12/2/2023 0 Comments Killer instinct arcade reviewThis inconsistency isn’t just found in the art direction, but in the visuals as well. Tusk, for example, looks like a first draft for a Conan the Barbarian type character, and the other humans look equally as rushed. Though the non-human characters standout – such as Spinal, a skeletal pirate and Glacius, an alien being with ice powers – the human character designs feel downright uninspired and boring. The character roster is a little bit of a mixed bag. The single player modes greatly suffer due to this AI problem, but Killer Instinct Gold does have enough depth in its combat to help elevate the gameplay higher than it otherwise would be. It’s one thing for a fighting game to be difficult, but in the case of Killer Instinct Gold, it seems like the rules just don’t apply to the AI. I have a friend who’s a big fan of Mortal Kombat, and even he admits that, in that game “the computer cheats.” And it’s basically the same story here in Killer Instinct Gold. I’d get an opponent down to the tiniest shred of health, only for them to get a second wind and immediately bombard me with life-depleting combos. I even lowered the difficulty settings so I could try out different combos easier, and the computer was still able to to have its way more times than I’d like to admit. You’ll frequently be in the middle of an attack, only for the AI’s attack to take priority and render your move useless. If you’re playing Arcade mode, you may find that the computer opponents can interrupt your combos with ease, while you can’t seem to do anything about it if you get caught in your opponent doing the same thing. Especially since Killer Instinct Gold follows Mortal Kombat’s lead in having AI opponents who can seemingly go against the game’s own rules, making single player bouts often feeling more unfair than fun. You can certainly have more fun trying out combos and doing battle with a friend than you can against a computer AI. Killer Instinct Gold, like most fighting games, is better played with a human opponent. The fighting can be fun, but its sense of character control certainly has a “for its day” feel to it. The moves themselves are easy enough to use, though the game does suffer a bit from the stiff character movements that were frequently seen in fighters of the day (floaty jumps, some slowly-performed moves, etc.). The main draw to Killer Instinct, of course, was its emphasis on combos, with pretty much every characters’ moves being able to be linked together if the player can perform them quick enough. In terms of mechanics, Killer Instinct Gold has many of the elements you would expect from the genre: characters have light attacks, heavy attacks, projectiles and special moves, which can be performed with a variety of button presses and combinations. While Killer Instinct Gold can still provide some solid fighting gameplay, it does suffer from many of the shortcomings the genre suffered in the wake of Mortal Kombat’s influence. The first installment went from arcades to the SNES, while Killer Instinct II made its way to the Nintendo 64 in the form of Killer Instinct Gold. While Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat have seen many iterations over the years, Killer Instinct only had two titles to its name back in the day (though the 2013 reboot has helped revive interest in the brand). However, Killer Instinct’s popularity was not to last. Though it never reached the same popularity of those two series, Killer Instinct was a worthy third piece in this equation, with a strong emphasis on combos over its competing series (thus “C-C-C-Combo Breaker!” was born). Killer Instinct was Rare’s answer to the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat craze of the 1990s. *Review based on Killer Instinct Gold’s release as part of Rare Replay*
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |