We've talked quite a bit about remakes over the last few weeks, so I guess now is as good a time as ever to also look at a reboot.
Reboots have some similarities to remakes, but they are most certainly not the same. Whereas a remake tends to stick with similar plot or gameplay mechanics from its original, reboots tend to change one or both of those things entirely. Moreover, they are created with the express purpose of doing so. A lot of video game series have done this over the years, Mortal Kombat is the first one that comes to mind. I have heard some folks say the Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually a reboot. It isn't, because reboots typically erase all previous cannon and FFVIIR doesn't, but it does feel like one in a lot of ways. I don't want to get too far into it, because we could go all day talking about hard reboots vs. soft reboots and other minutia like that. Instead, I want to focus on the 2013 reboot of Killer Instinct, a game that I always wanted to check out but has eluded me until now.
Developed by Rare, the original KI hit arcades in 1994 before being ported to the SNES a year later. It was an instant hit, largely because it stood out in an era full of second-rate and rip-off fighting games. KI was one of the few fighting games of the era that I would not classify as a straight up Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat clone, it was probably closer to MK than SF but KI was its own thing entirely. It featured what nowadays would be referred to as dial-a-combos, where you perform combos by landing a hit and entering a series of button commands. MK would eventually go this route as well, but KI was the first big time title to implement something like this. It kind of fit with the Genesis version of Eternal Champions in terms of violence level, it had blood and fatalities but they weren't nearly as graphic as those in MK. It had an outstanding soundtrack influenced by a variety of musical genres, heavy metal, hip hop, techno and everything in between. The characters were unique and different, sure you had your basic ninja and girl in a tight-fitting outfit, but you also had a dinosaur, werewolf, skeleton and what I can only describe as a guy made of fire. And who could forget the announcer? C-c-c-c-c-COMBO BREAKER! We all remember that right? Anyway, KI did a great job of standing out from the pack right from the jump. I will say that while I always liked Killer Instinct, I didn't love it. Believe me, it was way better than most fighters of the era. But I would just never choose it over the big two. I don't really like dial-a-combos all that much and I always felt that it was a bit unbalanced.
KI would get a sequel in 1996, but after that the series would go dormant. I am sure part of that had to do with Microsoft's purchase of developer Rare, which we also won't go into as its also probably its own post (maybe even its own series). The previously Nintendo-exclusive developer got to keep its IPs, including KI, and began releasing them on various XBox consoles. I don't know why it took them so long to create a new Killer Instinct, but in 2013, with much fanfare, it finally happened. Honestly, I think they did a pretty good job of adapting the series for better and for worse. It retains all of the ridiculousness of the first two games, the crazy announcer, the insane characters, the 30 hit combos, all of the madness KI fans would look for in a reboot. However, it also includes a lot of the issues that the original games presented as well. I often talk about how critical reception and gamer reception of certain games don't match up, but they very much did here. KI got okay to good reviews, and I think that's about right. I definitely had a lot of fun with KI and I appreciated the attempts to add more things to do. But I don't think I would put it amongst the top fighting games of the era and I'm not sure I would choose to play it over Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11, Injustice or others.
I will say the game is about as technically well made as you could hope. I kind of expect this from modern games made by top level developers, but that doesn't change the fact that this game looks and sounds great. The graphics are outstanding, the characters are well designed and detailed and have been changed just enough from their original incarnations that they feel unique and fresh. Just about every character returns from the previous games, with Jago, Orchid, TJ Combo, Spinal, Tusk, Maya, Kim Wu, Riptor, Cinder, Chief Thunder, Glacius, Cinder, Saberwulf and Fulgore are all here, as are boss characters Eyedol and Gargos. They are joned by Sadria, Kan-Ra, Omen, Arganos, Hisako, ARIA, Rash, Arbiter and Eagle. Not all of these characters were available at the game's launch, but I would guess that there won't be any more added. The sound is great as well, many of the tracks are callbacks to those from the original KI and they all perfectly fit their stages. The controls are tight, the menus are relatively easy to navigate, the hit detection is fair, everything is just so well done and there are very few, if any technical flaws.
My biggest issue with Killer Instinct was, well, the same issue I had with the original Killer Instinct. I talked a little bit about the dial-a-combo system and how it essentially defines the series. During the training sessions, the game makes this system sound unbelievably complex and difficult with all the manuals, starters, enders, liners, etc. I am sure at the highest levels, that proves to be the case. But when playing against the computer or a normal player, it always feels like button mashing is a perfectly viable strategy. I guess it's not button mashing in the traditional sense, where you just press stuff. It's more like, for lack of a better term, intelligent button mashing. The dial-a-combo system here is pretty modular, with many different moves allowing you to extend combos. So, because of this, sometimes it's better to just, press something rather than try and maximize damage and risk dropping your combo. I've always found this to be an issue with KI and it was on full display here. The fighting actually feels pretty technical at first, because hitting with an opener is so, so important. It isn't always that easy to get that first hit, but once you do it's relatively easy to start a combo, hit a few buttons and pull off tons of damage. You may not get the perfect, ideal combo, but you will still melt your opponent in short order. In MK, you need to enter and exact string to prevent dropping your combo. But in KI pretty much any button press will more likely than not keep some level of chain going. I should mention there is something called Combo assist in this version, but I can't figure out what it actually does. I turned it off and felt no major difference in the combos I was able to string together.
I am sure if someone that's a top-level KI player, or even a decent KI player probably read the above paragraph and thought "obviously, a noob wrote that and misses the point of KI's combo system." That's true, but it's also kind of part of the problem. I didn't play very much online, but this strikes me as a game where someone like me would just get absolutely destroyed by someone that knows what they are doing while never losing a round to another masher. I can't really explain it any better than because of its nature, it's impossible to just be okay at KI. It feels like you can either mash or be a hardcore experts and nothing in between. This kind of makes it seem like there's no reason to pick the game up unless you want to be a hardcore expert. Again, I haven't ever played against a hardcore KI expert. But no matter what difficulty I played on, I lost a grand total of one match against the computer. As someone that had never played the game before, that shouldn't have happened.
I have to give them credit for the amount of different modes on offer. You have the standard one player ladder, where you battle through a list of computer opponents. You can unlock different items by completing certain objectives, like performing an ultra combo on a specific opponent. You can just fight a single one on one battle, either versus the computer or an opponent. Of course, you have your online modes as well. Much of the single player content comes in the form of Shadow Lords. You choose a team of three fighters, completing various missions to prevent Gargos from gaining the power he needs to invade the earth. You need to manage your character's stats and health as you battle enemy after enemy. Winning fights will reward you with items to power up your character and keep you healthy, so there is a strategy/RPG component going on here. It isn't the deepest, but it's a nice diversion. There are a handful of additions to the fighting, like shadow moves, to help it stand out from the original games in the series.
At the end of the day, KI was a solid experience that I would go back to from time to time. Sometimes its fun to just throw down with a dinosaur hitting easy to perform 30-hit combos while a crazy announcer screams random stuff at the top of his lungs. Maybe I will boost the score a little bit after playing some more, but for now I can't really call KI anything better than good. That said, it's not bad and has a certain charm to it, just like the older Killer Instinct games. They all have to be given credit for standing out in a genre where that is difficult to do, even if they weren't the best fighting games out there.
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