I enjoyed Mortal Kombat's story mode...to a point. But as a longtime fan of the series, the conclusion felt like a sucker punch. They did an admirable job setting up the various side stories, and then...nothing. And then something major happens, which I won't spoil here.

I realize that Mortal Kombat presented an alternate history of the MK timeline, so Sub Zero became mechanized instead of Smoke. I can appreciate that. But the conclusion felt like a major cop-out, as though it easily could've easily been another 3-5 hours. It feels like they pulled a Xenogears, and cut it short, though Xenogears was apparently chopped due to budgetary concerns.

If you'd have asked me up to a few days after I bought it, I'd have enthusiastically declared MK one of the top 5 fighting games of all time. But the story really soured me on it, and because MK touts its narrative, I'm inclined to knock it down a peg or two. With MK 1-3, we accept the fact that the story is of piddling concern. But when the latest entry promotes it to the foreground, the story becomes a legitimate criticism.

I heavily agree, MK has a lot of single player content, specially compared to MvC3 which basically has nothing. Even the endings in MK's arcade (Ladder/Tag Ladder) are of much better quality than MvC3's. They aren't just 2 pictures with subtitles or something stupid like that, they're actual endings. They are narrated, and they are animately (even if the animation is pretty simplistic, it's a LOT better than MvC3's slideshows).

What's worse, when it comes to story mode, about MvC3 is that Capcom was releasing those "episode" trailers that made everyone think there would a story mode with awesome cinematic cutscenes. But there was nothing.

I also think that MK is a more complex fighting game than MvC3, as the combos are really fun to find and feel way more complex and varied than what you can do in MvC3. Maybe that's just me, but hey.

I would totally love it if MvC3 had the amount of content that MK does. Maybe MvC4 will provide the massive amount of content that MvC3 should have had?

PS: The disc locked DLC isn't cool either. It's one of those things that makes me say Capcom is both one of the best and one of the worst companies.

I think MVC3 is the better competitive fighter, but Mortal Kombat is the better single player experience and thus the better game for people who aren't competitive fighters. If we could convince competitive fighting game makers to give a shit about their non competitive audience it would do wonders for the industry.

Smash brothers has always been pretty good about single player content as well. Though I personally think the subspace emmisary was a frustrating and largely boring mess, at least they gave it a good honest try.

While I do agree that the "episode" trailers made me expect a story mode that wasn't there, I still believe MVC3 is a well-written game. You have to think of the all the character intros, rival dialog, in-game attack shouts, win quotes, and text quotes. Obviously that doesn't work for MK since it's not suppose to be chatty, but the MVC3 lines are cool, funny, and reference storylines from both companies and even community memes. People take those bits of dialog for granted, especially since you'll hear them a lot more often than the one or two times you would play a Story Mode.

The actual entrances are pretty cool though. Maybe it's just a delivery issue.

TLDR: Single player content is fine as long as it doesn't take away resources that could have made the point of fighting games better. I.E. Depth. of the fighting engine itself.

As someone who only cares about the competitive scene for fighting games I am all for a buffed up singleplayer as long as it doesn't take away from the competitive part. Making a good fighting game should come first in fighting games. Not a few hours of crap storyline that all fighting games have. If I want a good story I will play a rpg or read a book. Fighting games are not the place for it.

The casuals will have returned the game within a few months and only the competitive players will remain. Give the casuals their eye candy, but make a good fighting game that the only people who will be playing a few years from now can actually enjoy.

I haven't played a Mortal Kombat game in a while (the last one was MK4 on my N64), mainly because of the fact thaat I couldn't get the combos right, so the tutorials alone might convince me to get back into Mortal Kombat.

Man I just can not enjoy any MK games anymore (Or Fighting games in general). I try to get into them, and enjoy playing online, or getting some buddies around and smashing on each other, but the problem with it is, the combos, special moves, and super hits are just easier and easier to land. I can sit in Soul Caliber IV and just win a match by mashing three buttons, and dealing tonnes of damage. 

I dunno. I miss old Fighting games I guess.