair warning that a tournament was about to happen. My twitter feed wasn’t blowing up with announcements. Instead, after watching a video I’d downloaded, I checked twitch, saw that there was an unusually high number of people in the MKX channel, and found out for myself. So I kinda missed the beginning, which is no big deal. I’m just saying I think they could do a slightly better job of letting me know when the shit’s about to go down.

As I type that, I’m thinking that it’s probably a regular tournament -- at the same time each week -- and I’m the fool who just doesn’t realize.

Either way, the second thing that kinda bothers me about the tournament is that it’s the Xbox One version. As you already know from reading my blog, I have the PC version (no tournaments there) *and* the PS4 version. So it kills me that the one tournament that’s getting all the attention, the tournament that anyone can enter, is the one you need an Xbox one for. Because fuck, I’m not buying this god damn game three times. If for no better reason than I refuse to unlock three fucking Krypts.

The tournament is the #ESL, I believe. The first thing I noticed is that SonicFox wasn’t in it. The commentators mentioned that because he’s already qualified for the finals, he decided to sit this one out. I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, sitting the tournament out is a smart decision. I mean, SonicFox is the best and he knows it. Which means he’s also aware that, the more he plays against people his level, the more they will be able to feel out his reads. It’s a basic fact of human nature, and you see the very phenomenon in every strategy game (I first noticed it in Chess). The more games you play with someone, the more likely your win/loss ratio is to go to 50/50.

Why? Well sooner or later, the loser will start to learn how to parry your attacks (for lack of a better word). And the more the winner wins, the more likely he is to play riskier, slow his reaction times, and get comfortable with his patterns of attacks.

So by sitting out the tournament, SonicFox is making it harder for his rivals to reach that level of familiarity with him. He’s practically the only pro player to use Erron Black, and I fully understand his not wanting them to get too much experience against him.

But now for the other side of the coin. By sitting out the tournament, *he’s* losing out on experience against his opponents. He’s not getting his name out. And there’s the possibility that him sitting out can be taken as a sign of weakness.

Still there’s the counterpoint that he’s really a good guy, who wants to give his peers a chance to have *their* names be scene. To give the other guys a chance to get in on the MKX fame that he has in abundance.

But what made me much happier than not seeing SonicFox in the bracket, was seeing Dab there. I don’t know why, but I really like Dab. Maybe it’s just me recognizing the skills from the first time I saw him play. I really like that he’s one of the only players who will change characters, and play just as good with several. It’s clear to me that to be at the top level of the game, you really have to know how to play all of the characters. Because if you’re going to counter a toon, you have to know how that toon attacks in the first place.

But I also love the way he plays as Jacqui. He really uses her like nobody else. He strings along these combos I didn’t think were possible. Excuse me if I’m repeating myself here, but I see him use the uprocket in combos, in a way I’d never dreamed. And that allows him to knock up his opponent and use Jacqui’s punch combo special move on their way down. It’s insane.

He also does another thing I’d like to incorporate into my Jacqui play. He’ll knock an opponent down, dash up to them, and fire the down rocket at their feet. It’s good stuff.

Which also led me to realize one of the major flaws in *my* play. I cannot perform a run or backdash. I know, I know, all I have to do is push the stupid direction twice in rapid succession. But for the life of me, I can’t pull it off. During the load screens, I try and try to to practice it, but in actual play, it never works out.

As a matter of fact, much of my inability to run is due to the controller. You see, I spend most of my life playing on old school, nintendo style D pads. But they really hurt your thumb. So with my PS4, I’ve switched to using the tiny thumb joystick. And I love it because it’s so much easier on my thumb. But I can’t fucking run with it. I hate it. I’ve tried everything, but it seems if I have to choose between my ability to play at a high level, and the health of my thumb.

Back to Dab. I tweeted him good luck just as his final match was starting. And he even retweeted and favorited my tweet. I think that’s so cool. I find that all of my heroes of the moment are professional video games players. Probably because that’s what I wanted to be when I was young. In StarCraft, it was Taeja. But now, it’s definitely Dab and SonicFox (in that order). All I’m saying is that Dab is such a down to earth guy, a father and pro gamer. I’ve very happy for him, and I’ll be cheering for him. They said even though he lost to Perfect Legend, that he’s still in the running, he’s still a contender. So awesome.

