Killer Weekend Update: Achievements, Shortcut Mappings, And More

Here we are again; another weekend, another Killer Instinct update. As always, you can watch the stream in full here. For those who can’t, here are the highlights to last night’s stream. There was a lot covered this week as usual, including achievements, gamerscore and controller shortcut mappings.

The story mode for Killer Instinct will not be a cinematic narrative sprinkled with fights. When asked if the game’s story mode would be like the story mode in Mortal Kombat 9, they said no; the story mode would be similar to the story mode of other fighting games. That isn’t to say that it will never come in the future. There is a possibility that they can make a cinematic narrative story mode, but their focus for right now is bringing us more characters and features. The game’s story mode will touch base on the characters’ back stories as well as explain who their rivals are and why.

Their intention while creating Sabrewulf was to make his special moves and his regular moves look slightly similar to make him a tricky character to read and to stay true to his ground based, rush down archetype. It is possible to distinguish between his special and regular moves, but it just takes some practice. Sabrewulf’s “quick ultra” animation is reminiscent of his back flip special move from Killer Instinct 2.

There is a major possibility that classic stages will make an appearance in the game. When asked about it, they simply said “stay tuned” so I’d say the probability is high. Of course these would be revamped classic stages if remade so I’d assume there would be a modern twist to it if they do make an appearance.

Instinct mode allows the player to cancel anything at any time granted they have full instinct meter. Instinct cancel can be used on shadow moves or even regular special moves.

Aerial combo breakers are allowable under certain circumstances. If the player is being juggled and the attacker is still on the ground, then a combo breaker is permissible in the air. It takes great timing but it is possible.

The classic Killer Instinct that is coming packaged with the game is the arcade version. There are two different versions of the game packaged in. There are “interesting changes” between the different versions, though no specifics were given.

The difference between ultras in the original Killer Instinct versus this iteration is that, in the original KI, the ultra was all of the character’s moves in different amounts of frames put into one long combo whereas in the reboot, the ultra is a mixture of the character’s moveset with added flair to make it look more interesting.

Players are presented with the option to chose between the classic and current announcer. They’ve even given them identities in the options menu. The original Killer Instinct announcer is named Chris Sutherland and the announcer for the current KI is named Mike. Chris re-recorded all of the voices for the game for those who want to take a trip down memory lane.

There will be downloadable content between seasons of the game. They said that while they have a plan for what is released between seasons, they also want to listen to the community. So if we want more accessories or more costumes, then there’s a high chance we’ll see release of what is being asked for. The Ultra Edition of the game comes with exclusive accessories.

They plan on revealing at least one character’s classic costume before launch.

Achievements are currently being worked on. At launch, the game will have 1,000 gamerscore and more achievements will be added as more characters release. There will be character specific achievements as well. Classic Killer Instinct will have its own separate achievements ranging between easy and challenging to unlock.

For those who don’t have a fight stick but still want to play Killer Instinct, they added a shortcut mapping in which the right stick can be used to combo break, throw, or throw escape. Down is light, left and right are mediums, and up is heavy hits. Also, the left bumper and trigger are mapped to be the three attack buttons (Heavy punch, Medium punch, and Low punch and vice versa with the kick buttons) similar to the mappings of Street Fighter 4. The d-pad has been vastly improved from the 360 controller.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back next Friday with our next Killer Weekend Update filled to the brim with news and updates as they’re revealed. Check out the screenshot gallery below to satisfy your visual needs:

.