First of all, if you didn’t already know, I wrote a StarCraft 2 Blog. I might link it here. I’m not going to talk too much about StarCraft. I just wanted to mention the concept of Cheese.
Cheese is where you use a really gimmicky attack, which often takes advantage of the enemy not being prepared for it, to win a game before your opponent thought the battle had even begun. If you play on the ladder and win a game by cheese, there’s a good chance you’ll be mocked for having done so.
But if you watch professional StarCraft 2 games, the pros cheese, too. In other words, it’s a completely valid form of gameplay. The crux of the problem is that cheese is usually really easy to perform, even for a noob who has just learned to play. But to defend against cheese takes real skill that a player might have to practice for months to be able to do.
Well Mortal Kombat X also has cheese. Except they don’t call it cheese, they call it Spam, or even Zoning. The best example of this is Jacqui Briggs. Her full auto variation has a four bullet gun shot that you can spam till the cows come home. It’s almost impossible to jump over (althought that level 65 I played against managed to do so). You can duck under it, but Jacqui builds meter every time she shoots, and she can spend a bar to shoot a rocket that can’t be ducked under.
Which basically makes it your typical form of MK cheese. But what I only just learned was that Jacqui Briggs isn’t the only character who can do so. I’ve had a battle against Scorpion, the variation that can summon a minion to attack. Well just the same, Scorpion could spam that minion attack. And just like Jacqui, he can vary it up by having the minion attack from below if he feels you’re a little too comfortable with blocking high.
But not only him. Kung Jin has a similar variation. He can spam his arrows all day, and if you try to jump, he has a kind of glowing ball attack that he can use to stop you from jumping over the arrows to get into attacking range.
One of the reasons why I can understand people hating these attacks is because they rely so heavily on timing to counter. A split second can make the difference between win and loss, between a counter and an pwnage.
Since you know I like to play as Kotal Kahn, this is very dangerous. Sun god or War god, Kotal Kahn’s only projectile is so slow, it will never help in these situations. He has to close the distance. And while this is done easily enough by simply taking a step or two forward in between volleys, your ping better be low enough for you to pull it off.
Because War God Kotal Kahn’s main advantage is his sword, and because his sword attacks are so slow, I decided to give the Sun God variation a day. My main reasoning behind this was his ability to command grab. When an enemy has me trapped in the corner, I would be able to command grab myself out of the situation. Or so I thought.
Turns out the command grab isn’t everything I thought it would be. Either I’m doing something wrong, or the grab simply doesn’t work the way I want it to. But in the course of my playing the new variation, I learned a few new combos that I didn’t really need to learn as War God.
The first is incredibly useful, especially right at the start of the match. Forward front punch, back punch. Do it right, and Kahn will shoulder charge forward, and follow it up with a punch that will knock your opponent across the screen.
The second is Back front punch, back punch, back punch. That’s a three hit combo that Kahn will walk forward while performing. Against, it’s very useful at the start of the match, and it ends with an overhead that many opponents aren’t used to blocking.
I found that I can often spam the first combo to get my opponent into the corner. Then, once he’s there, I can use the second combo to keep him in the corner. Throw in his overhead punch, and a neutral jump punch or two, and in almost no time at all I learned how to win a game by keeping baby in the corner. I even took a match off a level 66 the other day, just by pushing Kahn’s weight around.
But still, his command grab isn’t quite what I thought it would be. I’m now tempted to take the knowledge that I learned back to War God. That variation would let me add an extra sword strike into my combos, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
Kahn also has a running uppercut. In practice mode, I can hit with it the first time, get a second hit while my opponent is still in the air, light punch him twice, and then grab him out of the air for 27% damage. But for some reason, I can never pull it off in an actual match.
If I don’t feel like risking it, I can just uppercut him once and grab him out of the air, but then the damage is only about 20%. I know for a character like Kahn, you really have to take maximum damage every chance you get, so I’m going to keep working on it until I can give the beatdown consistently.
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