Does Killer Instinct have any longevity?

I have an opportunity to be given a review copy of Killer Instinct, but then again I could chose from different things, like Shadow Warrior or Fantasia: Music Evolved (yes, as a non-major site we have backlogs too)...and I'm wondering if Killer Instinct have any longevity if you don't play online. How's the experience like when you have second season?

Or maybe I should pick Shadow Warrior, Fantasia, Tales from Borderlands or Lords of the Fallen (I'm not sure if it wasn't taken, though) instead?

I have the first season since launch. It's an okay game, but rather easy and dumbed down for the masses in comparison to how cutting edge Killer Instinct was back when it first released back when RARE was the developer.

I'm a longtime fighting gamer, but I wasn't impressed enough with the first season to buy into the second season. Many hate it, and others swear by the game. I'm in the middle. It's not a big game with the FGC if that's what you wanted to know, but it's being promoted to them as hard as M$ can even getting time at Evo, but I just don't see it as the game could be a lot better.

Metascore = 73/100

The online is filled with a lot of quitters if that's what you are asking, like any fighting game. IF you are into fighters, you could do a lot better. IF you are deciding to get into fighters, I would choose a better title to give you the best chance at staying with the genre, but to each their own. If you do end up buying the game since it's an Xbone exclusive, you can always compare your gamerscore to mine. Good luck.

The game is a big online title, so I'm not sure why you would buy a fighting game and not expect to play against people, especially KI which is touted to be online. There is a story element to it tacked on, but the game wasn't designed around that. Fighting games are about learning the moves and developing the strategies anyways. I hope you aren't into this game just because it's a 1st party title.

There's nothing better on Xbone currently until Mortal Kombat X arrives. Is there?

I've heard Season 2 brought some gameplay changes, though?

If you are limited to Xbone, I guess that's it for you until MKX (which I'm not a megafan of MK but I enjoy it).

In fighting games, if attempting to get into the genre, you could do better with a 360 and especially a PS3. Hell, even a PS2, PS1, Saturn, or Dreamcast.

Season 2 did add some more characters and brought in some gameplay changes, sure like DLC for SF4 from Super to Ultra or whatever. It's not going to change the base game into a completely different experience though.

You could do a lot worse, but it didn't have staying power with me and I absolutely love fighting games since the original SF2. I'm an ex-tourney player and the game didn't keep me active (i.e. new KI felt simplistic & pick up and play which got old fast once you learned the mechanics; it lacked depth but was pretty), but maybe the new KI was made more to get people into fighting so in that respect maybe you'll enjoy it more? I doubt it though.

Read a lot of reviews and watch a lot of videos if all else fails. Good luck.

I only have a Dreamcast as an alternative. I have some Marvel vs Capcom game or something. But the thing is I don't even have the Dreamcast in my flat, it's at my parents'. Anyway, I wouldn't mind Killer Instinct because I want to diversify my collection and get something that is good for 5 minute short bursts to vent my anger or whatever. Especially when my little Antoinette is 9 days away (: And I'm ordering a second TV today or tomorrow so I'd have my own man-cave in a separate room from the baby D:

It has great teaching tools because they don't just teach the player KI, but strategy/tactics for fighting games in general. But, the actual fighting engine is "good enough" territory, as opposed to being something genuinely special. Kind of gets stale if you've played more interesting fighting games.

You could definitely vent anger playing it, but usually what happens is when you are destroying a person online they quit which becomes frustrating. Instead of venting, you may just get more aggro. That's how it played out with me, but if you are losing, rest assured they don't quit and hope you don't quit either.

MvC I enjoyed greatly, but it's best online or with like minded friends to play with, much like any fighting game really. You get more out of it if you can get someone to learn and play with you together.

As far as diversify, it would certainly do that and 5 minute matches are doable (after online syncing in, you may get 1-2 games in a 5 minute window).

I have a gaming room myself, it's not a mancave though, it's more a room dedicated to classic consoles. I do let the nieces and nephews play in there all the time, they quite enjoy it. I find the dilemma of a separate room tough because one HDTV is typically better than another HDTV. So, which room gets the Better HDTV? The mancave or the livingroom. Most choose the livingroom since it's on display, but then that would bother me because I wouldn't want to play on a secondary HDTV knowing there is a better picture in the livingroom.

Factor in surround sound and it makes it tougher. Good luck in setting that room up. I'm just posting my experience with multiple gaming rooms and multiple gaming systems as something for you to consider that I learned the hard way. :)

I agree.

Get Shadow Warrior instead. It's an amazingly fun FPS and it's from Polish devs :)

@Salt_The_Fries: lol, don't take advice on Xbox or its games from SolidTy. He's the last person to ask for a fair honest opinion on anything MS or Xbox lol.

As long as the keep releasing new content, then sure.

