Every time a new Mortal Kombat arrives I think this is it: the one that’ll be so freaking gross I can’t stomach it anymore. MK1 threatened to be that game when Netherrealm trotted out a fatality montage to show off its latest skin-shredding tech, but playing it at Summer Game Fest, the gore didn’t give me the same ick.
The dismemberments of Mortal Kombat are just punctuation, an eternal exclamation point at the end of every match. While I was playing this one, the sentence that kept running through my mind over and over was: this is going to be the best year for fighting games ever.
Mortal Kombat 1 is more polished than a crystal skull, almost as if Netherrealm could have just made a fighting game in its sleep and used the bulk of the last few years to focus on flair. The detail on these faces? Johnny Cage’s cakes? The way two fighters square off in a short cutscene that masks loading, before flowing seamlessly into the fight? Mirror sheen.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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