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Gargamel Gibson
Apr 24, 2014

Yeet posted:

Raiden, who is the probably the most central figure in MK lore, only got a few minutes of screen time and a really weird over the top Japanese accent. It almost sounded cartoonish-ly racist, at one point I expected him to blurt out FLIED LICE

:eyepop:

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Communist Thoughts
Jan 7, 2008

Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!


I for one think scorpion v subzero is the most boring part of the MK story.
Its OK as a cliche to give the ninjas a reason to fight but it's not anything to focus on.

Where the gently caress is the proper yellow man cyrax

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Dog_Meat posted:

Slightly off topic, but I totally agree with this. I'm in my 40s, so "my" Mortal Kombat was 1-3. My friend's 11 year old son somehow got hold of one of the newer ones as we assumed it would be the same cartoony violence we grew up with.

Jesus loving Christ...

I know that part of the problem is just me growing up and becoming the modern day version of the pearl clutchers back in the 90s who demanded the blood be turned off, but there's a vindictiveness and torture-porn feeling about the game now. I grew up watching the original nasty-as-gently caress Robocop movies so graphic violence has always been hilarious, but there's something in the tone that just sits 'wrong' with me.

Then again, if I was a kid I'd think it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen and we'd be talking in the playground about all the amazing finishing moves and competing to be the first to see the next horrific scene and calling bullshit on eachother

I'll always remember the most insightful thing Yahtzee ever said was his discussion of Manhunt. He said this is not a game any child should be playing and yet it's clearly made for children. He said something like "talking about all the awesome ways you can kill people is a good way to make friends in school, it's a good way to LOSE them at work." I've always remembered this observation because it's a fascinating little paradox. So many 'adult" things are actually for children or teenagers who long to be adults.

I think New MK is very similar to Manhunt in this regard and you're right on the money

But I am also old now so what do know.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 39 minutes!
My go-to example for that kind of thing is how the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon show had a body horror episode where Sonic meets his uncle, who was turned into a cyborg.

Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:

Communist Thoughts posted:

I for one think scorpion v subzero is the most boring part of the MK story.

You may be completely correct on that but those were the best fight scenes in a movie which should be 99% fight scenes.

Cacator
Aug 6, 2005

You're quite good at turning me on.

Halloween Jack posted:

My go-to example for that kind of thing is how the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon show had a body horror episode where Sonic meets his uncle, who was turned into a cyborg.

Ah yes, "Sonic Meets Sektor"

Dog_Meat
May 19, 2013

NikkolasKing posted:

I'll always remember the most insightful thing Yahtzee ever said was his discussion of Manhunt. He said this is not a game any child should be playing and yet it's clearly made for children. He said something like "talking about all the awesome ways you can kill people is a good way to make friends in school, it's a good way to LOSE them at work." I've always remembered this observation because it's a fascinating little paradox. So many 'adult" things are actually for children or teenagers who long to be adults.


This is absolutely true. I have no interest in the SAW or Final Destination sequels as they literally became "hosed up death showcase part X", but as a kid I loved the Nightmare on Elm Street films and would be listening to the cool kids who saw them first describe the latest Freddy kills in great (and usually embellished) detail. I cringe when I think back to trying to fit in by telling my younger cousin all about the films I'd seen when in reality I was a 9 year old describing 10 year old's description of a film he probably saw on a terrible bootleg vhs. Saw and Final Destination would be the holy grail to me as a kid and NOBODY would believe me.

I mentioned the original Robocop in my previous post and it still holds up as a nasty, nasty film that I loved as a kid, but it also scared the poo poo out of me. It wasn't the gore or effects that made it disturbing. It was the cruelty, sadism and uncaring casual nature of the violence that scared me as a kid. There is a whole generation of people like me who are genuinely uneasy when we see Kurtwood Smith and no amount of sitcoms will change that :D

The modern Mortal Kombat games would have been crack cocaine to young, undeveloped me and I worry how my world view would have been affected with the casual fun of violence reaching such realistic, graphic levels.

