Araphel wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 9:53 pm
I feel like what makes fighting game animations cool or impactful is that they look unrealistic. Characters don’t move like humans so naturally they have to move in ways that are more about feeling right to a player and for gameplay. Realism should take a back seat to game feel imo. Real people punch too slow for the speed of videogames it’s why mk looks so choppy.
One of my favorite looking games is marvel vs capcom 2 where all the characters feel more like they’re comic book posing than moving and it makes the game feel so fluid despite its age!
The thing is, it's not like you can't do realistic actions or use motion capture in fighting games
Tekken's Lidia is praised for the accuracy of her Karate, and that accuracy was achieved by having a famous Karate master do her motion capture. It's just that the animators made small tweaks to ensure the motions still looked good and readable as Fighting Game speeds. Unlike Mortal Kombat which does weightless flailing or outright fastforwards the motion capture to achieve the speeds needed for gameplay
EcoHound wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 8:06 pm
Also Ed Boon still defends the animations of modern Netherealm games, saying that they're perfectly realistic and people who say they look bad are "too used to cartoons"
So I would say it's not a purposeful "legacy art" choice
i don't think we can take ed boon seriously
terminator low kick.jpg
I misremembered the quote AAAAA
It just feels like there's such a disconnect that Boon refuses to do anything about.
He wants a super realistic look without any of the animation tricks to make sure things look good in motion while at fighting game speeds.
But Mortal Kombat is a game where brightly colored ninjas rip each other to pieces like everything's made of wet tissue paper.
And until they let go of that "always anatomically correct" doctrine, it's just not gonna look good.
EcoHound wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 8:06 pm
Also Ed Boon still defends the animations of modern Netherealm games, saying that they're perfectly realistic and people who say they look bad are "too used to cartoons"
So I would say it's not a purposeful "legacy art" choice
i don't think we can take ed boon seriously
terminator low kick.jpg
I misremembered the quote AAAAA
It just feels like there's such a disconnect that Boon refuses to do anything about.
He wants a super realistic look without any of the animation tricks to make sure things look good in motion while at fighting game speeds.
But Mortal Kombat is a game where brightly colored ninjas rip each other to pieces like everything's made of wet tissue paper.
And until they let go of that "always anatomically correct" doctrine, it's just not gonna look good.
while i dont personally enjoy playing mortal kombat am i crazy for thinking it looks satisfying in its own super fucked up way when i see people who are good at it? its uhhhhh... unlike anything else...
This is the fighting game thread, everyone here has faves that they know intellectually aren't perfect, but still love them regardless. For all my objections about MK's animations, it's still a joy to watch top rank players duke it out!
I'm always bummed about MK, because, look. Yes, the animations are bad. Yes, the gameplay is weird. Yes, people getting PTSD from all the violence sucks. It feels like every time you say something positive about MK, you always have to preface whatever you say with this stuff so that nobody gets the wrong idea. That said
I really, really wish that they gave the MK franchise to literally anybody who cared just a little more, because I feel like the franchise has a lot of untapped potential. I think -- and I'm being serious here -- that the recent MK games have had the most stylish, distinctive characters of about any modern fighting game I can think of, except maybe Guilty Gear. You've got the way they interact with each other, you've got the way they develop game by game -- at least before they get rebooted, which really sucks, you've got the non-fighting animations they put so much work into, which really do try to sell you the character and what they do.
And while I'm not... the biggest fan of how they control, what I really have to make a hill on for MK is that it tries to really innovate. I mean, even the best fighting games of the last generation are kind of just iterating and streamlining what came before. MK has always these wild ideas, it really feels like it's trying to push the envelope more than any other fighting game franchise.
You've got stuff like Krushing Blows, where doing certain things during a match will give a one-time boost to some of your moves. You've got MK11 literally letting you set up a custom loadout of moves, or instead of a super meter, you've got different meters you can spend for defensive and offensive mechanics, which I thought was really neat. Not to mention some really neat ideas for character moves. Just off the top of my head, you've got Baraka, who literally has a war banner he put down and pick up for specific, more powerful specials -- I might be wrong, but I can't think of any other recent fighting game character who does that.
And sadly, it doesn't mean a whole lot in the end, because these games are just so offputting to the sorts of people who might put some serious time in them. And I really don't think they have to be! I think there's a really good underlying foundation there that's constantly being buried by the old guard keeping what's fundamentally wrong about these games from getting the changes they need. I'd really love to see this series go to somebody who could find a way to make it a little easier to swallow without making it lose what I think is cool about it, but that doesn't really seem likely.
The only game I can really think of that's ever really tried to apply that sense of innovation and style to a more... palatable fighting game is Killer Instinct. I miss Killer Instinct so much dude it hurts.
Last edited by Bobinator on Sat Aug 02, 2025 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
EcoHound wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 11:47 pm
The itch to learn fighting games has returned
DAMN YOU SOCIAL ANXIETY WHY WON’T YOU LET ME PLAY ONLINE WITH RANDOS?!
I've been having a really good time on the Discord server scratchingway was talking about! Real nice folk who were happy to whoop my butt and didn't complain about any of the cheap gimmicks I fall back on when I panic.
[edit] Oh man, the Armor King gameplay trailer looks siiiiiick, gimme gimme gimme! I wanna be the bad jaguar!
Big Hazama inspo for me this top 8, J-Anson makes his movement look so effortless. Makes me excited to play him more!
The VOD doesn't show it but Fenrich held the whole bracket up for like 1 1/2 hours because he was in another top 8 so now it's vendetta forever
