Input Error!!!

Mortal Kombat X (MKX), me no likey.

I took some time out of my busy schedule this week and attempted to play some MKX. My good friend (the PS4-owner) had been playing it for a couple days and I walked in on him doing advanced combos in the practice mode. He was doing some ridiculous 17-hit, 40% damage, mix ups and juggles. (These are all fighting game terms that you can look up here) I was thoroughly impressed at the skill at which he was displaying in the short amount of time he had been playing for. (Secretly I was cringing because if I happened to be hit by 2 of those combos it's basically K.O.) Of course, in his regular fashion, he was running through the whole cast of characters trying out different variations and seeing which one felt right to him. (MKX has a variation system where a character comes in 3 different variations. Each variation specializes in a certain aspect for example one variant may be centered around projectiles while the other is better for defensive play and the third would be more inclined to rapid attacks) He seemed to like Erron Black (which scared me, especially after seeing Fatal Eight) and he messed around with Erron for a good 15 minutes.

After watching him for some time (he got tired and went to do something else) I grabbed his fight stick and started my own little session. I pressed a few buttons, measured jump distance and float, walk/dash speed, and I found the all important block button. (MK has a dedicated button for blocking as opposed to Street Fighter (SF) where you just hold back.) I lost a bit of my adoration for him though because after I adjusted my seat to get a better view of the screen I noticed his cell phone had a list of ALL the combos he'd done. I glanced at a few, reduced his "cool point" total (he doesn't have too many to spare) and then tried my best to do the combos I read. 

This is where MKX went downhill for me. First of all I haven't played MK since my Super Nintendo days. So I was accustomed to the High Punch Low Punch, High Kick Low Kick set up. The combos I read from his cell phone consisted of the following:

B123-U4-Run-F112
B321 DB2-112-U2-121-DBF2

My brain was like "O_O WTH?!?! This isn't Mortal... OOOHHH they changed the buttons and the layout" and after doing a quick update and conversion I deciphered the cacophony of alphanumeric code and deftly went into my "get the timing right then go for muscle memory" ritual. This lasted all of 3 minutes and I gave up. I wanted to be stringing combos like Sonic Fox and MIT were (in this video)

but that wasn't happening and I wasn't having it. I played 3 matches against a non-player (one worse off than I was) and then I quickly went back to playing Assassins Creed Unity. This was apparently a good thing because a bit later when we were all playing SF everyone (excluding myself) was losing on account of major input errors (I just lost because they were better than me). They all complained about instinctively holding the "block" button when they were attacked only to realise that this was SF and not MK. So I'm happy that I didn't play MK for too long.

Let this be a lesson to ALL!!! Know that MK will mess up your SF inputs and cause you to lose then say "why do I keep pressing R2 to block?" This will be ignored by the person beating you but they will be like "ME GLAD *maniacal laugh*" in their head!!! (ME GLAD = local dialect for "too bad for you... maybe you should've left MK for the MK players. Now do it again so I can take advantage of your dire circumstance"