I played this as a single player game, which likely isn’t how it’ll be experienced by its biggest fans, but it’s still a fun time outside of the online versus mode. The moves feel easy enough to pick up and satisfying to pull off, and there’s apparent depth for anyone interested.

Visually, this is by far the most high fidelity fighting game I’ve ever played, with environments and character designs that are richly detailed in addition to often looking photorealistic. The facial animation in the “kampaign” cinematics is astounding, though the performances are mostly amateur enough that capturing every little nuance is often more distracting than affecting.

The plot is nostalgically reconstructing the backstory of the early games (again), especially MK2 and 3, and that’s entertaining for a while, if also long-winded. Eventually, though, it collapses into the same halfhearted gesturing at multiverse nonsense that so many big branded stories default to right now. The dialogue is also generally bad, not just in a hammy way, but in an “I can finish half the lines myself because they’re that tired and recycled” way.

Beyond the story mode, there’s the usual arcade tower with character endings, plus a time-sink seasons mode that seems like an okay carrot to keep solo players interested but also way too much of a service game/MTX store grind to grab me more than the couple of intro hours I tried.

An all around improvement to Uncharted 1, better set pieces, more colorful and detailed, better shooting, story and pacing. There are some bad things I don't see a lot of people talking about though, the game is kinda glitchy (at least the Nathan Drake collection version) the end portion is kind of weak, and the final boss in the hardest difficulty is absolutely god-awful, he is so unfair and frustrating that it just makes you want to stop playing and just watch the final cutscene on YouTube. I only managed to beat him because I accidentally glitched into a wall where I could shoot him, but he couldn't hit me (happened twice, but I accidentally glitched back in and died the first time) Overall, a very good game, and a great sequel 7.5/10