Interesting use of Wii's unique abilities... but...somethings missing....
All in all, I'm happy that I decided to now... Sure I may not know why Liu Kang is a zombie, or who 90% of the characters are...but it's still a fun game!
The unique abilities of the Wii shine thorugh here, but it can be a bit frustrating at first. Sure with practice the Wiimote/nunchuk combination is way more leathal than the standard control method with the Classic Controller or GBA controller, but it sure takes a lot of practice to get things right!
The Kreate a Kombatant feature is really cool, and you can really take things to the next level and combine the favorite moves of your favorite characters and put them into one fighter. And it dosn't take long to get enough Koins to buy new moves anc cloathing either. In about an hour of exploring the various game modes I collected enough Koins to build a Laura Croft look alike (gun holsters and all!) and unlock enough special moves to have the perfect mix of Scorpion, Katana, Cage, and Sonya. The Kart game is definatly an after thought, and dosn't play as well as one would hope, but it's still a fun addition that shouldn't go unmissed.
The story mode is interesting... combining parts of action/adventure and the standard fighting mode into a story intrigues me. The story seems a bit lame, and the voice acting can sometimes be lifeless, but it seems to be a quick way to unlock things for the standard style of play. Graphcis are pretty good for a fighting game, and animations are usually pretty fluid. The biggest fault in the animations is where the losing character regains their balance after an attack, and then just keels over backwards...it looks really really bad...after so many editions of this game, you think they would have figured out a way to fix that!
Your custom fighter dosn't appear properly during loading screens or character selection either. It's just a generic picture...this is really lame. The least they could have done was allow you to 'snap' a portrait shot that gets added to the selection screen, and then take the pose of that character for loading screens. It may be harder than it sounds in reality, but I bet with an extra month or so of development they could have had that in there...
Overall a fun game, and lives up to my expectations of a MK game... I guess Ill have to rock this until a new Streetfighter makes it's appearance... I hope its soon!