Not for me...I am over it and I don't like the season thing, it's confusing. I would rather have a full retail game.

I mostly play it online. It does have all the basic offline modes, such as story arcade for most characters, a robust training mode, and a survival mode. For me, fighting games are meant to be played with others, so I cannot really comment on how its longevity will be strictly offline, other than to say it covers most bases in terms of its offline content, compared to other fighters I have played in the past. Online it appears to be quite popular, and I don't have any issues finding people to play online with. The season 2 characters have been cool overall, and there is a,good variety of choices overall considering all the characters released so far for both seasons.

I've been playing it ever since it was released over a year ago so I say oh yes. Great fighting mechanics, updated the resolution with season 2 from 720p to 900p, just download Oman the new fighter with 4 more to go. Great fighting game and a fighter that's apart of Evo once agin. I say it's a definite buy but the final decision for your money is yours.

I wholeheartedly agree.

@@Salt_The_Fries:

When you say staying power, what do you actually mean? Years of replay-ability? Single player content? Or just a good fighting system.

If you are interested in this game for single player fun, I'd argue that there is only one FG with SP content worth having, and that is MK. KI is fun, but extremely slim pickings when it comes to SP content. All you have is survival mode and arcade/story mode, on top of the training modes, so yeah. If you aren't going to be getting in to the community, and are just going to casually play the game from time to time against the CPU, it probably would be fun (provided you like the base fighting system), but yeah, there won't be much else to do.

One more thing though on the SP front is that up through April there will be new characters every month along with subsequent balance changes, on top of the new Story Mode for S2 characters, and a few other things like accessories for characters and such.

If you are just looking for a good fighter though, something you can play offline/online with other people, then KI is a great game to have. It is different than the KI of old, and to purists that might be sacrilege, but KI3 is a better game overall for it (that is just an objective fact). It is more balanced, more varied, deeper, and still growing and evolving with S2 (and hopefully S3); it's a living game. I know in your OG post that you said you were more interested in SP stuff, but the online is great fun, and is getting overhauled in the next big update (next month) so it might be worth checking out.

About S2 vs. S1, that comes down to personal preference. IMO S2 addressed a lot of issues that I had with S1, thus it made the game better, but there are plenty people who swear by S1 for one reason or another and feel differently. Honestly though, if you didn't play S1 at all, you won't have any issue as S2 is rock solid, and S1 is gone.

IMO though, probably the best thing about KI is that the Devs are still shaping the game according to the fan's wants and needs in the moment. Just last week they announced that they are addressing some of the concerns players have in the S1 vs. S2 debate specifically by adjusting some of the S2 characters to "feel" more like the S1 characters (buffering moves and such), so yeah, the Devs are listening, shaping, and addressing concerns players have even as we speak. If you don't particularly care about those things though, that is cool, but to me this all adds up to KI being a great tournament FG, and it ensures that it has the potential to be a long lasting game.

Edit: one more thing, KI is FREE. If you have an X1 right now, you can try it for free (all the modes) with the provided character, and see if you like it. You can also just pay for one character (the one you like) and do it that way too. I know you said you could get it for free (I'm assuming all the characters; S1? S2?), but anyway, if you are on the fence you can trying it out now and see if you like it.

It might if you're really into competitive fighting games. I'm not really, haven't so much as touched a competitive fighting game since the last Mortal Kombat, and before that it was just Marvel vs Capcom 2 two generations back. Though, I plan on making a go at the next Mortal Kombat game. I wouldn't mind trying Killer Instinct though if the price were right. It's still kinda pricey, I might get if MS ever offers a substantial discount on their digital store.

@lamprey263:

KI is a $5 if you just have one character you want to play.

actually I think I just saw the other day that it's now free if you want to play as just one character, I thought about it but I've way too much on my plate at the moment

Yeah. I really enjoy KI, and I bought both Ultra packs, but I can't play FGs like I used to, especially if I want to play current games and try to get caught up on some stuff that I've missed. KI, like any multiplayer game, is a time sink if you want to be good and stay good.

My only point was that it is pretty cheap to get into money-wise. Personally, if I'm getting a fighting game, I want the whole thing, which is why I got both Ultra packs. But that is the thing about this KI, you don't have to do that if you don't want to.

I remember being very excited for this game when it was announced. I still have the biggest combos of many of the original characters from the SNES version memorized. In fact, I still remember how to turn Cinder into Idol...

However, I had a chance to play it and was a little underwhelmed. The graphics are on the muddy side to me, not as crisp as I typically like my fighters. And they made some strange decisions with character direction -- Glacius in particular. I think they reinvented too much about it and lost some of that original appeal.

That may be nostalgia talking. Regardless, I still go back to two games from the way, way back when -- Zelda: A Link to the Past and Killer Instincts.

