So last night at right around 11 pm CST my PS4 digital pre-order unlocked. The problem was, it couldn’t connect to the online servers. Now this isn’t a big deal for me as I’m not really sure how much online matchmaking I’ll be doing, even if that seems to be the focus of the game. What was funny was all the people losing their minds online. I mean, they must never have played ANY MMO at launch. Besides that, for me it was really late and I have to get up for work every morning so I wasn’t planning to play a lot anyways. I did a little training mode and called it a night.
The problem with the server being offline, is that the way you earn money/experience is through playing the game, but it won’t work in offline mode. I simply don’t understand that. I can understand online ranking obviously, but why would it need to have an internet connection for your xp and money? I can understand authentication to prevent hacks, but that’s really the only thing I can think of.
I did get up and play a little bit this morning with no issues with connectivity. So I played through the “story” mode with a couple of characters and then left for work. I say “story” in quotes because it is not the story mode I’m used to. Maybe there is more to it later and it just hasn’t been released, but these felt more like character introductions than an actual story. I’m assuming either the full story unlocks later, after completing all character intros or that mode will be released at a later time.
Graphics wise I think it is similar to Street Fighter 4, though I didn’t play that much. It just looks similar to what I remember. I do think that they’ve changed the controls to be easier for regular, non-pro people to pick the game up. The move list for the 3 characters I played with were not as complex as the ones for Mortal Kombat X were. I was able to pull off most of the moves without much trouble, though there are then ones that have a weird diagram and I can’t consistently pull off.
This brings me to something I’ve wondered about for a while now. Is it better to buy a fight stick/fight pad or use the regular controller. I played this on a fight stick at Pax South and it felt intuitive. I just don’t want to spend a minimum of $60 on a new controller, and that is just the basic controller. The basic fight stick is something like $80 US with the most expensive being around $230 US. The reason I’ve considered this is that the normal PS4 controller seems to be a bit to sensitive on the dpad, where I have the problem of jumping when I’m not meaning to jump. It doesn’t help that all the move lists seem to be designed around people using sticks, not dpads.
Keep in mind these are just initial impressions. I’ve only spent maybe an hour with the game since it was released. I probably won’t get to spend much time on it today, but hopefully over the week I’ll get some more time in with it.