Review – Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat has returned in a big way. This ninth core title is a surprisingly robust package that completely lives up to the franchise’s once-great legacy. The game completely reinvigorates the series, harkening back to the easy-to-pick-up style of the arcade originals, while still packing in a wide array of modern fighting conventions to keep things fresh.

I’ve spent twenty years as a devout Mortal Kombat lover. To me this series was never really about ultra-skillful competition. Among my friends, MK was all about corner-trapping people with sweep kicks until the game told us to tear their heads off. Sure there was plenty of skill there, but in my neighborhood it always felt more accessible than the Capcom or SNK scene. Despite its gore and “maturity”, Mortal Kombat was much easier to pick up. Since every character had the same basic moves and speed, all you needed to learn were some special attacks and finishers. And hell, if you didn’t want to do that, the uppercuts alone were devastating. For us, MK was just a lot of violent silly fun.

Mortal Kombat was a pure product of the strange arcade community that existed in the ‘90s. Unlike other games, Mortal Kombat’s cabinet didn’t give you any hints on how to do the moves. MK’s greatness existed in rumors of secret finishing moves, hidden characters, and codes written on scraps of paper. Taped to the cabinets, these secret notes were passed from arcade to arcade, until somehow we all learned them by heart. The days before the Internet were kind of awesome.

So with all of that said, I deem this new Mortal Kombat: incredible. NetherRealm Studios has managed to take literally everything I’d loved about the first couple of games, and refined it into something truly amazing. The result is the most approachable fighting game of this console generation. The characters all control very similarly to each other. There’s a welcome return for the uppercuts and sweeps of the original trilogy, giving this new title that old-school flavor. Wisely, NetherRealms stripped out the extraneous features of the later MK games, leaving us with a solid, timing-based combo system that just feels like it belongs in Mortal Kombat. It’s perfect for people like me who like to pause matches to “learn the moves”, but there is clearly plenty of depth here. Just dabbling online has gotten me crushed and tossed around by massive combos.

Unlike most 2D fighters, the need for an arcade stick in MK is debatable. On one hand, you can EASILY reach all the necessary buttons on the game pad. In many ways, this makes pulling off enhanced moves—which require you to hold block—much easier. On the other hand, the Xbox 360’s d-pad is borderline worthless.

If you’re using a stick with a standard 6-button layout, the basic in-game instructions will have you doing some rather uncomfortable stretching. This is a 6-button game, but you’d never guess it from the tutorial or control instructions. For example, to “throw” someone, you can press FP and FK at the same time, but it never explains that. Instead, the in-game instruction directs you to press a designated “throw” button. That just leads to a lot of awkward reaching. Tagging has a similar problem. It’s just sloppy. Fortunately, once you get used to it, the controls will feel very responsive.

The visuals in this game are just the right mix of gritty realism and ’90s comic book camp. It’s a style that perfectly complements the series. And speaking of gritty, we can’t go any further without discussing the violence. Good lord, the violence is astounding. Mortal Kombat is horrifically gory. Remember the controversy over the original games? If you look at those “brutal, mature images” now, they’re pretty silly. Yeah… not happening here. Sure this new title is still ridiculous, but I can’t imagine us ever looking back at this game and not slightly cringing. The fatalities aren’t even the worst part. The new X-Ray Moves are so sadistic they belong in an unrated cut of Hostel. Take a look at this:

That wasn’t even a finishing move. The dude just got right back up to fight. Wait till you see Smoke’s X-Ray. It’s just vicious.

My girlfriend, who is usually pretty cool with blood and guts, refuses to be in the room when I’m playing. When I had the PSN demo, she just sat there doing that “girl hides her eyes” thing and screaming “Oh god, OH GOD! WHY?! I don’t like this game!” over and over. If there is anything more amusing than grossing out girls, I’ve never found it. Hilarious. Mortal Kombat: still a game series clearly built for immature boys.

But violence aside, this has to be one of the most feature-packed video games ever released. The meat of the single player game is Mortal Kombat’s canonical “Story” mode. I don’t want to say this is a “good” story or anything—it’s still about movie stars and thunder gods fighting pro-wrestlers in space. Dammit though, Mortal Kombat takes itself SO SERIOUSLY, that you just have to go along for the ride. It’s really hard to fault it. It’s so earnest about its own dumb lore that it’s honestly quite charming.

