The latest Killer Instinct is a game I love to play. It’s also a game I love to complain about. Why? Well, parts of the game was made by Double Helix Games and other parts were made by Iron Galaxy Studios, making it a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster type of game. Overall there’s very little things to complain about in the game, so this post will mostly consist of my nit-picks and minor annoyances that don’t detract from the overall experience but are enough to grind my gears.

CHANGE MUSIC SELECTION ORDER - Prior to Season 3, there were no music selection. However, with the news that not every new character would get a new stage, Iron Galaxy added a music selection so that every character’s theme would have a way to get played. There are two things to complain about here: No way to select a random theme, and the order the character themes are in. The former has already been adressed, so I’m sure they’re already working on adding that. The latter, though, is an issue. “In what kind of order are the themes?”, you may ask. Sorted by release date? Nah. Sorted by the game the character first appeared in? Nope. Sorted by alphabetical order? You would think so, but no. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there even is an order. Here you have Sadira (S1, new), followed by Hisako (S2, new), then Sabrewulf (S1, old), Arbiter (S3, new) and Glacius (S1, old). What type of order is that? Personally I would prefer to have it in alphabetical order as that makes the most sense, especially for people who might not know in which order the characters released. Oh, and on the topic of music…

ADD MUSIC SELECTION SUB-MENU “CLASSIC” - In the Practice mode you have your typical Dojo-style music, but (provided you’ve unlocked them) you can select a song from the first Killer Instinct to play instead. So the songs are there, why not just add them to the already existing music select? And while you’re at it, you could add the songs from KI2 as well. Sure, this might need some tweaking with unlocks and such, but it can’t be too hard to implement, right? And regarding the order, it could be Default, Random, Classic, then all the characters, and of course this sub-menu should also have a random button and alphabetical order.

LOWER TRANSPARENCY OF GREEN SMOKE - When selecting character, there’s this green smoke in front of your characters. While it certainly looks cool, it’s a bit too thick, like trying to view a building 100 meters away while it’s foggy. I think about 30-60% more transparent than it currently is would work.

CHECK FOR ADDITIONAL CONTENT BEFORE PRESSING START - Something that bothers me a bit with modern game is there’s a startup loading screen, then you press a button, then another loading screen and then you can play the game. This is mostly for convience as you could start the game up, then say, go to the bathroom, be back and ready to play instead of start game, bathroom, press start and wait some more before playing. This should also make it so you can time the “Killer Instinct” with the beat of the music.

UPDATE SOME CHARACTERS MATERIALS - This is a consistency issue I have, and probably my biggest annoyance. When comparing Jago with TJ Combo, Thunder with Tusk, or Fulgore with ARIA you may notice that there’s a difference with the way the skin looks. I’m not talking about color or anything, but Jago, Fulgore and Thunder have more of a shiny look while TJ, ARIA and Tusk are a bit more matte, a bit more life-like. This is mostly a problem with the humans and robots. Since I prefer the way S1 characters look with their materials, I’ll choose mostly from them. Here’s how I want these to change:

• Teeth:
  
  • From Orchid to Tusk, Kim Wu, TJ, Maya, Rash
  • From Spinal to Kan-Ra, Hisako
  • From Sabrewulf to Riptor
• Eyes:
  
  • From Orchid to Maya, Kim Wu, TJ, Tusk, Hisako, Rash
  • From Sabrewulf to Riptor
• Skin:
  
  • From Jago/Thunder to Tusk, TJ, Rash
  • From Orchid to Kim Wu, Maya
  • From Hisako to Kan-Ra
• Robotic shine/eyes:
  
  • From Fulgore to ARIA, Riptor
• Metallic shine:
  
  • From Jago’s gold rings on his chest to Rash’s belt, golden parts of Kim’s nunchucks

And these are of course excluding upcoming characters such as Gargos.

Overall these things aren’t gameplay related and should hopefully only make the game better if implemented.

EDIT: There was a bit about Combo Assist and Ranked here but after having tried it out a bit it doesn’t seem like an unfair deal and as such it has been removed. It is a bit button-mashy, though.