Mortal Kombat Fanatic

To understand what I’m going off about, you’ll want to read Dan Hsu’s editorial which you can find at 1Up.

For the link phobic, I’ll give you a mini-summary. Dan Hsu is the editor-in-chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly. According to him, Midway will no longer sending them Mortal Kombat games to cover because “they didn’t like our reviews.”

Before you cancel your subscription, please remember that this doesn’t mean that EGM will never cover the series/companies mentioned in the editorial, just that they won’t be getting any advanced copies of the games. That means their news will come from other sources and that their reviews will come after the game hits the shelves.

Now, this doesn’t seem like such a big deal, right? Why would you do any favors for a magazine that’s been trashing your games? Well, there is a major problem with this.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Midway to stop making games that suck instead?

Let’s face it, neither Mortal Kombat Armageddon nor Mortal Kombat Deception were exactly masterpieces. (Neither was Shaolin Monks from what I’ve heard, but I’ve never played so I can’t comment on that one.) Midway has yet to work out the kinks in the fighting system, and cramming in lots of characters does little good when the essential part of the game is still glitchy and well, not that fun to play.

I’m glad that magazines are no longer kissing game company ass. With the big stink over people getting fired over bad game reviews, its about time the commercial gaming magazines and websites cater a little to their readers rather than their advertisers.

I don’t know about you, but I want to know that a game is going to suck ass. I don’t want a wishy-washy review where there seems there might be some sort of redeeming value. I almost ended up buying Armageddon for the Wii because it seemed like it would be a decent game. Luckily I have Gamefly and got a chance to play it out first. But damnit, gaming magazines, don’t talk about the novelty of gameplay, talk about how only a ninja master can wield the Wii-mote with enough fine motor control to activate the special moves.

So good for you, EGM. And boo on the Midway PR department. You’re already alienating your players by giving us low quality, half-finished MK games, don’t alienate us further by not letting us get the truth on the games.