With my 3 month Microsoft Game Pass subscription still active I figured I'd try out some more games that were available for the pass for free to play. Since I now have a controller I was keen to trying games that go a lot better with it than keyboard + mouse. Fighting games have been something I've enjoyed a long time ago playing at friend's places usually on consoles, anything from Tekken to Mortal Kombat. When I was a kid we also had Street Fighter on the Super Nintendo that I really enjoyed and played a lot, I remember beating the game with each champion and no matter who of my friends came to visit didn't stand a chance but they probably didn't play it as much as me.
I saw that Killer Instinct was available so I started downloading it. Ever since esports became big I've seen that there are a lot of fighting games that gather a crowd to their tournaments so I was looking forward to try some pvp online as I've never really played online fighting games before. That's something I was looking forward to trying out with this game and of course hoping it'll be just as fun to learn to play it, different moves and combo's and appreciate the graphics of the games today compared to the ones I've been playing and gotten used to in the past.
I started out with some player vs cpu just to get a taste of the gamestyle. Chose the fighter Aria as first and instantly regretted it, just smashing buttons she kept doing this thing where she stands in one place but disappears for a second and reappears that I really didn't like. Later on playing her in PvP it felt like she was doing it with more buttons and combinations which really just annoyed me. I then went on to try some "Improve your Skills" section that had a survival guide but it just seemed way too easy as I expect the difficulty was at its lowest, I was trying one of what I assume is a popular fighter called Jago for this one. This survival thing just kept on going so I played a few more as getting into the new fight felt quick but got a bit old when winning was way too easy with the other fighters not even getting a hit in most of the time.
Recorded in 1440p @ 60fps.
Next I tried this season 2 Rivals thing that had a story mode to it, I chose the fighter TJ Combo and listening to the story line it felt like an old retro game that where trying to guess what the future would be like with AI, augmentation and big tech going evil. I guess it's not that far off that some of these giant companies today are going to choose the dark side but it just felt a bit way too old school and that they could've done a better job being a bit more original there. I guess the story is not what people are buying this game for anyway.
I liked the heavy hitting movements of this fighter, looks really good in 60 fps. Here also unfortunately it felt way too easy but luckily a few fights in I realized I could switch the difficulty before the fight started so kept adjusting it while at one point it did become way too difficult and I had to adjust down. I felt myself not being able to break any of their combo's (not that I knew how neither).
Now was the time for multiplayer action and get myself rekt hard, but that's how you learn the fastest, right? I ran a quick performance test before getting into the online pvp and checked quickly the actual commands and buttons for different moves before getting into the ring. At least this way I couldn't blame it on in-game lag or something when I lose hard.
In this game they had a similar method of finding someone's skill level as in many other games where you're first sent out to play 10 placement games and after having played TJ Combo the most after the recent storyline I went with him at first playing against this max level player's Jago.
That first fight started off bad but somehow I made a nice comeback and to my surprise, my fighter had a "last stand" mode where he gets back up a 3rd time which most other fighters don't and I managed to beat him with about 10% health left. Considering he was level 50 to my level 2 I was of course pretty full of myself at this point thinking "such natural talent, much wow, such going pro" but that quickly was shattered in my next games.
I decided to go through with the 10 placement matches to determine my rank as annoying as it was to constantly fight against max level players. The few who were on the lower level made for some interesting fights but most of the ones I met were gold rank max level who just wiped the floor with me. This was kind of a turnoff as I was expecting there would be more players playing this game, especially since it's cross-platform but I kept meeting the same gold max level player 5-6 times during my placement matches which just demotivated me to play ranked any longer.
All in all it was a good modern fighting game, I felt there was a lot that could've been done better by giving the game more unique moves and button combo's than just making it about doing combo's while the other player tries to break them. It kind of makes the game a lot more about 30+ hits for each side instead of a lot more back and forth but I guess that's what they're going for here with Kill Instinct and the whole combo-breaker theme. I personally wasn't a big fan of this fighting style but I can see others that may be and that the game gets its unique thing from that.
I'm thinking of downloading and trying out a few more fighting games now that I've given this a proper try to compare and see if I like their styles better. If you have any good recommendations please let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading and watching!