It says something interesting about our culture that the violence has gotten much, much more graphic but the shameless sexual exploitation has been dialled back and we don't get women characters running around in rear end-floss swimwear. Hey kids, horrific violence is cool, just don't look at the scantily clad girls in case they make you think naughty thoughts

Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 16:14 on May 4, 2021

Xenomrph
Dec 9, 2005

AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill



It’s worth mentioning that Final Destination 5 is great and the second-best FD movie after the first one. For the fifth movie in a gory death series, it’s pretty slick.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Dog_Meat posted:

This is absolutely true. I have no interest in the SAW or Final Destination sequels as they literally became "hosed up death showcase part X", but as a kid I loved the Nightmare on Elm Street films and would be listening to the cool kids who saw them first describe the latest Freddy kills in great (and usually embellished) detail. I cringe when I think back to trying to fit in by telling my younger cousin all about the films I'd seen when in reality I was a 9 year old describing 10 year old's description of a film he probably saw on a terrible bootleg vhs. Saw and Final Destination would be the holy grail to me as a kid and NOBODY would believe me.

I mentioned the original Robocop in my previous post and it still holds up as a nasty, nasty film that I loved as a kid, but it also scared the poo poo out of me. It wasn't the gore or effects that made it disturbing. It was the cruelty, sadism and uncaring casual nature of the violence that scared me as a kid. There is a whole generation of people like me who are genuinely uneasy when we see Kurtwood Smith and no amount of sitcoms will change that :D

The modern Mortal Kombat games would have been crack cocaine to young, undeveloped me and I worry how my world view would have been affected with the casual fun of violence reaching such realistic, graphic levels.

It says something interesting about our culture that the violence has gotten much, much more graphic but the shameless sexual exploitation has been dialled back and we don't get women characters running around in rear end-floss swimwear. Hey kids, horrific violence is cool, just don't look at the scantily clad girls in case they make you think naughty thoughts

For Robocop it was the guy who got covered in like toxic waste that always scared little me. He was just flailing around in agony forever.

And your last point is very pertinent to me. I think it was a couple MK games ago now but the usual suspects were complaining about the new MK girls outfits. I haven't played an MK game since Armageddon and so I YouTubed to see what they were talking about. Shitlords are gonna be shitlords and it is inevitable that literally everything created nowadays will have somebody complaining about how the SJWs ruined it. But as you said, it really does reek of hypocrisy that "ridiculous exaggerated sexualization of women is bad, ridiculous exaggerated murder of women is good."

It's all just performative, of course. But a company being performative to avoid controversy is in response to culture as you noted. The culture has to be hosed up and be okay with extreme violence but not extreme sex to produce something like MK.

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 16:42 on May 4, 2021

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

I feel bad how the newer bug lady character is constantly used as the Fatality victim in showcase videos because she has teal blood like a horseshoe crab so the violence doesn’t flag the auto-censors that would otherwise demonetize the video.

Somehow the gore in MK11 feels less awful than MKX, but then maybe the anatomical study is more realistic thus a bit less outrageous? But in my case I always had a very clear separation of special effect fiction versus real life, even MK 1-3 (I too being 40-something); I used to try and hide my MK carts from my much younger siblings in an attempt to be responsible and respectful of my mom not wanting them to play something that violent, but they found them every time!

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost
Studying like photos and videos of real gore to make the in-game stuff is stupid anyway, I don't know what it actually looks like when a torso gets compacted and I don't want to know. Just study like 70s Italian horror movies and try to make the fatalities look like foam and syrup, it's fine!

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

The increasingly psychotic excess of the Fatalities is kind of endearing, honestly. They've gotten to the point where it's nearly self-satire. A batshit-goofy kung-fu stereotype feeding people through his buzzsaw hat feels less Hostel and more Looney Tunes.

Rainbow Knight
Apr 19, 2006

We die.
We pray.
To live.
We serve

i can't remember which MK it was, but i remember one of them having very painful and unnerving screams coming from victims of fatalities, which seems way worse in comparison than x-ray kills and drawn out dismemberment. punching people's limbs off seem more like 70's-kung-fu-movie level of silliness, with detailed anatomy replacing cartoonish amounts of blood.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 39 minutes!
The new games don't quite do the same thing as the old Brutalities--where you punch someone until they explode in a shower of body parts that reveals they somehow had four skulls and six ribcages inside of them--but there is a pretty ridiculous amount of blood.

Collapsing Farts
Jun 29, 2018

💀
The gore in the new MK11 is absolutely nuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9vb-nA0lE

Rainbow Knight
Apr 19, 2006

We die.
We pray.
To live.
We serve

^^^^The first one is Rain quartering someone with fire hose powers! That's some funny rear end poo poo

Halloween Jack posted:

The new games don't quite do the same thing as the old Brutalities--where you punch someone until they explode in a shower of body parts that reveals they somehow had four skulls and six ribcages inside of them--but there is a pretty ridiculous amount of blood.

cl_gibcount

Rainbow Knight fucked around with this message at 18:12 on May 4, 2021

Dog_Meat
May 19, 2013

Rainbow Knight posted:

i can't remember which MK it was, but i remember one of them having very painful and unnerving screams coming from victims of fatalities, which seems way worse in comparison than x-ray kills and drawn out dismemberment.

