I once considered myself to be a hardcore fighting gamer. I spent many a free period at school honing my skill at Tekken 5 on the PSP to the point where I could defeat almost all who sought to challenge me. I would eagerly get the next Soul Calibur or Mortal Kombat game and spend hours unlocking all the characters and their endings and I generally felt like I was good at what I did. Then Street Fighter 4 and Tekken 6 came and shattered this illusion.

I discovered that there was increasingly less for the single player to unlock, that character stories and endings were more brief and less satisfying and most damagingly, that the online competetion was spectacularly ahead of what I was used to. The skill that had got me by against my friends and family was woefully below pretty much everyone I fought online and the veil I had lived behind comfortably for years had come crashing down.

I spent a great deal of time trying to learn the intricacies of juggle combos in Tekken but I was mired in terminology that I did not understand and I simply did not have the timing or reflex neccesary to pull off anything that worked. This is evidenced by my grim win-loss record on Tekken 6.

In the end I concluded that I did not have the time, patience or fortitude to succeed online so I turned to the single player modes instead. However there was little satisfaction to be had here. With all characters available from the start and the character endings being mere footnotes compared to what they once were, there was no incentive to play the game.

I had decided that this generation of fighting games had left me behind in favour of those who want little more than online play and was ready to abandon series that I had played since I was 6/7 years old.

Then out of the increasing complexity came Netherrealm studios. Mortal Kombat holds a special place in my heart because, on the Sega Megadrive, it was the very first video game I had ever played. Ed Boon stood apart from the increaasingly distant likes of Namco and Capcom and gave us three games all of which gave value to the fighting gamer who didn't care to go online. Mortal Kombat vs DC (much underrated), the sublime Mortal Kombat and recently Injustice have all presented the single player with a lengthy and satisfying story mode that provided just enough challenge for the more casual of us gamers.

Simple combos were easy to string together and I even found myself occasionally juggling my foe and this was all wrapped in a stories that were coherent and felt epic in scale, as opposed to Street Fighter 4 where I could not make any sense of many of the animated shorts.

Netherrealm stands as a shining beacon for those lost in the mire of a genre they once loved. They continue to make games that embrace those who simply want to spend an hour after work battering Superman or those who are invested in the lore that they have created.

Perhaps it is time those at Namco Bandai and Capcom took notice.