like god, I love how there's this one point where the announcer changes because of the in-universe person overseeing the fight that's so cool

and they ease you into fighters and kameos like any other game by introducing, say, Kung Lao before he gets his razor hat so you have a restricted movelist to learn with and the first fight has no kameos and your first kameos are just one button so you can get used to calling them out

and it's such a good story mode so far like, writing and acting-wise? It feels like a movie, they gave it their all

also, listening to Smoke's fight grunts like "yeah that's Yuri Lowenthal all right". Man has range but is also pretty distinct! One of the few VAs I have a chance of recognizing without being told

Baraka literally has a dial-in that is 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4\

just mash circle/B

(is it good? Not if they duck the first hit! But it's funny as shit)]\

40% through the story according to the activity list

I want to keep playing

why must I sleep and work

there's going to be an annoying little "new thing!" dot on my kustomize menu because I unlocked a thing for a character locked behind story completion lmao

Reptile is so much fun holy shit

auuugh still not done with story

73% and I have to go to bed why

before I go though: lol oops someone forgot to replace this placeholder text

lmaooo that was insane

the final chapter lets you pick your character so I'll replay it sometime as Smoke (went Sub-Zero the first time since I'm most familiar with him)

next up, clearing out the tutorials for the free koins and then onwards to more stuff! Practicing a little bit of combo timing, heading out onto the Invasion boards with TEAM MYTHOLOGIES HELL YEAH

apparently Sareena is a really strong kameo so a lot of people are picking her but fuck it

I did NOT wait this long for her to be present and playable in some capacity to ignore her because other players happen to be sick of her

(and if people are also sick of Sub-Zero or Smoke well fuck that too.)

courage is this NPC who just witnessed Sub-Zero tear his opponent's head off on an ice spear he's now standing with in victory pose...who is standing right behind him, scolding him for...killing someone? Making a mess of the docks? idk

Most NPCs run away or hide in finisher state. Not this dude. Balls of titanium on him

gore warning

switching kameos around a little, and having Cyrax cover an otherwise unsafe launcher with his helicopter spin is fun - and if I GET that launch I can make the opponent land on an ice clone...

by that time gravity scaling has limited my ability to do much off it, thanks to Cyrax's rapidfire juggling

but it's funny. From one trap into another

since it has a long windup, I need to call Cyrax earlier against opponents with long reach like Ashrah or Tanya

Invasions mode made the Pokemon Gen 1 mistake of having the "special" stat affect both attack and defense

I'm putting stats into that one twice as often as the rest and I can basically ignore Sub's weaknesses to fire and electricity

since he just tanks special moves and kameo attacks with it (doesn't hurt that I've also pumped health a fair deal)

went from dying every time a node rolled Sektor or Scorpion kameos to just not caring

results of playing online at last have been...mixed. Which is better than I thought it would be!

Had a Johnny in kasuals whoop my ass and then immediately move on, hopped over to ranked and lost to a Shao fairly badly, then fought a Baraka who gave up after 2 games though both were close (ranked is ft3 in this game).

Today, fought a Kenshi who quickly figured out I'm slow to respond to overhead attacks and won (though, all rounds came close), then a Reptile who kept doing the invisibility teleport - except that always lands overhead far as I recall, so it was some nice upblock practice. They backed off on that in game 2 but I still managed to win

latest was a poor Baraka who I just kept interrupting... I had one daily left towards the goal and I THOUGHT the one to do it would be either entering practice mode 5 times or winning 5 fights (because this time it does count matches, not entire sets like the last game)

but no, it was the one I thought I would never fulfill: "End a round with more than 75% health"

just for swinging low when they were swinging high and happening to swing faster than they were and FOR SOME REASON I am much better about the mid-combo mixup this time around?

Like the variation I used for Noob last game had kind of a built-in mix - his 112 ends in an overhead but 11 can be canceled into a special so with Shadow Slide equipped 11 becomes a guessing game. 112 overhead or 11BF3 low? I ALWAYS did 112 when I wasn't doing the standard hit confirm 113 instead

somehow, not so this time

his reincarnated, newly-living self has 212, ending overhead. 21 can, you guessed it, be canceled. 212 overhead or 21BF3 low? I've been doing both fairly often! it's not a lot of damage but if they're getting hit they're not hitting back...

(in terms of risk/reward low is MUCH riskier than overhead. Guess right on overhead and...well, Sub basically has to block unless you go for something slow enough to interrupt. Guess right on the low Slide? Congrats, you get a free combo! This route does slightly more damage too. Very slight. 13% for overhead route, 15% for low route.

Testing with Cyrax's helicopter.
On hits: Run simultaneously with overhead increases its damage to about the same as the low, but doesn't extend the combo. Running helicopter simultaneously with low interrupts the last hit of Ice Slide, decreasing its damage to 12%.

On block: Run alongside the overhead route, this pushes the opponent out of range. Alongside the low route is a MISTAKE on the Sub/Cyrax team's part because if you blocked that you're crouching, meaning Cyrax will just go over you and you're free to punish Ice Slide as normal

Just don't stand up too soon

the Hourglass stage is a nice training stage. The track has a slow methodical beat

Attempted to learn Smoke for a week, had fun in single player mode but apparently Kombat League was filled with my exact team (Smoke/Sareena) for all of week 1 and people hate it so I was too chicken to try them out online. Maybe next time. But next week! Reptile/Frost! Does Reptile need more combo starters? idk! But I'm giving them to him anyway.

(maybe if work isn't so exhausting the next week I try them...)

also coming back to the Sub/Cyrax thing I was testing above, apparently just the normal helicopter will extend off the portion of Ice Slide where Sub lifts his opponent off the ground? May be corner-dependent? If I ever come back to that team I'll try that out.

Have played one set with Reptile/Frost so far. Was against Nitara, so the ability to just put slow-moving projectiles on screen was nice, but the other player was much more comfortable with her than I was with Reptile. went 1-3 so hey, there's that. I didn't get swept!

the connection decided to shit itself halfway through the set though. Last two matches felt like we were playing underwater

idk if it was as bad on their end or what

wtfffff I get matched up with a player, they beat me pretty handily for 2 games, afk for a round in a third, and then quit. I did not deserve that win!!! They were beating me!

clearly that was RL obligation happening but still

that sucks

I want to know how tf my first opponent tonight managed to quit the session without my end playing the Quitality animation

(it wasn't a desync or connection drop, it was literally "[opponent] left the session")