Exactly. When I see someone rip off someones head and stuff it into their chest cavity to take a selfie I'll laugh my rear end off. When I can see that someone has painstakingly gone to the trouble of making that victim react 'realistically' it suddenly turns into weird fetish porn and sets off my serial killer red flags. Dump someone into the lava and have them pop up as a skeleton? Fun. Have them thrash about as their skin melts and they agonisingly try to escape in vain? Snuff territory.

It's not what I'm seeing that bothers me. It's the fact that someone went to the trouble of creating this to the level where a youtube video called "all fatalities on Sonya" sets off warning bells as to who specifically wants to watch women suffer in so much detail.


davidspackage posted:

Studying like photos and videos of real gore to make the in-game stuff is stupid anyway, I don't know what it actually looks like when a torso gets compacted and I don't want to know. Just study like 70s Italian horror movies and try to make the fatalities look like foam and syrup, it's fine!

This too. Real gore has a weird uncanny valley where it doesn't actually look real because we're conditioned to expect Hollywood gore. Like how a real fight doesn't seem to have any impact because it's so sloppy and un-entertaining compared to a movie fight or a sport fight between two highly trained athletes.

Real horror isn't about gore. It's the small detail that elevate it to disturbing. Take the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre - the most disturbing scene for me is the lump hammer kill. It's quick, ugly and then focuses on the victim's foot spasming as he's dragged away to be butchered like an animal.

In a similar vein, some of the kills in the finales of the original Romero Dead films are extremely graphic, but they're also fun and over the top. Whereas there was a scene in the Walking Dead series where the kid from Everybody Hates Chris was trapped in a revolving door by someone saving their own skin and was torn apart in full view while helpless and screaming. It was probably a similar level of gore, but just had a nasty realism to it because the context was different and not fun.

EDIT - to keep the conversation on topic, from what I've seen of the new movie it looks like they've stuck with the "fun" side of the gore and violence instead of trying to be all edgelord about it

Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 18:36 on May 4, 2021

Xealot
Nov 25, 2002

Showdown in the Galaxy Era.

Dog_Meat posted:

It's not what I'm seeing that bothers me. It's the fact that someone went to the trouble of creating this to the level where a youtube video called "all fatalities on Sonya" sets off warning bells as to who specifically wants to watch women suffer in so much detail.

It didn't occur to me that this would exist, but I instantly believe that it does. Of course someone made that, and of course it has a high viewcount.

I really liked the 95 movie as a 10-year-old, but I was never particularly into the actual games. I was way more of a Street Fighter person than a MK person, because the former seemed way more fun to play. The play style of different characters felt considered and unique, and the game seemed really well-balanced and dynamic because of it. Maybe MK was that way when you played enough, too, but I always felt like I was rote-memorizing random button sequences, and the "point" of playing was to get through the match ASAP and show off insane fatalities.

Gratuitous violence rendered in a photorealist way was always central, though, so I'm not pearl-clutching at the new games looking more realistic since that was always the goal. But goddamn does it feel tedious now...beyond a threshold, you've maximally heightened the blood-fountain violence of it all and it starts to feel the same.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 39 minutes!
The Street Fighter games flat out have better animation than Mortal Kombat, with unique character designs that perform the same basic moves differently. The MK games have a shoddy, exploitation film feel that some people actually prefer.

I don't know for sure, but if the Elsa Spiderman Toilet channels are any indication, these videos are made by an algorithm and whatever succeeds, succeeds. If I'm right, the issue is not so much that some pervert made an "All Fatalities on Sonya in Her Skimpiest Costume" video, but that there was way more demand for that than for the "All Fatalities On Robocop" video.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 4, 2021

Isometric Bacon
Jul 24, 2004

Let's get naked!
I thought the new film did a good balance of depicting gore. It would have been easy to be gratuitous given the R rating, or instead tone it down to secure a lower rating.

The way it is now it doesn't overstay its welcome - the glory bits get a genuine shock response, and when we get a real modern day MK goofy fatality from Kung Lao there was a huge audible reaction from my crowd of both disgust and bemusement.

