So I recently picked up the new Mortal Kombat game and thought to myself, wicked time to rip people apart. When I got home I popped it in the ole xbox and went straight to the story mode. Well needless to say the first few matches were aggravating. I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. Reading through the move listings and the special moves they seemed pretty simple. Eventually I made it pretty far through the story, up until one match where as Smoke I had to defeat sub zero and reptile. After the fourth or fifth time I lost I decided to boot up the tutorial and see if I was missing something. Well that also pissed me off. One match needed me to push a certain combination of buttons. I tried pushing them slowly, fast, all at once...but the character didn't seem to do anything other then punch/punch/kick. It wasn't until I actually just rolled over the buttons that he decided to pull off the move needed. But still it wasn't any help in showing me how to actually play the damn game. Another thing I noticed about the story was that they would let you play as a character for about five or six matches. Just enough to get comfortable-ish with them before swapping them out with another. Yes I agree that this is a good function in a fighting game, if each character didn't have a completely different arsenal. It could have been forgotten if the A.I. didn't have each and every one of their moves down packed. It was incredibly difficult to get the hang of the new character as I was being pummeled. The resulting effects was me randomly smashing buttons and trying to pull off a power move and the a.i. sending ice/fire/acid bolts into my face or brutalizing my ass with their fists. Other forums I read on the game had people seeming to have the same problem with the controls and the difficulty. Now I enjoy a challenging game, even ones that have me pulling my hair out, but this was not challenging. This was sending a toddler into the ring with a black belt. So to sum up my thoughts on this game: Dodgey controls, ridiculous difficulty curve(not so much a curve as a line), good story line, but all in all not fun. And the people who think it is have a very very VERY large loving of abuse and frustration.