I’ve been playing some fighting games last week, funnily
enough…
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Mad as a fish.
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The main game I’ve been playing on the PS4 lately is
Injustice 2, a fighting game based on one of the DC storylines. Years ago, in
2013 I played Injustice: Gods Amongst Us on the Xbox 360, and I really enjoyed
it at the time – but this was before I was doing my blog anywhere near as
regularly as I’m doing it now. In actual fact I only published five blogs that
year, before the No Game New Year event really began to develop the drive and
structure in my writing. The result is the position I find myself in, writing a
700-word blog every week as I’m playing the next-gen sequel to a pretty good
fighting game. I’ve really enjoyed this one as well, not least because I’ve been
able to play it with Kirsty – it’s not often that we play video games together,
but when we do it’s a lot of fun. The thing is, we take very different approaches
to playing through the game. I like to learn a few moves and combos, and some
of the real fun in Injustice comes from finding the environment interactions
and using them to great effect so I like doing that to and getting through the
game that way. It works fairly well. Kirsty doesn’t necessarily know how to
find all the special moves and combos but does know how to press all the
buttons until something falls over, and it works about as well as playing
methodically.
Of
course, the Super Moves are spectacular and we really enjoy doing them, and
seeing which character does what. Highlights include Green Lantern’s super
move, which looks brutal, and Harley Quinn’s, which is quite representative of
her madness even though she’s turned face for this game. At the time of writing,
we’ve played through the story mode twice and got both endings, which I won’t
spoil but it does a fine job of blurring the lines between morals and necessity.
I’m also trying to play through Injustice 2’s equivalent of the Ladder mode – I
thought they’d omitted this, but it turns out it’s in the Multiverse mode, and
I’m playing through with each character to try to get their endings. So far, I’ve
got six – but at the point I’ve got them all, I’ll consider the game “beaten”
for my purpose.
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I suspect that number of wins is going
to go down by quite a bit... |
I haven’t been having quite as much success with Mortal
Kombat II, though. The problem I’m having is quite common with the Mortal
Kombat and Netherrealm games – horribly cheap difficulty spikes. The game
requires you to beat all 12 playable fighters, to begin with. Notwithstanding
the fact that most of the special moves don’t work properly as your opponents almost
always block or dodge them, you can beat the required 12 fights without trying;
even Shang Tsung is nowhere near as powerful as he was in the first game. Then
you’re put against Kintaro, and you might as well go home at that point. Your
attacks do half the usual amount of damage, his moves are disgustingly powerful,
and he has a jump/stomp attack that you have about 1/14
th of a second
to react to and is absolutely devastating if it hits. Even the usual cheap tactics
of jump kicking doesn’t work well, since if you land too close to Kintaro he
just picks you up and throws you. The only way I’ve found to beat him – and this
has only happened once, not enough to win a match – is to freeze him with Sub-Zero,
which leaves him open to an uppercut which is your most powerful attack. It works
sparingly at best, since actually doing the freeze move with Sub-Zero leaves
you open to the jumping stomp attack. This isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat II is
a bad game; as a multiplayer experience it’s excellent and I have fond memories
of playing this with my brother when we were both well into adult life. But it’s
a very hard game in single player mode!
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