On the topic of the games, one of the other things that helped desensitise the violence was the goofy rear end sound effects and vocal 'noises' that accompanied every move, not to mention things like 'Toasty!'. MK3 and MK4 were particularly hilarious in that regard.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



davidspackage posted:

Studying like photos and videos of real gore to make the in-game stuff is stupid anyway, I don't know what it actually looks like when a torso gets compacted and I don't want to know. Just study like 70s Italian horror movies and try to make the fatalities look like foam and syrup, it's fine!

I don't know if anyone here has read the manga "Chainsaw Man" (it's very much the kind of nonsense that Mortal Kombat fans would appreciate, I suspect) but the creator has talked about this topic.

Basically, he draws people's innards as just piles of intestines in oceans of blood. At one point, someone is shot in the head and what comes out looks more like sausage than any realistic depiction of brain matter. It's an intentional decision to keep the grindhouse gore feel in a magazine ostensibly marketed towards kids without being actually unsettling.

I mean, it's still a manga that has a chapter banned from the American Shonen Jump app due to 18+ content, but it's definitely going for a 70s horror vibe rather than realism in gore, and that helps with a lot of the Evil Dead style slapstick gags.

Roth
Jul 9, 2016

I like Netherrealm's fighting games because they have a ton of single player stuff to do.

Also I don't like Street Fighter's art style in 4/5. I think it looks just plain ugly.

postmodifier
Nov 24, 2004

The LIQUOR BOTTLES are out in full force.
MOM is surely nearby.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

I feel bad how the newer bug lady character is constantly used as the Fatality victim in showcase videos because she has teal blood like a horseshoe crab so the violence doesn’t flag the auto-censors that would otherwise demonetize the video.

I honestly had a jaw-drop moment the first time I queued up a fatality against Robocop in mk11, thinking, watch this just be be intestines and blood again

But instead it was electrical cables and motor oil, and that little attention to detail bought them at least 20 more hours of me wasting my life to grind out ridiculous currencies to unlock things I would never ever end up using

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 11 years!
Melman v2

postmodifier posted:

I honestly had a jaw-drop moment the first time I queued up a fatality against Robocop in mk11, thinking, watch this just be be intestines and blood again

But instead it was electrical cables and motor oil, and that little attention to detail bought them at least 20 more hours of me wasting my life to grind out ridiculous currencies to unlock things I would never ever end up using
Too bad they forgot to give that same level of detail to the terminator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQhFP3RgQbw&t=64s

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Terminators have red oil/fake blood

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 11 years!
Melman v2
No they have regular blood and a shiny endoskeleton that's treated like regular skeletons and not extra durable metal, but that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about a lack of attention to detail there - they missed their chance to do this

Xenomrph
Dec 9, 2005

AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill



postmodifier posted:

I honestly had a jaw-drop moment the first time I queued up a fatality against Robocop in mk11, thinking, watch this just be be intestines and blood again

But instead it was electrical cables and motor oil, and that little attention to detail bought them at least 20 more hours of me wasting my life to grind out ridiculous currencies to unlock things I would never ever end up using

I loved it when MK9 started that trend, different characters would have different blood or skeletons depending on what species they were, it was really neat attention to detail.

Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:

Roth posted:

Also I don't like Street Fighter's art style in 4/5. I think it looks just plain ugly.

And you're very right to think that. Peak Capcom hideousness was Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Infinite which just look like complete poo poo.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 39 minutes!

Roth posted:

I like Netherrealm's fighting games because they have a ton of single player stuff to do.

Also I don't like Street Fighter's art style in 4/5. I think it looks just plain ugly.
I really should have specified that I only mean games from the 16-bit era, where SF characters had unique techniques for every button press, while all the MK characters used the same moves. The difference between MK 2-3 and Super Street Fighter is pretty stark.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Pre-9 MK games were heavily flawed at best and exploitative to the point of being unplayable at worst, it's always sold itself on sheer kontent since at least MK3.

Also yeah, MK9/10/11 obliterate most other fighting games when it comes to singleplayer experience.