I’d also like to take the time to say that I kinda hate Perfect Legend. Mostly because he plays as Kung Lao, and I think Kung Lao is an OP, crappy toon to play with. His EX Hat spin makes him kinda cheap. Combine that with the drop kick and the zoning power and I just pretty much always root against him.

The truth is that Dab deserves mad props. His specialty is to never give up, never surrender. He has the ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, a rare talent that is almost unheard of in today’s world of gaming. He has the ability of change the pace of the game, as if evident when he gets his opponent into the corner.

As a matter of fact, he only lost against PL because of a few minor, technical errors. I saw him not cancel a run and get punished for it. He also, several times, ran into the EX Hat spin, instead of stopping just next to it. Now I know, to be the best of the best, you really have to be consistent at *Not* making technical errors like that. But I know that Dab’s game is so close to being at the top level, I fully expect him to take home a definitive win sometime *very* soon.

Shinnok

So you know from my earlier post that I already broke the sanctity of my Steam account in order to play some MKX with a guy I know at work. That got me thinking. Because I haven’t played Jacqui in a while, but in a way I don’t want to. Kotal Kahn is clearly my main, so when I get tired of playing him, who should I play next?

Normally I’d turn to Reptile, but something about him in this game just doesn’t interest me anymore. D’vorah? Even though I like the character, I just don’t feel like she’s powerful enough to be a true contender. Who then?

The only other character I really want to play is Shinnok. Problem is, Shinnok is grayed out on my PS4 version of the game. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I guess I got him unlocked with the combat pack on my PC. But to get him the old fashioned way, you have to beat the single player?

I’m not entirely sure if that’s true, but I am sure that I heard it somewhere. Which really sucks, because I hate to play the single player. I hate the fact that this game will make me play through with characters I don’t even like or want to play, just to get to the ones that I do.

So what did I do? I fired up Steam and the PC version of course. The first time I played, I was reminded of the fact that the graphics on the PC version were kinda sub par. But then, the second time I ran the game, I remember to go through the Nvidia software and optimize the game settings. I have to admit, at this point, it’s very hard to tell the two apart.

And I played Shinnok. I like to pick a character for the day, and stick with him. It helps me to really nail down the timings and their combos. I used Shinnok’s Necromancer, the version where he has a giant skeletal hand to perform several attacks.

Here, when you’re playing online multiplayer, is where the differences between the PC and the PS4 really take hold. Because one thing I know about the PS4 version is that when you are matched, nearly all of the time, the match goes automatically into the game. It’s very rare to be matched against an opponent with a bad ping, or such a difference in rank that it gives you the option to decline.

But not so on the PC. As a matter of fact, almost every game I played on the PC gave me the option to decline. Meaning everyone either had a terrible ping, was way too easy for me, or was way out of my league.

I also feel to a degree that the newbs are all on the PC, and that I tend to get matched up against easy players there. By contrast, I feel like all of the good players on the PS4, and I tend to get my ass kicked for several games in a row there.

That being said, I’ve played more on the PS4 so my ranking there is more accurate, and higher than it is on the PC.

And here is another problem, due to the game design. I haven’t unlocked anything in the Krypt. Or, actually I have, but good luck keeping track of what items you unlocked where. I think it’s so freaking unfair that I might have to unlock *another* Krypt, just to be able to do the brutalities.

So there you have it. I’m very surprised at the lack of combos Shinnok has. He has no combos that hit low! How is that? He doesn’t really get any kind of mix up whatsoever. Your entire game has got to revolve around his fireball/pushback special.

BigStick MKX Challenge

So the only other person I work with who plays Mortal Kombat X is a guy who I don’t normally see or talk to. We don’t have all that much in common, and I probably only run into him by chance about once a week. I’d like to call him by his screen name: BigStick.

I’m get into an elevator and who’s in there but BigStick. He said to me, “They pretty much fixed the PC version, you know.”

I gave him a smug smile. “But I have a PlayStation now.”

“Yeah …” BigStick said. And I had a point.

Still, when I got home that day, I realized he was offering me an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up. Often times, after you select a game to devote your time and discipline to, the next biggest challenge is finding your worthy opponent. Did I really want to play ranked matches against unknowns for my entire run? Of course not. I *wanted* someone at work, someone who I could brag to and talk trash about.

