Smell the roses
October 14th 2010 23:49
“Shape the future!”
-- displayed above the game board in Dissidia: Final Fantasy’s story mode
Mortal Kombat, scheduled for release next year, shares a name with its ancestor, a Super NES game that debuted in the same year as Magic: the Gathering. But the trailer videos all over YouTube show a game that very much belongs to this century. Scorpion and Sub-Zero, once palette-swapped near-clones, now have unique weapons and fighting styles, and costumes whose detail goes all the way down to demonic sigils on the former ninja’s belt and icy mist rising from the latter’s gloves. Each character has a pre- and post-match ritual, and a celebration when they win a non-decisive round. This is before you even get to the stages, which look and behave like they would in “real life.” The crowd in Shao Kahn’s Arena cheers and heckles combatants, the gears in the Bell Tower actually turn, and there’s this one video of Johnny Cage in action where you can see a guy being lowered into the Dead Pool, and the skin melting off his body as he submerges in the acid. 2011’s Mortal Kombat seems to be the game Ed Boon always wanted to make, but there was never the technology to actually do it until now.
And yet it still feels like you expect a Mortal Kombat game to feel. The creators seem to have been successful in embracing new technology and game design conventions while preserving everything that was great about the franchise’s early years. Other long-running series, including Magic, should take note. We didn’t take it up because we wanted to smack our friends down and see our name in the top eight section of a tournament list (well, most of us didn’t). We took it up to be part of an experience – to see the sights and hear the sounds of Dominaria, to be told a story and to make our own stories.
Whoever came up with some of Magic’s recent gimmicks – Shards of Alara’s story-based design, Zendikar’s hidden treasures, Scars of Mirrodin’s watermarks, and Mirrodin Besieged’s “affiliated” booster packs for the pre-release – deserves all the praise they get. Yet these moves come not long after an era, in both design and marketing, where technical play often trumped flavor and new players were taught from day one that the right way to build a deck was to pick a strategy and axe your favorite cards if they didn’t fit it. I wonder if they come too late for some of our fellow fans.
-- displayed above the game board in Dissidia: Final Fantasy’s story mode
Mortal Kombat, scheduled for release next year, shares a name with its ancestor, a Super NES game that debuted in the same year as Magic: the Gathering. But the trailer videos all over YouTube show a game that very much belongs to this century. Scorpion and Sub-Zero, once palette-swapped near-clones, now have unique weapons and fighting styles, and costumes whose detail goes all the way down to demonic sigils on the former ninja’s belt and icy mist rising from the latter’s gloves. Each character has a pre- and post-match ritual, and a celebration when they win a non-decisive round. This is before you even get to the stages, which look and behave like they would in “real life.” The crowd in Shao Kahn’s Arena cheers and heckles combatants, the gears in the Bell Tower actually turn, and there’s this one video of Johnny Cage in action where you can see a guy being lowered into the Dead Pool, and the skin melting off his body as he submerges in the acid. 2011’s Mortal Kombat seems to be the game Ed Boon always wanted to make, but there was never the technology to actually do it until now.
And yet it still feels like you expect a Mortal Kombat game to feel. The creators seem to have been successful in embracing new technology and game design conventions while preserving everything that was great about the franchise’s early years. Other long-running series, including Magic, should take note. We didn’t take it up because we wanted to smack our friends down and see our name in the top eight section of a tournament list (well, most of us didn’t). We took it up to be part of an experience – to see the sights and hear the sounds of Dominaria, to be told a story and to make our own stories.
Well, maybe not all the sounds.
Whoever came up with some of Magic’s recent gimmicks – Shards of Alara’s story-based design, Zendikar’s hidden treasures, Scars of Mirrodin’s watermarks, and Mirrodin Besieged’s “affiliated” booster packs for the pre-release – deserves all the praise they get. Yet these moves come not long after an era, in both design and marketing, where technical play often trumped flavor and new players were taught from day one that the right way to build a deck was to pick a strategy and axe your favorite cards if they didn’t fit it. I wonder if they come too late for some of our fellow fans.
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