After reading review after review praising the game, and also realizing I haven't played a MK game since MK2 on my SNES, I must admit my interest got bigger and bigger. Although I must admit that my interest in any form of online play, be it ranked or "for fun", is almost nonexistant.

Do you think it's still worth picking this up, just looking at it from a singleplayer perspective (and a couch vs.-match here and there against visiting friends)?

Single-player looks fun, but I can't see a fighting-game being a viable purchase for only that.

Did you read Jeff's review?

I'm in the same boat.  I'm picking it up after I finish my lunch.  I may get xbox live again after finals are done, but for now, it will be offline only.  The story mode looks cool and i really like challenge mode type stuff so I think it will be fun.

Yes!  Challenge Tower, Story Mode, Test Your luck, etc all very fun things to do.

MK games have more single player content than any other fighting game. Soul Calibur comes in a distant second on account of their peripheral content collectively sucking pretty hard.

I've been playing the single player for nearly three hours so far and haven't seen anywhere near all the characters in the game yet. It is also rather incredible how the game switches from the flat fight plane to the cutscenes seemlessly. I also have to hand it to them that the story and voice acting are passable to good. Throw in the huge Krypt full of things to unlock and the Challenge Tower and I would say that if you like Mortal Kombat this will easily keep your attention playing single player.

There's no question this game has the most bang-for-buck single player experience out of any fighting game on the market right now.  If you like fighting games in general, it's well worth a purchase for single player / occasional local MP alone.   The sheer amount of modes and characters will keep it interesting for quite a while, and if you are a fan of past MK games, it's a definite must have for the story mode and familiar characters.  

Playing online is a ton of fun, but I don't think you will be disappointed if you stay with all the single player content.  There are A TON of things to do, so I would say go for it.

Its a fighting game. Its made for multiplayer.

I primarily play fighting games SP; you're not alone out there. I've had some stints with playing online, but I get so frusterated with the disconnections and constant verbal abuse that I just tire of it.

I have friends who will play a match or two with me on occasion locally, but as they don't own the games themselves typically, they get frusterated pretty fast and we move on to something else.

Anyways, point being, I buy every fighting game out there, I'm a fanatical fan, and this one will be holding my interest for al ong time to come, I can promise you that. I loved MvsC3, but I've already stopped playing it, I bought a 3DS just to play SSF4 in 3D, and that started to bore me after about one night, but I've put in about 20 hours on MK in the past two days, and I'm watching the clock at work so I can go home and bow to it some more.

Simply put, if you like fighters, and have any interest in MK, it's a definate purchase in my humble opinion. It's exploding at the seams with content, and has so many different variations on how to play that it will take you a long, long time to get bored. I don't want to give anything away, but there are modes uch as Test your luck that toss a bunch of random Kombat Kodes and such at you and the results are hyterical and a blast to play, AI or not.

I say buy it, you will not be sorry. it's easily in the top 5 fighting games ever made from my perspective, and I'm calling it GOTY as far as I'm concerned. (At least, so far.)