Honestly, I was the same way. I didn't like KI3 when I first got my hands on it because I was thinking (hoping) it would be like KI2; it's not. It felt/feels WAY different, more like SF4 than I'd like, so I was happy to stay with KI2 for the weeks that I did, and only play KI3 off and on. Ultimately though, I found myself play KI3 more and more, and I was enjoying it more and more.

When TJ's retro costume came out I really stopped playing KI2 all together (TJ is my boy), and I'm really looking forward to Golem and Cinder. I'm interested in the other characters, but not invested as of yet.

The character's direction is a hate it of love it thing. I like the variety, but if your a purist, that is just that. In the end though, the variety helps the game in the tourney scene. OG KI1 and 2...all the characters were essentially the same; that isn't the case anymore. KI1 and 2 wouldn't survive in today's market.

@OniLordAsmodeus: In all fairness, I only used Jago, Sabertooth, Glacius, and Spinal. My best character from the original is certainly Fulgore, though, followed by Spinal and Jago.

If I did get an Xbox One, I would likely pick it up, but it's not the game that is going to push me over the edge to buying a next gen console (sadly).

@musicalmac: Don't know if you heard, but MS is mulling over making a PC port of KI. If they do, that would be awesome, as having a bigger base for this game would be awesome. By the end of the year (E3 maybe), something could be announced. Would be awesome.

Go with shadow warrior.

@OniLordAsmodeus: I'd be interested for sure.

I disagree with these two well known lems. Notice they had nothing to say about the average KI? Notice my opinion is not alone in being the game is okay, but not mind-blowing? My opinion is backed by my experience in OWNING & PLAYING the game on my XBONE. These two X-biased users are still reeling from previous experiences in foruming. They are also torn because they don't want to bad mouth a game that's on their precious Xbox.

Again, both of you failed to actually talk about the topic and instead chose to troll users. Pathetic.

Also, Salt_The_Fries is on my Xbone and 360 friendslist, lol. Unlike you two posers (until proven otherwise by gamertag or pics), Salt is a legit Xbox gamer and he knows I am as well as we've communicated over Xbox Live.

lol, don't take advice on Xbox or its games from tymeservesfate. In fact, don't trust his opinions on any product. He's the last person to ask for a fair honest opinion on anything at all. Everything Xbox is amazing to him, everything not Xbox is terrible to him.

Look at his only post in this KI thread...notice he is trolling because he's angry and didn't participate in the actual discussion?

He has no KI info posted and instead chose to troll a user.

Even if he did post about KI, he's not longtime fighting gamer nor does he have his gamerscore up for us to see if he's legit.

Save yourself time and avoid his posts and threads. It's either trolling users as he demonstrated above, praising Xbox, or bashing Nintendo/Sony.

I didn't come in here to bash any system, but rather to speak my mind on a product THAT I OWN AND PLAYED EXTENSIVELY from my experience and I did so. We don't even know if they bought the game, that's how off topic they are. They came in here offering nothing but off-topic trolling. I wish Killer Instinct was a 3rd party title published by Namco/Capcom/Atlus/whoever that way butthurt console fanboys wouldn't feel they need to come defend their "exclusive". The fanboyism forces them to get involved with their 1st party meltdowns when users post if they enjoyed the game or not, just because of who makes it. I'd still have the same opinion, but these two fanboys would be trolling some other user for not loving Halo/Fable/Forza/GeoW or whatever. They automatically feel the need to defend KI, not because they love fighting games, but because it's a 1st party game and for that reason it's pathetic.

When MKX comes out, and if I don't like it, I won't be dealing with these two lemmings because MKX will be multiplatform from WB. It's sad they feel the need to defend Xbox is such a desperate way. I don't defend Killer Instinct, Playstation All Stars, or Super Smash Bros. I post my opinion and move on, just like I've done for Marvel Vs. Capcom, Tekken, Soul Cali, Street Fighter, etc.

It's hard for biased users to accept KI could have been a lot better (it's Xbox so it's automatically spectacular), so instead of being honest about KI he attacked a user. That's not polite. I didn't even call the game "shit" and I paid money for the game, which is more than I bet either of these two above users caught trolling did. I don't even think KI is terrible, I find it fun, but also disappointing for modern standards. Funny thing is, my opinion about KI isn't alone or extreme, there are others also posting the new game is disappointing, competent, but disappointing.

That's uh, very late. Even for small sites.

All I can say is that apparently there are tournaments and there are still a good deal of active players buying it and online so i suppose that could give a hint that the game has legs. We haven't been told sales numbers, but that applies to a bunch of other games as well, so not much one could say objectively.

As for personally, I only cared about KI when it got put in a retail box. So it has longevity for me currently, Season 2 is DOA until it's in a box.

