You never even tried. You seem all-too eager to excuse everything that IG does when you shouldn’t.
And you seem to worship the very ground IG walks on and think they can do no wrong when they have. I admit there were some aspects that I wasn’t crazy about with regards to DH such as some of the classic costumes (cough cough Fulgore, Jago), but at least with their work the characters generally look like continuations of the characters’ stories, have features that make them recognizable from the old games. Fulgore and Spinal looked like their original counterparts, if not were massive improvements on them. Spinal still has his classic laugh. At least there is a sense of ambition. In Season One, DH was approaching KI as KI3, with some of the staff even referring it as such. IG’s philosophy was to make it a reboot/remake of KI1, thereby making things confusing, with a “good enough” mentality.
“Maybe we should clean up the animations for Maya, TJ and Riptor later.”
“Nah, it’s good enough. Nobody will notice or care.”
“What about the Stage Ultra animations?”
“Nah, it’s good enough.”
“Maybe we should add Stage Ultras to the other stages?”
“Nah, it’s good enough.”
“Okay, for TJ, we’re going to make him all blue like Balrog, and as a comeback story he’ll tear out his cybernetics.”
“Okay, that’s a cool idea, but why is he wearing MMA apparel? Nothing in the story indicates that he turns to MMA.”
“Meh. Whatever. It’s good enough.”
“We’ll give Cinder a mask.”
“Alright, cool, but why does he have fish lips?”
“Whatever. It’s good enough.”
“Maybe we should make other stages and costumes for the other characters, especially for the ones without either?”
“Nah, it’s good enough.”
“You’ve added new details to Riptor, Sabrewulf and Cinder’s backstories that contradict the story mode in Season 1 and 2.”
“It’s good enough.”
“We’ll have arrows flying in Tusk’s background.”
“But nothing in the story indicates such a thing-”
“It’s good enough!”
“We’ll recycle animations for the Ultimates and make them as laughably pathetic as possible - good enough!”
“What about Ultimates for the other characters?”
“Meh, good enough!”
“We’ll make kind of new characters, but we’re going to recycle elements from previous ones. Good enough.”
“But-”
“It’s good enough!”
Riptor is one of the many icings that embodies this half-a$$ philosophy. She just looks and sounds pathetic. Nothing about Riptor in its design, sound or stage even touches the original. And no, I’m not the only one who has had a complaint about Riptor not feeling like Riptor - there have been others who feel the same way, not just me. In terms of the Ultimates, there are so many ways they could have been so much more impactful without resorting to gore, even on a smaller budget and without pushing the rating, so don’t excuse mediocrity, because what is to stop Microsoft in a future entry to do the whole season thing again, but on an even lower budget? Are you going to defend them when they do that like you do here? Yes, I’m aware that Mick wasn’t impressed with the theme either, and I know about the time constraints and that the Ultimates were a limitation of finances and having to maintain the game’s rating, but that only further proves my point. Look, I will always be fair in my assessments of a given company or individual’s work, even look past some things depending on the circumstances for a given product or project, but at some point a line has to be drawn where you have to say enough is enough or “that is unacceptable”. At least with DH’s attempt at Ultimates with Shadow Jago characters DID die and there were very clear consequences with an opponent’s body lying lifeless on the screen.
Hm, let’s see. Original T.J. - wears the American flag for a shirt.
TJ 2013 - wears largely blue and black with slight shades of grey, looking like a more drab version of Balrog.
So, yeah. I like the scars on the arms and the goatee, but aside from that, it’s so generic as hell, even downright boring.
