An MK Walker, short for
Mortal Kombat Walker, is a kind of
Nintendo Hard AI, commonly found in fighting games, where an opponent steadily walks forward, blocks/deflects/parries all attacks, and, upon reaching the correct distance, attacks flawlessly. All attempts to input any attack are matched instantly with the appropriate counter: for example, if the player tries a hard punch, the MK Walker will auto-magically jab him out of it; if the player tries a jab, the MK Walker may automatically jab "first" or perform a powerful combo that has
Magic Priority (the ability of a computer to automatically hit a player past his own attacks); if a player jumps in, the Walker automatically performs the appropriate anti-air move.
MK Walkers are characterized by opponents that are always advancing but always being technically "safe". Opponents that perform "unsafe" moves to approach, such as jumping in, rolling, and certain teleports are not strictly MK Walkers although they can be considered MK Walkers for the most of their play. In ancient war, MK Walking can be considered a rough equivalent of the Spartan Phalanx: it combines an unbreakable defense with a devastating counterattack to both psychologically and geographically pressure the opponent into a corner. MK Walkers are also known for using moves that are, by the rules of the game, impossible to pull off given the circumstances. For example, using charge moves(Guile's Sonic Boom, Blanka's Rolling Attack, etc.) without the initial charge time.
MK Walkers first appeared in
Mortal Kombat II, and have become a recurring difficult-to-defeat AI in fighting games. Theoretically, the "standard" counter to the MK Walker strategy is to step back, attack out of range, never initiate an attack that can be countered, counter the computer when attacking, and hopefully initiate a throw upon entering the correct range. In practice, this usually means ticking your opponent to 0 from block damage. As MK Walkers usually tend to attack or throw "first", relying on block damage for a human player is a bit of a gamble. In games without a counter-throw, the only way to beat an MK Walker with equal range is to hope that he does prefers to perform a stupid move - otherwise known as an AI Flaw. MK Walking is believed by some to be the highest level of play unattainable by humans: once perfected by a capable AI, the AI can be assumed to be unbeatable.
While initially, MK Walking only optimally did the damage of a throw or a ticked jab, the Walkers have accumulated more and more tricks over time to add to their arsenal. MK Walking was normally done by normal opponents in Mortal Kombat II - and only a couple of jabs or a blocked attack was the original inevitable result.
- Damage - It was a sometimes feasible normal play to attack an MK Walker while he is attacking, knocking the opponent out of his attack in the best case and trading blows in the worst case. When performed by bosses and certain characters though, this game becomes much more difficult: since certain characters can do 2 to 3 times as much damage as the player, the risk of trading blows becomes highly prohibitive.
- Tick Damage - In a large number of games, jabs and normal attacks don't do any damage when blocked. This makes it acceptable for the player to keep on blocking (and avoiding throws) until he finds an opening. Some games, however, have the Walker always gives the player block damage, lowering the feasibility of waiting.
- Hyper fast jabs - Some Walkers not only always "jab first", they jab so fast and so often (often with Tick Damage too) that it is simply unfeasible to use 99% of any character's arsenal: the player will get knocked out of it.
- Counter Smart - In games with a parry or counterattack, where the player's character enters a pose which temporarily allows him to automatically counter any move, you might think that the Walker would fall into the trap of attacking the prepared player. Not quite. The Walker is often smart enough to either wait for the player to be vulnerable and attack or to use a non-counterable throw. In fact, some Walkers of this type cheat by frame-counting, throwing a punch during the stance, timed such that it will land one or two frames after the stance ends. This gives the player no chance to dodge or make a new attack, attack and makes the counter stance a suicidal move.
- Counter Devious - Some Walkers themselves have counterattacks moves. These are mixed in with their normal walking routine to mentally paralyze the player from guessing when it is the correct time to attack.
- Unblockable Smart - in games where an unblockable move can easily stop an MK Walker's routine, Walkers are typically smart enough to avoid unblockables by knocking the player out of them or staying just out of reach: in both cases at pixel-perfect accuracy.
While most often encountered in Fighting Game AI's, MK Walkers have been known to make manifestations elsewhere. Skilled players often resort to MK Walking less skilled ones. Robots from the future or from hyper-advanced civilizations are also known to likewise shrug off the attacks of the heroes using some kind of "adaptive shielding" to render most attacks moot point.
MK Walkers are usually characterized by their slow, but sure "Offensive Defense" towards their opponent. It is NOT this trope when the Walker runs, jumps, or performs certain risky moves to get close or when finally there, unless those movements are the exact counter to something an opponent does.
When encountered,
the computer is almost always a cheating bastard. Often used by
SNK Bosses. In narrative terms, compare the
Implacable Man,
The Juggernaut, and
The Slow Walk although an in-game
MK Walker may not fit any of these by the story background.
Examples:
- Basically all Mortal Kombat II characters at hardest setting.
- In Last Blade, the boss, Kagami, MK Walks in his first form.
- In Real-time Strategy, MK Walking is done by hiding most of the army around a cluster of long-range artillery units, then cascading them forward so that the army never leaves their protective shadow.
- Star Craft's Terrans, with their Siege Tanks and generally low mobility, tend to thrive on this.
- The
rather insanely difficult "bunker rush" is based on the same idea.
- Likewise, some players of Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, use a similar strategy with the NOD Artillery.
- Truth In Television: The funniest thing is that this is an actual tactic, called leapfrogging. Alternately, it could be considered using the "Creeping Barrage" concept from WWI, except with mobile artillery pieces.
- Videogames are supposed to be fair. Real war isn't.
- In the Advance Wars series an inversion of this is done by a tactic called 'mech spam', which involves using artillery shielded by lots of cheap infantry units with bazookas — the enemy gets bogged down trying to chew through the infantry hordes and are cut to pieces by the artillery.
- In Star Trek, the Borg, on a large scale, typically MK Walk towards their targets, using their adaptive shielding to neutralize all phaser fire.
- Several of the bonus bosses in One Must Fall, especially Devan Shell. To make things worse, One Must Fall had NO block damage.
- Every opponent on every difficulty in Facebreaker.
- In Tsukihime, this is how Shiki's epic-level pwnage of Nrvnqsr occurs, with Shiki doing the MK walking.
- Probably other SNKBosses, but Geese Howard from Fatal Fury fits this trope best.
- The AI in Soul Calibur 3 can sometimes do this when it's going all out. It can read your buttons, and (when it's at its best, like on Dancing Statues Hard) it can counter moves with its inhuman reflexes. Worse, it gets faster based on how much you press the button, even blocking. So if you block too long, the computer goes into a berserk rage, conveniently attacking in a way that gets around your block and is simply too fast to counter.
- Vergil from Devil May Cry 3 acts like an MK Walker "normally", as in he normally walks towards Dante while parrying any moves the player makes and counters immediately. The key is to let him attack first, dodge and counter. In this respect he is not a full-fledged MK Walker.
- The final boss of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link qualifies for this trope. He knows and has all of Link's moves and counters them perfectly. The only effective way to fight him is to MK Walk against him, while trying to catch the computer at just the right frame to hurt it. Fortunately, the game has been throwing lesser enemies of this sort (Iron Knuckles, Lizalfoses) at you, so you're well practiced at having to MK Walk yourself by now. Not that it makes the boss fight trivial or anything.
- Except the boss was trivial. Crouch in the corner and mash "B".
- Street Fighter's Zangief