But what about Steam? What about Ed Boon and the devs, the game makers who sold me a bad game? Well at that point, it was clear that I wouldn’t get my money back. The PC version of the game had sat idle on my computer for long enough. As might as well get *some* use out of it, right? I mean, wouldn’t it be a bigger tragedy if I paid for two versions of the game, and then *didn’t* play the PC version, when circumstance dictated that I should?

That night, not surprisingly, I saw BigStick online. I was in the middle of playing MKX on my PS4 when I saw him on, and I messaged him just as I was starting a match. Did he want to play?

He did, and I did. Now for the controller, the last time I had played the PC version, I used my Qanba fightstick. But since then, I switched to a standard PS4 controller, and I haven’t looked back. I briefly considered plugging in the fight stick, for no better reason than it wasn’t doing anything else, but I knew that would be a mistake.

I had been, for weeks now, building muscle memory around the PS4 controller. If I wanted to bring my A game, that was the controller I’d have to use. On a side note, I almost can’t believe the money I wasted on that fight stick. I mean, before I got back into MKX, before I got back into the fighting game, it seemed like the thing to use. I’d watched a few Street Fighter tournaments on Twitch.tv and seen how uber pro the players look, with their fight sticks. So clearly the best of the best use them.

But since then, I saw SonicFox destroy people with a standard controller. Not to mention so many other pros, who do just fine with the PS4 Dualshock. Now, with perfect hindsight, I realize that what I was buying was nostalgia. What I was buying was the dream and familiarity of the traditional arcade joysticks. But I was living in the past. The new controllers are here, and there’s a reason why most people *aren’t* using fight sticks.

Probably the same reason I’d grown tired of it. The buttons all feel the same. The damn thing is huge and clunky, and I simply got tired of constantly moving the fightstick from my lap to the table in between rounds.

So I plugged one of my PS4 controllers into the computer and fired up Mortal Kombat. I was happy to see that I worked straight away. After I rebound the buttons to default, I was ready to play against BigStick.

For our first match, he choose Jason Vorhees. I picked Kotal Kahn Sun God. We duked it out. I won the first match, he took the second. Then, with just the smallest sliver of health left, he took the third. Damn.

But I took the rematch after that. If there’s one thing I like about Sun God, it’s his command grab throw and what he says when he performs it. “On your knees!” But if there’s one thing I don’t like about Sun God, it’s that you really have to milk that throw for everything it’s worth. You have to perform it three times, just for it to do its maximum damage. And then you have to use it more to get that maximum damage, and to do the cool brutality.

Which means he’s going to say “On your knees!” a few too many times. I kinda wish they’d given him a few more lines to randomly mix it up.

We played many matches, but I won more. Still, I have to admit it was pretty close. Neither of us wanted to back down, and continually clicked rematch. But alas, he was unable to pull into the lead of matches won. So he eventually clicked Player Select.

He changed to Kano. I took Jacqui Briggs. Again, he won a few, and the matches were close, but I kept the lead on games won. Sweet. I got him to back down, and go back to the Player Select screen again. I was running out of characters I knew how to play.

I picked Dvora. He picked Tanya. Again, I kept my lead, and to be fair, it didn’t seem like he really knew how to play Tanya very well. But I didn’t really know how to play Dvora very well, so I think it balances out.

We played for more than an hour. Until finally, I could play no more. That last game, I clicked back on the Player Select screen, for one final game as Kotal Kahn before calling it a night. When he saw me pick Kotal Kahn, he changed back to Jason Vorhees.

We started to fight, but in the middle of battle, my game froze. Lost connection. A minute later, he messaged me and told me that his game had frozen. So there you have it. The PC version isn’t fixed, per se. But it is much more playable. It still crashed, at least for us.

One of the things I’m most surprised about was how seamless the transition was for me, from PS4 to PC. I was literally able to simply plug the controller in, and play just as I had been. I could do all of the combos and special moves without a problem. That was something which scared me. The idea that I might have to ‘relearn’ how to play, because I was on a different system.

But one of the things I really didn’t like was how the game looked. The way I have my PC and PlayStation setup, they use the same HDMI monitor with a switch. So in this case, I literally pressed one button, and switched from the PlayStation to the PC. Even though I built my PC specifically to run MKX, it didn’t look nearly as good as the PlayStation version. For some reason, the PC version looked darker.

