It was also pointed out to me that while the story mode does not feature any character specific tutorials (a gripe that I personally levelled against the game), the Challenge Tower of the game acts as an extended tutorial mode which periodically makes you change characters in order to complete further challenges. I've almost finished the first third of the tower (assuming that there are 300 challenges in all as I am to understand). While some of them seem like just interesting mini-games some of them are structured in order to take advantage of the specific character that you're playing in a way that you may not have tried before. More often than not, this comes down to using a move with a character that you had not considered. Not using a different move and attempting to play each challenge the same way will more often than not result in a fairly frustrating experience. However, testing out different moves and exploring what each character does makes the challenges seem to fly by a bit quicker.

After spending some more time with the game and really getting my head around how its structured I now see that there is something truly amazing under MK's hood. In order to describe it I have to use a word which is often unassociated with Mortal Kombat. That word is subtlety. In a game where blood spills out of every character with each and every hit, damage is persistent and shows on the character models in the form of bruises and cuts, and finishing moves result in someone having an award statuette shoved in what used to be their neck in the place where their head used to be, subtlety is not the word that any MK fan would probably use to describe it. However, those are all overt elements. The elements that I'm talking about are the ones that you feel. As an example I recently completed a challenge where Cyrax is fighting Raiden, with you in control of Cyrax. The objective is to beat your opponent. Sounds easy right? Of course, the catch is that with each second your movement speed decreases by 1%. Considering that it will probably take you 30 seconds at least to beat your opponent, you'll already be moving at only 2/3's the speed. By the end of the match it looks like you're fighting on the moon as Cyrax moves very slowly. Its at this point that you try to rely on what Cyrax has in his arsenal in order to compensate for the loss in movement speed. So you try his dial-a-kombos (probably the easiest combos in the game to pull off as most are just  3 button presses with no directional components). However, you soon find that the wind-up time for kombos is very long as the timer ticks down. This leaves you vulnerable to attacks from Raiden who is unaffected by the slow down. 

At first, I exhibited some frustration at this. I tried jump kicking, blocking, and attacking again. I also tried komboing but was still not really having any luck. Finally I realized that the most obvious answer from Cyrax was staring me in the face. His net. Using the net in that challenge is great as it allows you to close the distance to your opponent despite the slow-down and also lets you get some shots in before he can recover. That fight also does a good job of letting you know the effective combat range for the net and why you probably shouldn't be pulling off net grabs from full screen. If any of you played Cyrax in MK3 or any MK game prior to this one, you may remember that when Cyrax used his net it dragged the opponent back towards him. Effectively it was like Scorpion's spear in that it brought the opponent to you and closed the distance. In this game, the net does not move. Rather you have to get to the net before it dissolves to take advantage of your opponent's immobilization. So staying close is a good way to make sure you'll be able to make that opening count. Additionally, it also gives you a chance to test out comboing Cyrax's teleport with the net for quick movement around the arena.

While this is a lesson that is pretty essential for this particular challenge, its also applicable to most, if not all, of the other projectile attacks in the game. Playing through the Challenge Tower has given me a much deeper respect for what NetherRealm is attempting to accomplish in terms of the game's design. I get it. Perhaps I was letting my impressions of what occurs in the story mode color my judgement of the rest of the game. However, in this case I am happy to have been proven wrong. 

Other than doing Challenge Mode stuff I've also been playing the arcade ladder with each character one at a time. I'm more than halfway through the character roster in terms of completion. Its pretty cool how each ending contains some voice over narration and motion-graphic style visuals. After playing through the story it seems weird to see some of the endings that have come up in arcade mode (Nightwolf's ending in particular is pretty dark), but I like how they are continuing in the tradition of character specific endings for each of the fighters. Perhaps in retrospect I shouldn't have played story mode first. While it is a cool way to experience the lore of MK (if there is such a thing...), it sadly doesn't really give you a good tutorial on how to use the characters that you take control of as it progresses. In a way, and I know this is going to sound weird, maybe the best way to gain an understanding of each of the characters is to go through the basic  tutorials, and then the Challenge Tower, and then mess around on the arcade mode ladder. I guess that would be my advice after seeing EpicSteve's post regarding his frustrations in beating the story mode. I almost don't have the heart to tell him that that's only the first time you encounter Shao Khan and is certainly not the last.  Moreover, its also not the last 1v2 match you have in the game. Still I'm really enjoying it and am finding cool stuff with each character that can string together to make some basic bread and butter combos for easy use. Can't wait to test some of it out online. 

I really hope PSN comes back soon. I'm starting to exhaust the single player stuff and given how repetitive it is playing against the AI its starting to get kinda boring. Also I think that my go to characters are going to be Scorpion, Kung Lao, Ermac, and Noob. Anyone have any good tips for using them? Again I've found some moves that string together for some easy combos and can pull off many of their dial-a-kombos, but some advice would be appreciated.