[jwcooper]

Killer Instinct is pretty popular, and fairly well reviewed. It did go with a model similar to League of Legends where you can play it for free, but then buy each character, or buy a pack of characters[1]. It's not a terrible model if it's priced fairly and balanced well. The characters do seem a little expensive, but if you play each one for more than a few hours, it's probably worth it in the end.

The worst offenders are games like Forza that are a $60 up front purchase, and then also have micro-transactions to buy cars (you can also grind many hours away to get them).

I believe Double Helix also has a game called Strider (related to the original arcade game of the same name somehow)[2] coming out soon that is somewhat anticipated.

[1] http://killerinstinct.wikia.com/wiki/Killer_Instinct_(Xbox_O... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strider_(2014_video_game)

[fooqux]

I feel it is disingenuous to compare this to League of Legends' model. The big difference is that in LoL, you can buy characters with in-game currency earned from playing the game. The only thing you can't buy with earned currency are cosmetic skins for your characters. So while you might not look as fancy, you're never at a tactical disadvantage in-game just because you haven't sunk a wad of cash into it.

KI:3, if I remember right, only gives you two characters to play for free, and doesn't stop opponents with bought characters from playing you. I presume KI, like most fighting games, have attempted to balance the characters; this may alleviate the point somewhat. But typically they never get the balance quite right for all skill levels. That is, Alice and Bob might be equal at the top-level competitive play (and even that is a stretch in most games) but at the beginner's tier, Bob is way stronger. A great example of this is strong & slow characters versus weak & fast characters. The faster characters are typically better for beginners as they're better for button mashing and missing an attack isn't as detrimental to your health bar.

[chrisrhoden]

It's a demo. You can buy all of the available DLC for the price of a standard game. The fact that you can play against people with the full game when you only have the demo might be a strategy to get you to buy, but I'd wager most people would call it better than the alternative.