How NOT to beat Shao Kahn in MK9
0With Mortal Kombat 11 having just been released and looking mighty fine on all platforms, I felt compelled to get up to speed with the endearingly cheesy storyline of this rebooted trilogy which launched with MK9 in 2011.
The trouble is, my experience with the fighting genre is still extremely limited despite having played video games for 30+ years. I couldn't differentiate a high punch from a low kick if my life depended on it, and any combo requiring more than three consecutive inputs is pretty much off the table given my non-existent muscle memory. To make matters worse, I don't do particularly well under pressure and am prone to ineffectual button mashing panic when my character's health bar gets low and split second decisions mean the difference between staying in the fight or losing yet another round.
After 20 gruelling hours, I somehow made it through MK9's story mode on the regular difficulty level. About two thirds into the campaign, I got stuck for 5 hours - yes, you read that right! - on a single boss fight (MK9's version of the last encounter from MK2, if I'm not mistaken). To immortalize this mortifying event, here's a comparatively brief excerpt from my desperate struggle with MK9 (and yes, the second Shao Kahn fight in the game was also tricky and took me around 2 hours to beat).