Mortal Kombat borrows the narrative structure of the previous title Mortal Kombat vs. DC. The player switches from character to character as the plot calls for it, seamlessly transitioning from cutscene to fight. Because the game handles all the disc preparations behind the cinematics, you’re never stuck staring at a loading screen. It’s the little touches like that that make it feel like your playing through a new Mortal Kombat movie.

The plot is basically a retcon of the events of Mortal Kombat 1 through 3, but features enough surprises to keep long time series fans interested. The voice acting is just all-around great and really sells the plot.

(Johnny Cage is far and away the best character. I mean, what a superb jackass.)

I hesitate to say this, but this is the best story mode that’s ever been in a fighting game. If other titles learn anything from Mortal Kombat, it should be to steal this style of single-player storytelling.

After you finish story mode, there is plenty more content. You’ve got the standard arcade “Ladder” tournament mode, which you’d expect to find in any fighting game. You pick your character and fight the AI until you get his or her unique ending. These serve as fun “what if” scenarios. Some of these endings are completely crazy, so MK fans should eat them up. There’s also a tag ladder mode, which feels like a light version of Marvel vs. Capcom, where you pick two fighters and battle your way to victory. It’s okay, but nothing to really write home about.

My favorite addition is the Challenge Tower, which is frankly a game all to itself. This series of 300 missions includes a wide variety of ridiculous extras. Here you can:

• Play a mini-version of the plot from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks!
• Face endurance matches where the sky rains down fire and ninjas throw iceballs at you from the background!
• Fight Johnny Cage’s stuntmen!
• Compete in Test Your Might, the classic button mashing challenge from MK1!
• Test Your Sight, a minigame that’s basically Three Card Monte… but with severed heads! (Because why not!)
• Holy crap, so much more!

Challenge Tower is truly the most fun I’ve had with the game, so far. It’s lengthy and most of the challenges are just tough enough without seeming like overkill. Until the last few matches, that is. It gets a bit brutal.

Throughout the Challenge Tower, Story Mode and the Ladders, you will constantly be earning Kombat Koins to unlock special items in the Krypt. Like older games, you navigate a gruesome graveyard unlocking new fatalities, alternate costumes and more. There is tons of stuff to unlock, so fully cracking open the Krypt will take some time. It adds some nice longevity to the game. You can always specifically look up a detailed list online if you can’t be bothered, though apparently if you’re looking for individual graves, it can get a bit frustrating. But you know what Johnny says:

Now, while I said I wouldn’t really speak about the game mechanics, we should quickly discuss the online experience. I’ve been playing on Xbox 360, so I’ve been able to actually get online this week. It’s kind of a mess. Matchmaking generally takes forever. When it does work, it’s pretty laggy. That’s not my connection either. Other games run lightning fast. I even popped in Super Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 to test it out. They ran just fine, but Mortal Kombat just chugged along. Hopefully this will be fixed with a patch.

Additionally, my online matches keep getting cut short because the game has “desynchronized.” This doesn’t count as a drop-out for either player, but it’s still very annoying. Be ready to see this image a lot:

That’s a shame because King of the Hill mode is a fantastic new addition that should really liven up online play. Instead of the usual round-robin style group matches, now the spectators can use their Xbox Avatar (or Mortal Kombat-stylized avatars on PS3) to watch and gauge the match. You can cheer and boo other players, which really makes it a much more active, engaging experience. After each match, everyone can hold up Olympic style number ratings for the winner. Which would be great if Xbox Live wasn’t completely full of jerks that always vote 0.0 no matter what.

Fortunately, having friends over to fight in person is an absolute dream come true. Every single one of us had an absolute blast.

So overall, Mortal Kombat is incredible. For offline content alone, this might be the first fighting game that is a completely justified purchase for hateful cowardly shut-ins like me. Mortal Kombat has always been built for 14-year-old boys. It’s a bloody, messy, completely “stupid while pretending to be serious” joyride. I’m happy to say that this latest iteration lives up to the family name.

It pulls all the right strings and proved to me that in many ways I’m still the gore-obsessed immature child I’ve always been.