Game:

Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004)

Duration: 5:35

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3

Phew, I think all the ancillary details of "what's going on here?" and "this looks like Puzzle Fighter" and "this game exists?!" as well as a relatively belabored and belated explanation on HOW the game plays are out of the way and we can actually focus on the game itself and what it really "means" to go toe-to-toe with an actual kombatant.

Just so conveniently, it also happens that it took this long for us to encounter an actual kombatant. I think the first three rounds kinda just rolled over for me. You will hopefully understand and agree with my choice of difficulty as we progress onward. Hey, at least I didn't pick the easiest setting for this one, although that's just a good choice all around, since any easier and enemies will ALL simply roll over and die most of the way through and nobody will learn anything except that I'm a bully who makes a habit of only picking fights I'm sure to win. (I prefer the label of "ninja" over "bully" in those cases.)

In reality, it's really hard to find a decently balanced act to keep one opponent from getting totally snowed over... the real truth of the matter is that even 50% difficulty opponents start to become more than a match for me. After some experimentation and a lot of painful losses on one side or the other, I think this run strikes the right kind of balance.

It's too bad I can't select an opponent and an AI difficulty, because I'd actually love to do a series of character breakdowns on the cast of Puzzle Kombat. The fact that Jade and Raiden got bowled over without so much as a peek at what they can do bugs me, plus there's a whole row of playable characters (minus Scorpion) that won't be doing righteous kombat against me.

Mind you, it's not IM-possible to do a character coverage series as it is, but the way the sub-mode is set up is definitely acting against it... also I don't know how well I would be able to gather representative features into footage, much less how interesting such an analysis might be.

Plus... I'm not exactly the most qualified instructor, but I believe I fall in the weird gap between the dueling contradictory adages: "those who can, teach" and "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" (...just not "those who can't teach, teach gym") in that I know I'm not always the best doer, but I'm a fairly often an okay explainer, and if I think I can explain, I do. (Whether or not you wanted me to. Too bad!)

You don't want to know how ugly it gets if I explain when I really can't. Oh wait, that's me all the time! ("Toasty!")

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Stage 4: Bo' Rai Cho

Hey! I knew it! I DID manage to use a Jumble this go through, AND it happens to be a rather illustrative.case all around... the "all around" part means that it demonstrates the potential positive application more clearly than one might be inclined to imagine from the outset... it also manages to point out one of the major potential pitfall in its use.

To break things down a bit more specifically, Jumble can be used immediately after the opposing player makes a drop, but shockingly BEFORE a Breaker activates. However, the random nature of Jumble itself and the four-color gameplay and piece distribution will result in healthy odds that a jumble will cause a clear of indeterminate strength anyway. Just a little food for thought, but hopefully the humble Jumble can earn your respect in theory. It's also pretty cheap to activate, so it's a fun option to have tucked away. (Unfortunately, this means I'll have to be watching my opponent's field if I'm going to use it well.)

All this manages to touch upon the seemingly cruel nature of what this game considers to be "random"... and I do realize the inherent flaw in trying to gauge randomness when the human condition amounts to making order from the orderless and trying to draw upon patterns rather than noticing just how unpatterned things (theoreticay) are... well, that and as I've had occasion to mention about Avalanche ongoing alongside this, you'll remember things that don't go your way and the things that don't much manage to recall things that go according to plan.

In this case, I'm uncertain about the randomness of the piece distribution in this game. That is, you can go a really long time without ever seeing a Breaker or you can get a whole slew of them on your field all at once that you don't want to waste so soon. It even goes down to the frequency of these Breakers by color where by the time I'll finally get the color I wanted, I'll have inevitably buried the lead or gotten an enemy attack that did so for me. (And I haven't even begun to think of how it works when you factor in those pieces!) I guess what I'm trying to say is... I'm watching you, Puzzle Kombat.

Food for thought: Puzzle Fighter in fact actively adjusts the drop pattern to help the losing player. It has to give both players the same pieces in the same order, of course... but the newest upcoming pieces are decided by their usefulness to the one in more danger.