It’s very well documented that I am a bit of a fighting game fanboy – Having sunk 100’s of hours into Tekken, Mortal Kombat X, Injustice & Street Fighter over the past few years, it’s fair to say I like beating people up in videogames as a pastime.
It comes as somewhat of a surprise to me then that no matter how many trailers I see, no matter how many character reveals or fatalities I see – I just do not give a single shit about Mortal Kombat XI.
I’m not sure what it is this time around that’s stopping me caring, maybe it’s the cheesy, Power Rangers-esque plot or that I feel the trailers are showing me fatalities and story plot points I would rather not see without buying the game, but I am struggling to get excited about it.
When it comes to other fighting game sequels, in recent years everything has brought something new to the table which changes the way the game is played. For example, Tekken 7 refined what it meant to be a Tekken player and finetuned everything in the game down to a tee. Injustice 2 added armor bonuses and some sweet DLC characters I would love to play as, whilst Street Fighter V brought with it such a shitstorm of classic character paywalls and adverts that… Well, no, I can’t even defend that one.
I think therein lies the issue with MKXI for me then, every trailer makes the game just look more and more like a cut and paste of MKX with a few new fatalities and a couple of additional characters who should have been in the game in the first place (I’m looking at you Noob Saibot)… And to me the cookie cutter style of sequel-making just feels lazy to me, and I know, I know, I am judging a book by it’s cover here, but I am struggling not to in my head.
Contradictory to all of this however, I do feel compelled to pick the game up to trial the new fatalities for myself and I know that there will be a ton of stuff that the game isn’t giving away in trailers that I will enjoy, but this compulsion is coming to me out of a feeling of obligation to the franchise moreso than actually really wanting to play the game. I know damn well I will sink time into it, and get my skills back as a Noob Saibot main.
I think to boil it all into one concise point, I think that video game trailers in 2019 are giving away a little too much, that’s leaving me less and less hyped about games than ever before – It’s games that I know very little about that’s filling me with intrigue and hype, not ones that are dropping their pants within a few moments of being announced.
Sigh.