I was happy to see that they finally included the character walk aways. It may be a minor aesthetic touch, but I’m glad they finally got it in. Still, my original point is still quite valid. Why play the PC version when you have the PlayStation version? The answer is, so that you can kick your friend’s ass and brag about it at work the next day. Which is exactly what I intend to do now.

Koins and Kombat Kard

So let’s talk a little bit about coins, excuse me, Koins, and Kombat Kards. And Brutalities. Where to begin?

So it’s fairly safe to say that Kotal Kahn is my favorite character. I spend the most time with him, even though I can probably win more games with Jacqui. While I still think War God is probably his best variation, I’ve seen been on a Sun God kick, recently.

And that makes me want to do his Brutality as Sun God. It appeared to me that every variation has it’s own Brutality. I’m pretty sure I’d seen the Brutality once before. If you recall in my earlier post, I talked about how the Sun God variation has a command grab, and that the grab changes each time you use it. The first time, it’s simply a throw. The second time, it adds on an extra hit. The third time, you get the throw, the hit, and a second throw, which reverses the side that your opponent winds up on.

Well the Brutality comes during that second throw. Kotal Kahn lifts you over his head, and you get hit with his Sun Beam. For the Brutality, the beam barbeques you. It’s pretty cool. But after trying it in combat a few times, it never worked.

Then I remember what is probably my least favorite aspect of Mortal Kombat X. The Krypt. I couldn’t just *do* the Brutality. I had to unlock it first. In the Krypt. I swear, I’ll never understand what the devs were thinking when they added a FPS style element to Mortal fucking Kombat. Who the fuck wants to walk around like they’re in a FPS when they play a fighting game?

What’s worse, it’s not even an easy unlock. It’s a terribly inconvenient unlock. First I had to go to the Mortal Kombat subreddit on reddit. Then I had to find the location of the chest I needed and get there. The price of the Brutality isn’t certain, so I had to confirm that I did, indeed, need more Koins to unlock the Brutality. All that work just to find out I couldn’t afford it! (it’s also fair to say that there was more work involved, because I had to unlock the Krypt earlier)

Okay, so I don’t have enough Koins. Well how do I get more? Before, I’d been playing Mortal Kombat and getting Koins fairly regularly. But I had noticed recently that my coins weren’t going up any more.

Again, I had to turn to a third party webpage, the sub reddit, to figure it all out. I did a search for “how do I get more Koins?” The top two ways, were either to do towers, or with the decals on your Kombat Kard.

Now let me remind you that I *hate* to spend time playing against a computer. It’s pointless to me. As long as there’s internet and people who want to play, I’ll play against them before I’d ever challenge a machine.

But because the towers were the best way to get Koins, I actually ran a few. So now, see how fucked this game is that it has me doing all this shit I don’t want to do, just to do a stupid move when I play the way I want to play.

But after running a few towers, I knew there had to be a better way. I re-read the post on reddit and discovered something I’d been overlooking on the Kombat Kards. The icons and backgrounds your choose for your Kard can actually grant you XP or Koins, depending on which one you select.

This realization had me slapping my face, because it meant I had been clueless and doing it wrong for so long. You see, when the game first starts, you get Scorpion and a very generic looking MKX background. I liked to stick with that background. There’s a bit of strategy involved with that choice. Because keeping the default background makes you look like a new player. It makes you look like a newb. I always like to take any advantage I can get, and inviting your opponent to underestimate you is one of them.

Eventually, I switched my background. But to something plain that I thought was pleasing to the eye. When I made that change, little did I know that I was affecting the Koins and XP I was getting.

So I went back to the Kombat Kard and reconfigured it for a Kotal Kahn player. Now I get Koins for each win, Koins for each win as Kotal Kahn, and Koins for each faction kill. That’s kinda silly, because Brutalities are the ultimate in Mortal Kombat. They’re the combo style attacks that any player worth his salt tries to perform. But if I really want Koins, I actually need to *avoid* the Brutality, because I get more Koins if I do the faction kill. Now I understand why some players online are so eager to go for faction kills. I for one, am kinda tired of the faction kills already. But hey, Koins are Koins.

