The Mortal Kombat franchise has had its fair share of bumps over the course of its 20+ year existence. However, Mortal Kombat X isn’t one of them. Building off of the success of the Mortal Kombat reboot, this is the best iteration of the series to-date. This game may no longer be the new hotness, but it still has a large and active community that play it all the time. If you’re just getting off the ground, here’s a few tips to help smooth out the learning curve!
Understanding the concept of frame traps is key to the high-level Street Fighter V experience. Thanks to new tools in training mode, it’s easier to learn than ever. I show you in this quick video how you can use the new guard recover action functionality to learn about frame traps and how you can make frame traps of your own!
Alex Valle’s roots in competitive Street Fighter go all the way back to the first ever Street Fighter world championships where he squared off against Daigo Umehara in the grand finals. While I was certainly starstruck when we fought, I wasn’t going to let him steamroll me off the strength of his legacy. Watch the video to see how I fared against the legend himself!
It’s been a few years since I went to a tournament. However, with the new game out, now’s a great time to test my skills against Toronto’s finest at the Canada East Championships! Hosted by the good folks at Toronto Top Tiers, I’m pretty sure this is the first big Street Fighter V tournament in the city. Taking place tomorrow at the Yorkdale Holiday Inn, my game face will be ready to throw down one more time before Steff and I’s wedding (!). Wish me luck!
Prior to the release of Street Fighter V, I’m taking a sabbatical from Ultra Street Fighter IV to play Mortal Kombat X. It was a Christmas present from Steff that I cracked into as soon as the holiday madness cooled off. So far, I’m loving it. Full review to come, but kudos once again to NetherRealm Studios for knocking another one out of the park.
My biggest hurdle with the game so far has nothing to do with the game itself. Rather, it’s an internal problem that has manifested itself through my success in Street Fighter IV and other fighting games. Right now, I’m trying to overcome my fighting game superiority complex.
After floundering for years, Mortal Kombat got its groove back in 2011. Great graphics for the time, a switch back to 2D fighting and a well-refined battle engine made it a worth rival to the likes of Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Not willing to rest on its laurels, Mortal Kombat X is bigger, bolder, and better than its predecessor in almost every way.
With Street Fighter V just days old, no shortage of players will be jumping to conclusions about which characters are top tier and which ones suck. While it’s fun to have the discussion, it’s probably too early to draw any sort of conclusions. Quite frankly, where characters stand on some general hierarchy means little to me, as I’m far more concerned with the characters I use and the particulars I need to know to beat everyone else.
What I present to you is not a ranking of whose the best. This is my personal rankings based on hype levels. Who am most excited to play as? Who do I not want to touch with a 10-foot pole?
The launch of Street Fighter V has been a disaster. On day one, the servers didn’t work, making the game largely unplayable. Since then, the server issues have continued to improve, though the issues with the game’s paltry feature set still exist. In particular, casual players got hit hardest, as the lack of single player content is maddening. Due to this slight, the user scores for this game have been horrendous, even though the actual gameplay is better than its ever been.
As a hardcore player, it can be easy to be dismissive of the casual gamer’s point of view. For me, it has online play, training mode and 8-player lobbies will be arriving in a few days. I’m good. But for the overall well-being of the game, I should be worried.
Street Fighter V features a new distribution model where Capcom is releasing roughly one new character per month, starting in March. They’re also allowing for the purchase of individual costumes. In real life, it’s $6 US per character and $4 US per costume, which can add up real fast. However, the game also allows you to earn Fight Money, which is in-game currency that can also be used to purchase characters and items.
Having said that, it’s a grind. You gain 50 Fight Money for each online win, but characters cost 100,000 FM, while costumes cost 40,000 FM. There has to be an easier way than simply winning 2,000 matches for the privilege of earning one free character. If you want everything for free, you’re going to have to put in a ton of work to a point where it’s unrealistic for most players to achieve. There are, however, a few tips for gaining a decent chunk of Fight Money quickly.
When I was playing my final retail copy of Street Fighter V before launch, everything was great when it came to its online functionality. Yesterday, it was abysmal. Disconnects everywhere, matchmaking was very slow, and for a while, didn’t work at all.
This sucks for everyone involved. Online games usually have problems at launch, but they ran the beta four times for this! Yet still, it breaks catastrophically. I’m guessing this will be fixed sooner rather than later, though this first night of Street Fighter V in the wild has been depressing.
In Third Person 