So I have never played Mortal Kombat before(Gasp, someone screams out "blasphemy!" from a distance) mostly because I grew up in Asia and I could not understand the culture of Mortal Kombat when I first came to the States. Plus I was already too used to the Japanese style fighting games such as Street Fighter, King of Fighters or Tekken.

But the newest Mortal Kombat looked awesome so I bought it and man, it is a totally different game! And, this is also gonna surprise a lot of experienced players, it is SUPER hard!!! And I'm an okay Street Fighter player! I wouldn't say I am good because I really am not but I can win a few matches. But man... I was surprised by the fact how different Mortal Kombat was and it took me some times to get used to it but it is still SUPER hard!!!

So this is a couple of things that I have learned from Mortal Kombat as someone who is new to the franchise and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one out there. This is a list of things that I found it very helpful once I learned through hard works so if you are a beginner like me and have no knowledge of Mortal Kombat like me, please ready this! And if there is something that you want to add, please leave comments. I want to be better at this game.

1. Let's start with something really simple. There is a button for blocking.
I can imagine those experienced players laughing at me because of this but I did not know there was a block button in this game! Since I was too used to Street Fighter, I kept press back button but soon I learned that did not do anything. For PS3, the block button is R2. I don't know for sure for 360 but I'm going to guess right trigger. If you were wondering "goddamn it! Why do I keep getting hit!!" that was the reason.

2. Story Mode is brutally hard!!
When you look at the menu, the chances are you are going to pick the story mode first because... it's a video game. But let me warn you, it gets pretty brutal. AI is no joke, especially if you have never played Mortal Kombat before but let's just assume you managed to beat a couple of fighters in the beginning, like I did. You feel cocky and you feel like you're getting a good grip of it and BAM! You fight with 2 enemies simultaneously. That is seriously hard. I did not see any difficulty option because when you pick story mode, it just jumps into the story. There is no "choose difficulty" before the fight. You just jump in and just go. And fighting with two enemies at the same time is pretty overwhelming. So I recommend just going through some fighters first like you are testing the water before you go swimming. Once you get a good grip on it and understand how the fight works, jump into the story mode. There is also a training mode so you can always do that too.

3. Everybody controls kinda the same
"BLASPHEMY!!!" ....... Okay, so when I say everybody controls kinda the same, I mean that everybody has a similar control scheme. It is like Street Fighter. No matter who you choose, quarter circle punch/kick is gonna go something. Fire ball, spiral kick, roll, whatever. It will do something. It goes somewhat similar to Mortal Kombat. Forward punch/kick is universal combo for every character(I think) and quarter circle punch/kick is also universal(I think). Pick a character, practice with it and pick another character and see what she/he does. Or... you can always look at the move lists. There is no shame in that.

4. Crouch + Triangle (or Y for 360) is an uppercut
Apparently if you are into Mortal Kombat, uppercut is a big deal. It is also really helpful because it is a good attack when someone jumps on you. And I can totally imagine that being a good combo initiator. So mix around a bit with that. Some characters just straight up teleport to the air. Teleport after the uppercut would be a good beginner's combo.

5. The last advice. In case you haven't noticed, the fighting is very combo based.
The game has a unique style of chaining the moves. I am not really good at it either so I have not gone passed more than like... 4 combos, give or take. But at the same, it almost feels like it has a sequence of moves that can be chained but if you try to do otherwise, it breaks. I'm guessing there are moves that can be chained that cannot be chained probably for the purpose of balancing. But if you do not know any chains, your moves do not really mean anything and cannot really damage other players. Seriously, your Johnny Cage can throw that green balls over and over again but it ain't gonna do anything. You have to know your sequence.

So that's all I know for now and I know you're thinking "what a noob." Whatever. This game is weird, all right? It's so weird I like it but really, this game is weird... If you have any other advices, please leave a comment. Thanks for reading.