A Tasteful Nude
Jun 3, 2013

A cool anime hagrid pic (imagine nude pls)
I like that the ghost of a 17th century Japanese man who we are explicitly told only understands Japanese also happens to know exactly enough modern English to yell "GET OVER HERE"

Xenomrph
Dec 9, 2005

AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill



A Tasteful Nude posted:

I like that the ghost of a 17th century Japanese man who we are explicitly told only understands Japanese also happens to know exactly enough modern English to yell "GET OVER HERE"

The line is badass and the scene is infinitely better with its inclusion.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

A Tasteful Nude posted:

I like that the ghost of a 17th century Japanese man who we are explicitly told only understands Japanese also happens to know exactly enough modern English to yell "GET OVER HERE"

Look he had centuries to learn a few extra words from the other angry revenge ghosts, ok

hiddenriverninja
May 10, 2013

life is locomotion
keep moving
trust that you'll find your way

Neurolimal posted:

Look he had centuries to learn a few extra words from the other angry revenge ghosts, ok

I like the idea that you can just hang out in MK hell until you get tired of it and leave

A Tasteful Nude
Jun 3, 2013

A cool anime hagrid pic (imagine nude pls)

Xenomrph posted:

The line is badass and the scene is infinitely better with its inclusion.

Oh yeah, I wasn't been ironic - I liked that line. The movie needed more goofy fun stuff like this, not less.


Also it's loving cool that if you die pissed off and badass enough in MK world, your body turns into fire and you get to hang in hell until you want to get revenge.

Xealot
Nov 25, 2002

Showdown in the Galaxy Era.

Halloween Jack posted:

I really should have specified that I only mean games from the 16-bit era, where SF characters had unique techniques for every button press, while all the MK characters used the same moves. The difference between MK 2-3 and Super Street Fighter is pretty stark.

This is more or less what I was also talking about, the first few MK games in the mid/late 90's and the corresponding SF titles: SF2, SF Alpha 1-3, SF3. I've barely interacted with SF4 or SF5, or the Marvel vs. Capcom titles, so I have no clue what those are like now.

I also had a lot of affection for SNK fighters, though. King of Fighters, Fatal Fury/Garou, Samurai Shodown...they were no Street Fighter, but I still liked them.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Xealot posted:

This is more or less what I was also talking about, the first few MK games in the mid/late 90's and the corresponding SF titles: SF2, SF Alpha 1-3, SF3. I've barely interacted with SF4 or SF5, or the Marvel vs. Capcom titles, so I have no clue what those are like now.

I also had a lot of affection for SNK fighters, though. King of Fighters, Fatal Fury/Garou, Samurai Shodown...they were no Street Fighter, but I still liked them.

Weirdly I feel like the Samurai Shodown games hold up incredibly well out of all of them (except KOF of course KOF is eternally fuckin' awesome :hellyeah: ). 2 and 3 in particular are like aesthetic masterpieces, like 2 has some of the most "this background and music is ABSOLUTELY what this character's personality and story are all about on multiple levels you could build an entire game just about this one character and area" amount of focus ever.

How!
Oct 29, 2009

NikkolasKing posted:

For Robocop it was the guy who got covered in like toxic waste that always scared little me. He was just flailing around in agony forever.

And your last point is very pertinent to me. I think it was a couple MK games ago now but the usual suspects were complaining about the new MK girls outfits. I haven't played an MK game since Armageddon and so I YouTubed to see what they were talking about. Shitlords are gonna be shitlords and it is inevitable that literally everything created nowadays will have somebody complaining about how the SJWs ruined it. But as you said, it really does reek of hypocrisy that "ridiculous exaggerated sexualization of women is bad, ridiculous exaggerated murder of women is good."

It's all just performative, of course. But a company being performative to avoid controversy is in response to culture as you noted. The culture has to be hosed up and be okay with extreme violence but not extreme sex to produce something like MK.

My dad loves to say that the best thing to happen to England was America, because all the Puritans left. Not that England is any good, mind.

CubanMissile
Apr 22, 2003

Of Hulks and Spider-Men

Olympic Mathlete posted:

And you're very right to think that. Peak Capcom hideousness was Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Infinite which just look like complete poo poo.

Agreed. And all the Street Fighter V characters look too swoll to be able to wipe their own asses.

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NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Neo Rasa posted:

Weirdly I feel like the Samurai Shodown games hold up incredibly well out of all of them (except KOF of course KOF is eternally fuckin' awesome :hellyeah: ). 2 and 3 in particular are like aesthetic masterpieces, like 2 has some of the most "this background and music is ABSOLUTELY what this character's personality and story are all about on multiple levels you could build an entire game just about this one character and area" amount of focus ever.

I've always been very impressed with SNK's storytelling through backgrounds and music. They just had exceptional art and direction in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-js616r9XY

I grew up on MK which is such low tier trash compared to this.

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