The barrier to stop people from playing the good parts of the game can be taken down at any time. It is already a great game if you have a group to play with. The core game play is probably better than Sonic and certainly seems much more polished, but I'll wait until I get a chance to play it more before actually standing behind that claim. Most people who try to downplay MKW when making this comparison seem to complain about the wrong things and seem like they haven't actually played the game to know what is good and bad about it.