okay. OKAY.
third attempt at a review. this time i will try to be as fair yet firm as possible without referring to how i would not undo 9/11 to torture ed boon or how this game makes me want to die a painful sudden and slow death. i'm going to try and be like, something approaching neutral tone about this.
this game has potentially one of the best fighting game engines of any game in the past like 10 years. and the tutorial is great at educating you to all these concepts, both simple and complex. i like the story. i could say a lot about it but it's been like 90 months since i played this game correctly so i barely even remember the story beyond "i liked it" and "it had character arcs" and "it made me feel emotions". this is how a normie talks about marvel movies. surely that must be good right.
this game is just also simultaneously the worst kind of video game in basically every respect. this game is borderline devoid of content without an internet connection. this game is going to be a wasteland when the servers go down. hell, if you're reading this, you already missed the boat on a significant amount of content in this game that you'll never get to experience if you hadn't been playing from the start. FOMO murders everything we love and has made this game adopt an unsustainable model of "season exclusive kosmetics and brutalities! play this game 7 hours a day to get everything and not miss out! never stop engaging with our product! this is a FOREVER game!"
and you know what? they got me. i'm not above it. i'm not too proud or cool to admit sometimes the predatory game models swallow me whole. i'll admit it: i've bought time krystals in this stupid fucking game. multiple times. all because some kosmetics that are otherwise nearly impossible to obtain were available and i thought "i'm going to really hate myself if i don't get these now". you won NRS. you won triple A video games. i am now part of the problem.
all of this is rooted in a deeply misappropriated love of fighting games. i love MK11 as a fighting game. i hate it as an actual video game. towers of time do not constitute engaging singleplayer content. the story is good, great even. but that only gets you so far. and once you're done there, you're stuck with a game that you need a constant internet connection to play meaningfully. you're going to eventually have a game that will never be playable. art preservation as a movement weeps every time a game like this gets released because there is genuinely so much content in this game that eventually will be inaccessible without hacking/modding the game. FOMO, again, murders everything we love. i've spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this game, doing all the character towers, doing all the towers of time, and there's still content i will never be able to access because i wasn't playing this game from launch. i cannot think of a single more spiteful thing i've ever experienced in a video game, both to me and to the actual staff of NRS that worked on this content i'll never get to witness. all that effort for nothing. art sectioned off. nothing matters. it's all ultimately pointless.
fuck it. i don't recommend this game. play it if you want. i didn't recommend it to you. i suggest you just play something whole and complete that has everything available to you, whether it be from the jump or unlockable in-game. play anything but this game. do it for me. do it for the staff of NRS who got crunched, one of which saw so much gore working on this game that it traumatized them to the point of needing to seek help. don't play this great, enjoyable, fun at its core game. i am the warning on the back of a pack of cigarettes. here, let me show you a pair of lungs ravaged by cancer. scary, huh?
third attempt at a review. this time i will try to be as fair yet firm as possible without referring to how i would not undo 9/11 to torture ed boon or how this game makes me want to die a painful sudden and slow death. i'm going to try and be like, something approaching neutral tone about this.
this game has potentially one of the best fighting game engines of any game in the past like 10 years. and the tutorial is great at educating you to all these concepts, both simple and complex. i like the story. i could say a lot about it but it's been like 90 months since i played this game correctly so i barely even remember the story beyond "i liked it" and "it had character arcs" and "it made me feel emotions". this is how a normie talks about marvel movies. surely that must be good right.
this game is just also simultaneously the worst kind of video game in basically every respect. this game is borderline devoid of content without an internet connection. this game is going to be a wasteland when the servers go down. hell, if you're reading this, you already missed the boat on a significant amount of content in this game that you'll never get to experience if you hadn't been playing from the start. FOMO murders everything we love and has made this game adopt an unsustainable model of "season exclusive kosmetics and brutalities! play this game 7 hours a day to get everything and not miss out! never stop engaging with our product! this is a FOREVER game!"
and you know what? they got me. i'm not above it. i'm not too proud or cool to admit sometimes the predatory game models swallow me whole. i'll admit it: i've bought time krystals in this stupid fucking game. multiple times. all because some kosmetics that are otherwise nearly impossible to obtain were available and i thought "i'm going to really hate myself if i don't get these now". you won NRS. you won triple A video games. i am now part of the problem.
all of this is rooted in a deeply misappropriated love of fighting games. i love MK11 as a fighting game. i hate it as an actual video game. towers of time do not constitute engaging singleplayer content. the story is good, great even. but that only gets you so far. and once you're done there, you're stuck with a game that you need a constant internet connection to play meaningfully. you're going to eventually have a game that will never be playable. art preservation as a movement weeps every time a game like this gets released because there is genuinely so much content in this game that eventually will be inaccessible without hacking/modding the game. FOMO, again, murders everything we love. i've spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this game, doing all the character towers, doing all the towers of time, and there's still content i will never be able to access because i wasn't playing this game from launch. i cannot think of a single more spiteful thing i've ever experienced in a video game, both to me and to the actual staff of NRS that worked on this content i'll never get to witness. all that effort for nothing. art sectioned off. nothing matters. it's all ultimately pointless.
fuck it. i don't recommend this game. play it if you want. i didn't recommend it to you. i suggest you just play something whole and complete that has everything available to you, whether it be from the jump or unlockable in-game. play anything but this game. do it for me. do it for the staff of NRS who got crunched, one of which saw so much gore working on this game that it traumatized them to the point of needing to seek help. don't play this great, enjoyable, fun at its core game. i am the warning on the back of a pack of cigarettes. here, let me show you a pair of lungs ravaged by cancer. scary, huh?