So here's the thing, I've been a huge fan of fighting game since around the time Street Fighter II came out in the arcades so I was super excited to get this game. I made sure to get all the DLC stuff, looked up all the reviews about how great it is, and looked up all the moves to memorize and practice just like the 2011 game that had Freddy Krueger in it. I'm not sure why some characters are missing, but one thing that for sure should they forgot about was the functions of the game.
I'll make something clear, I haven't tried it out on the XBox One or PC, so perhaps it might only be a flaw with the PS4 because I've tried it this game on my other friend's consoles with the exact same complaints they also had. The controls feel broken at times, and I've tried other copies of the game so it's highly unlikely that I played multiple defective copies. Performing moves in this game is a total crap shoot at times, which makes me regret not simply renting this game from Redbox before being so disappointed after my purchase.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of some familiar characters, and after Freddy Krueger was missing from this title it made me question if they knew the game sucked so bad that he was only released for the mobile version of Mortal Kombat X. I like some of the added characters, but the character models on a few are done sloppy, like Predator having goofy looking arms and shoulders. It seems like a rushed project that people who button mash ate up without actually mastering all the moves and fatalities for the game, like people who stick with the same 2 characters in any franchise.
I'm not even including my feelings about how all fighting games changed their control schemes to cater with animations and button sequences, I've adapted with how it's nothing compared to the original design because it's just how things are now. Some of the moves are pretty dumb, pressing up to perform moves had been a problem for fighting games since Zangief was introduced and considered one of the least used players in tournaments. The problem with most of the reviews or the majority of the websites promoting this game with high scores is you can tell they're in awe of a couple violent moves but they don't seem to actually be good at the game or brag about each ending or other aspects of the game that you unlock.
The websites that have rated this game high also include strategy guides that have completely neglected the characters you unlock. I noticed it when I was trying to practice all of the fatalities with each character, which is obvious that they didn't review the game and the entire roster of characters properly because they didn't unlock everything. I wouldn't trust the rating of someone who didn't review the game 100%, I regret purchasing this game because people seemed to copycat these gaming sites to the point you could tell they likely watched other people play the game and were in awe of the graphics and animated scenes.
The only thing I noticed right away was when you practice fatalities, the instructions to do one specific fatality for each character seem to work fine and the box underneath is a good guide for beginners who try it out. When you look up the other fatalities, they seem to work when they feel like it, including the classic fatalities for some characters. Regardless if you're pulling off all the other special moves successfully there are some that are obvious proof that the game wasn't fully tested properly.
My suspicions may be with the PS4 version, that after you download all of the bonus content that the game doesn't load everything properly. Like I mentioned previously, it may be fine with PC or XBox One, but there are problems with the PS4 version that make the game a huge disappointment because I unlocked damn near everything within a week of playing the damn thing. I can't be too bad at the game if I was able to do that, my main gripe is with how poor and unresponsive some of the moves are, and they're the fatalities that make Mortal Kombat such a cool franchise so it was the last thing I expected them to screw up on.
Is there some patch that I'm expecting to get anytime soon to correct it? Has anyone who actually unlocked all the features noticed this as well? There is no possible way that I'm alone here, and it explains why the practice modes seem to avoid the flawed moves that obviously weren't tested properly for the PS4 version.
To me this game was a 60% completed title that needed to be properly tested, and while I think the animated scenes look cool that doesn't justify a game with broken controls. This is a franchise that I really love and wanted to brag about, I wanted to hop on the bandwagon to promote this game as one of the best but instead I would never trust the gaming industry that rated it so high. This game is only proof that people are too interested in a few flashy animations, a few cool characters to button mash around with instead of a great title that would promote an even more amazing title reminiscent to the Marvel Vs Capcom franchise.
It seems like they didn't have the license to use some characters because of this development flaw, which if you've experienced the same problem on PC and XBox One, you really have to think how much more this would have sold with Smoke, Baraka, Noob Saibot, Jade, Nightwolf, Stryker, Freddy Kreueger and a few other characters from previous versions. My guess is they knew the developers dropped the ball on this title, possibly played earlier versions and knew they were behind schedule to the point they didn't want those characters to be associated with such a poor release.
Sadly, it's why I gave it such a poor rating that I believe is the beginning of the end if an obvious incomplete title is released as if it's something genuinely special. This game is junk, it has some cool characters but was better off released as an animated short film. This game needed at least another few months to be tested properly, and it's identical why Adam Sandler continues to release movies because people are dumb enough to watch, rent and purchase them.
The promise of an actual great release is thrown in the trash, they're not going to take their time to develop the game and test it properly if this gets rated high. That also means we'll never have a good release of the all our favorite characters, the potential of Michael Myers, Pinhead from Hellraiser and the rumors of Spawn being released in the next version will only result in the actual fans of those special characters being disappointed how terrible the developers are. Don't even think we'll have the chance of any DC characters added, but on the bright side the animations might look nice.