My plan for faction, is to get level 50 in my current faction, and switch, which I think is what all the cool kids are doing. Supposedly, if you level to 50 in all factions, you get a Kombat Kard modifier that really lets you rake in the Koins. We’ll see. I’m not sure I play enough to ever get 50 in all factions. I just want to see new faction kills.

But again, choice plays a factor. I can get Koins, or I can get faction XP. But not both. Which I think is kinda lame. What do I want to do? Unlock the Brutalities, or do I want to hit fifty and finally see some new faction kills.

The decisions this game puts your through are absolute garbage. Why can’t we just unlock the stupid Brutality by performing it? I mean, Sun God has another Brutality with his projectile, and I want that one as well. But that’s thousands of Koins in the future.

tl;dr Kombat Kards can give XP and Koins. MKX makes you play FPS to unlock the fighting game.

Sun God

Yesterday I decided to take the road less traveled. I decided to play as the Sun God variation of Kotal Kahn. The main draw to this variation had always been the command grab. But the first time I tried it, I’m pretty sure I was doing it wrong. Now that I’m a little more experienced with playing Mortal Kombat X, I decided to give it another try.

But what really encouraged me to try a new variation was a post on reddit, asking for tips on how to play as Blood God. The response was about what I thought it should be. That Blood God kinda sucks. The only thing it really has is the totem, and doing extra damage really doesn’t make up for losing out on the attacks with the obsidian sword, or the ability to command grab. That, and you have to remember that Kotal Kahn has a move where he cuts himself to do extra damage. So the totem is really like a +damage buff on top of a +damage buff. Plus Kotal Kahn is slow. I mean, what are the chances that you’d be able to get both buffs up *and* do damage to your opponent. Most of the time, you have to be really good on your defencive blocking in order to do Kotal Kahn right.

One of the things I like the most about Sun God is how you can use it in your mixups. With War God, it was all about stringing combos and adding a sword hit at the end of them. And while I can do this in practice just fine, I really have trouble landing them in actual play.

Sun God doesn’t get that extra hit at the end. What he gets is the ability to command grab, which really let’s him have corner control. But I say that with a grain of salt, because the command grab gets confusing. The first two times you use it, it puts your opponent on the other side of you. But each time you use it, he adds another hit to the move. So the third time you use it, you pick the guy up again and slam him down on the other side. So command grabs three and four actually *don’t* switch him to the other side. That can be confusing when you’re trying to put your opponent into the corner and keep him there.

Which is where I find Kotal Kahn is best. I’ve beaten some high level players by getting them in the corner and keeping them there. And I think that’s one thing that will always remain the same throughout all variations of Kotal Kahn. He can knock an opponent back, or up in the air. He can do a string with an overhead, or a string with a low.

The other thing that really changes with Sun God is the fact that he can throw a projectile reasonably quickly. With War God, throwing the sword is so slow that even immediately after a full screen throw, a quick opponent can stop your projectile. Sun God’s projectile is still slow, but it’s fast enough to be safe from full screen.

I’m pretty sure it also works if used in a brutality, and it’s an easy brutality, or at least it looks to be identical to Reptile’s brutality. Which I did by accident, many times, simply by killing an opponent with his acid spit projectile.

Now let me tell you the worst thing about the Sun God’s variation. It’s his mace block. You know, those two golden things he’s wearing on his back? Well he can use them like a shield. The move seemed so similar to Jacqui Brigg’s shield in the high tech variation, I thought they were the same move.

Until I used them in a match against Sub Zero. He shot his ice ball, and I used the mace to block it, and I still got frozen. Which kinda pissed me off, because I was very proud of myself for getting the timing right.

So after the match I went into training mode and tried it again. Again it didn’t work. Turns out, his mace block only blocks regular attacks? What’s up with that? How is that even useful? Its only advantage is that it blocks through the chip damage that simply using the block button would take. That’s it. Big whoopty doo.

One aesthetic thing I’ve noticed about Sun God is that he normally has a very cool looking, goldish/yellow kind of color on his lines. Compared to the green glow of War God’s accents. But a funny thing happens whenever you do a fatality with Sun God. His gold flecks fall off. They literally fall off just a moment before the fatality cutscene plays. What’s left behind is a slightly less flashy orange/yellow stripe color.

I’m assuming this was a kind of cheap fix for some kind of frame rate issue they were experiencing.