You know what would help them? If they stopped pushing older audience away in pursuit of the new one. They kept reinventing the wheel with each game so much, that entire MK community is fractured into like 6-7 different groups (Traditional OG fans, 3D Era fans, NRS Era fans, Variations fans, Kameos fans, etc.)
Probably the most stupidest way of making sequels to fighting games. Or any game to begin with.
Couldn't even spend time to add modes like Puzzle Kombat. Or more than one "Test Your" series challenge. And it is now always the dumb one. We could have had "Test your sight", "Test your memory", "Test your focus", etc. But nah. Here is more of blind button mashing for you to split an anvil.
Lazy and dumb. Just living off the past glory.
Imagine how awesome it would be if we could customize our own main menu. Have our main fighter in the center on pedestal. Take a page from Tekken 8, but make it better, by allowing us to have the character on a platform that can be rotated or rotates by itself.
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As much as people around here may not believe it, I'm in the camp of OG
AND 3D era.
Contrary to popular belief I DO like the OG cast and don't "hate" them and my sentiment never was to "get rid of them," but rather that I wanted
more of a 50/50 mix of the OG
AND the 3D era ones included, and this game FINALLY started to somewhat give us that.
That's the reason that I'm frustrated when some Reddit 'tard says to "jUsT bE hApPy tHaT tHeY'rE iN" when speaking of kameos because these dense motherfuckers don't know what it's like to have a character gone for nearly 2 decades just to have them show up as a glorified assist / "kameo."
Li Mei, Ashrah, Nitara, Reiko, Havik, Kenshi and Tanya on the main roster, Quan Chi as DLC and then.........Sareena, Darrius, Shujinko and Mavado as.........kameos.
Aside for repeater kameos I have otherwise have 0 qualms with characters like Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Sonya, Kano, Jax, Kung Lao, Frost, Goro, Tremor, Ferra and Motaro being kameos since they were all JUST in either MKX or MK11. It's the same reason I'd be fine with a kameo Nightwolf, Kabal or Sheeva if they would have done those. Fuck, Fujin they could have put in as a kameo and it would have bothered me as much because he was JUST in MK11 as well and I at least have a way to play as him in more recent consoles with MK11.
If I ever want to play as Sareena, Shujinko, Darrius or Mavado in 1 game again, though, I'd have to buy a PS2 and hope that my old ass 2006 copy of Armageddon still works.
I agree with you that I would have liked more "Test Your" series mini games or Puzzle Kombat.
Shit, I was actually kinda hoping that after the tutorial that Cage's Mansion would be a static Mesa in Invasions and that we'd have a way to play some of those mini-games in his arcade room.
Missed opportunity to make Cage's mansion arcade a place to play some of the klassic games or mini-games, imo.
As for the main menu, yeah, that would have been cool to have your own chosen character on a platform like that.