It's an okay game, but that's it imo just okay. Personally I'd wait for mk10. It's not a bad game, but it just didn't compete with the alternatives with me. I'd rather play Injustice than KI. Just my opinion.

@TigerSuperman just like you can see the games that weren't reviewed weren't big ones - there was lots to review and things got prioritized. I was just browsing through our resources and it turned out we have some more freebies left so I wanted to capitalize on this :)

The fact this was a launch title and has an option to be played free and continues to release new DLC and still being played in tournaments already proved that it has longevity online and offline. Playing with others gives any game with competitive multiplayer longevity. I'm not sure if that review copy will include all seasons and the original to get that RARE nostalgia fix, that's a lot of content but it looks like you're looking for an offline experience so I would suggest pick a game that focuses on single player instead. People forget that you could play this for free as a bonus to your Gold membership but I guess people aren't aware that Killer Instincts, PowerStar Golf just to name a couple could be played free with a Gold membership since it's never mentioned in those "free games" threads.

KI will be better than MKX. It's not out and I can still tell you that.... imo.

For me, I play Killer Instinct all the time if I want to play something else on my Xbox One. Killer Instinct to me, is as close to a present day Darkstalkers as in matter of fact, some of the KI characters do resemblance some of the Darkstalkers characters so I'm liking what I'm seeing and I'm a Darkstalkers fan. I love KI back in the arcade days so I'm glad to see that MS is giving this series a chance and so far, they did a good job on it. The characters I use are: Jago, Spinal, Riptor, and TJ Combo. So yes, Killer Instinct does have longevity.

No.

Seems many love the game and once it comes to PC with online cross play, no other fighter will likely be as popular with fans of the fighting genre.

SF5 is still on the horizon, and it will most likely be bigger than KI...even if KI does get a PC release. Still though, KI on PC would/will be a great idea, and it will undoubtedly grow the base and extend the game's longevity.

I don't see SF5 selling even slightly over half SFIV's life time sales so KI might. Though I KNOW MK will.

I've established my mancave today. I've hooked my PC to the Xbone HDMI port, there is a bit of a mouse lag, but it's not that big, it still beats using browser on a console. Alas, the 46'' Sharp is now in the living room and I have a 32'' Samsung for myself. I cannot express how stoked I am.

SF5 is definitely not going to sell as well as SF4 did, but it will probably still out sell KI. That being said though, it is hard / impossible for us to gauge how well KI is doing currently since it was a digital only title for the first year, and I don't think any numbers were released for the retail version. Anything is possible, KI's pricing model may serve it well vs. SF5 (presumably) more tradition model.

About MK though...LOLOLOL! MK is going to mop the floor with KI, SF5, SF4, MK9, Injustice, etc. ... ANY / ALL modern era fighters will be dwarfed in the wake of MK's sales. Just the fact that MK is on EVERYTHING (except Wii U; :o( ) ensures that it will have a flawless victory over the current competition.

numbers were released but most sales were digital though.

don't think anyone is keeping up with micro transactions for that game since it does have a low population anyway.

@Salt_The_Fries: There is a healthy online community and as far as I know there will be a season 3. If you haven't heard, KI will be at EVO for it's second year. I would say it has some legs.

However, if you are new to fighting games your opinion on the game could go either way. A lot of people do not understand there is depth to fighting games and just go online and press buttons and then say things like, "its a ok game" without learning the mechanics, footsies, and more advanced subjects. I'm don't mean to come across as a tool, but I've been playing fighting games for over 10 years. It is by far my favorite genre and I can definitely say, you can do a hell of a lot worse than KI.

I have played the free to play version and really enjoyed it but I'm not sure how the full version pans out.

They are the same. The free version gives you access to all modes but only one character, and if you pay you just get all that and what ever character you pay for...unless you get the Ultra Edition. If you get the ED(s) you get the OG game(s) and all the accessories of each character. For me, I really wanted the accessories, and they do enhance my enjoyment of the game. All the characters are cool too, but not all of them are a good fit for me personally, but fighting against them is fun; it is a good test in adaptation for me.

@Salt_The_Fries: It doesn't have that much longevity if you are not playing online. Missing the tournament mode is a big disappointment.

Still, it's fun playing online or with someone next to you.

@StormyJoe: What's tournament mode?

Like in most other fighting games - it's the single player mode.

KI has that. It didn't have it at launch, but the arcade mode for KI has been in place for over a year now. If you beat the story mode with each S1 character you unlock a KI mural.

At the end of S2 they are bringing in a new story mode with some sort of cut scenes and such for the S2 characters, on top of some other mystery mode.

Really? Huh. I guess I need to download the updates... my bad.

man it has longevity even without you playing online, story mode for each fighters have three endings each, also different bosses dependiing on how you beat each opponent. Fresh content, costumes , and fighters still coming all with different styles. Its a good game and im a SF fan at heart