(I'm a proud Playstation 3 owner.)
2011's "Mortal Kombat" is the ninth game in this explosively violent fighting game series. Early reviews seemed to indicate that this would reboot the series, allowing things to restart from scratch. Others indicated that it was a genuine sequel to 2006's "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon." It's a little bit of both, actually.
"Mortal Kombat" (promoted early on as "Mortal Kombat 9") is both a reboot of the series and a sequel. Boasting a movie-quality story-line and taking place after the catastrophic events of "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon," all of the Earthrealm and Outworld fighters are dead, with the exceptions of benevolent lightning-god Raiden and Outworld emperor Shao Kahn. Just as Shao Kahn is about to deliver the fatal blow to Raiden, he is able to magically send visions of the future back in time to his younger self during the very first Mortal Kombat tournament. Using these hazy visions of the future, the younger Raiden tries to use these to his and the Earth warriors' advantage in helping to avoid Armageddon.
I've been playing the "Mortal Kombat" series of video games pretty much my entire life, ever since getting my hands on my cousin's version of the hit Midway game co-created by software developers Ed Boon and John Tobias all the way back in 1993 at the tender age of eight. The first 1992 "Mortal Kombat" started a revolution in fighting games with its realistic graphics (which included digitized versions of real flesh & blood actors as opposed to digitally animated cartoon sprites) and extreme violence. This latter trend helped lead to the formation of the ESRB - "Entertainment Software Rating Board" - a panel which issues ratings to games much like the MPAA issues ratings to movies.
2011's "Mortal Kombat" is a return to the basics of the first three games in the series; the game itself features roughly the entire story-lines and characters from the first "Mortal Kombat" game, "Mortal Kombat II," and "Mortal Kombat 3." Wisely enough, none of the characters featured from "Mortal Kombat 4" through "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon" are featured, which would have blown this game's software engine to the max and leading to a lot of confusion over which lethal character you want to play as the most.
"Mortal Kombat" does have a lot to offer gamers. Interestingly enough, you don't really need to have played any of the previous games to understand the story and what's going on here. Although it would help to have a little prior knowledge since you're not seeing an entirely accurate retelling of events, since things in this "Mortal Kombat" are slightly altered (I won't spoil by revealing what, but just know that things are changed here). I do wonder, though, will this game make all the previous games irrelevant and non-canonical? Can an entirely new series of fighting games based on this re-booted storyline be on the horizon?
In terms of features, "Mortal Kombat" has plenty. The most welcomed is the seriously revamped fighting engine that includes faster game-play, smooth and more-realistic graphics, two-dimensional fighting with three-dimensional characters (replacing the all-out 3D arena fighting of the last several entries), beautifully rendered backgrounds, and lots of brutal gore and violence that fans of this series love so much. What will surely appease gore-hounds is the new "x-ray" feature, which allows a fighter to deliver a series of punishing strikes to his/her opponents and true to the name of this feature, the camera allows the player to see inside his/her opponent's body as bones are broken, organs are ruptured, and weapons enter places where they shouldn't. It's cool, fast, and it's brutal.
There's a re-booted single-player version of the "Mortal Kombat" storyline, which thankfully consists mostly of one-on-one fights, mostly. Other times, you're facing tag-teams that can sometimes consist of up to four opponents at a time! It's certainly challenging and nerve-wracking but for serious gamers, it's not impossible to accomplish. (One of the worst aspects of this are the boss battles, especially with Shao Kahn; I'm going to say flat-out right now that I lost one of my controllers battling him because simply put, he's impossible to beat. The only way to win a battle against him is to edge your character to the side of the screen and just constantly launch projectile attacks at him while simultaneously avoiding attacks of his own. This uneven level of difficulty is also indicative of "Mortal Kombat's" most significant design flaw.)
More features include a new "Krypt" that features over 500 items of unlock-able content, character and fatality training modes, the four-player tag-team mode, and the new "Challenge Tower" that allows players to complete 300 different challenges meant to sharpen a player's fighting abilities (or test their patience, whichever is more relevant). The ultimate prize does appear to be worth it (as of now I've only completed 150 of the challenges) - especially if you're a guy, like me - since you've already seen what the ultimate prize is if you've played through the storyline mode. But the fun doesn't end there: there's also a wealth of additional content that can be downloaded off the Internet and will add to the game-play, and that additional content consists of new characters, alternate costumes, and one new ultra-secret character (hint: he's a famous horror movie icon). Finally, there's also online Kombat.
"Mortal Kombat" is a fitting addition to this revolutionary series of fighting games. Its uneven difficulty in some places - namely the seemingly impossible boss battles and tag-team matches - is this game's greatest weakness and can be extremely frustrating, even for experienced gamers like myself. Still, though, "Mortal Kombat" is simply marvelous. I can't believe it was all started just to rival the success of "Street Fighter II," which I also adore, by the way.
9/10
P.S.: Be sure to go out and get the soundtrack for this game, also! Like the game itself, it absolutely rocks!
2011's "Mortal Kombat" is the ninth game in this explosively violent fighting game series. Early reviews seemed to indicate that this would reboot the series, allowing things to restart from scratch. Others indicated that it was a genuine sequel to 2006's "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon." It's a little bit of both, actually.
"Mortal Kombat" (promoted early on as "Mortal Kombat 9") is both a reboot of the series and a sequel. Boasting a movie-quality story-line and taking place after the catastrophic events of "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon," all of the Earthrealm and Outworld fighters are dead, with the exceptions of benevolent lightning-god Raiden and Outworld emperor Shao Kahn. Just as Shao Kahn is about to deliver the fatal blow to Raiden, he is able to magically send visions of the future back in time to his younger self during the very first Mortal Kombat tournament. Using these hazy visions of the future, the younger Raiden tries to use these to his and the Earth warriors' advantage in helping to avoid Armageddon.
I've been playing the "Mortal Kombat" series of video games pretty much my entire life, ever since getting my hands on my cousin's version of the hit Midway game co-created by software developers Ed Boon and John Tobias all the way back in 1993 at the tender age of eight. The first 1992 "Mortal Kombat" started a revolution in fighting games with its realistic graphics (which included digitized versions of real flesh & blood actors as opposed to digitally animated cartoon sprites) and extreme violence. This latter trend helped lead to the formation of the ESRB - "Entertainment Software Rating Board" - a panel which issues ratings to games much like the MPAA issues ratings to movies.
2011's "Mortal Kombat" is a return to the basics of the first three games in the series; the game itself features roughly the entire story-lines and characters from the first "Mortal Kombat" game, "Mortal Kombat II," and "Mortal Kombat 3." Wisely enough, none of the characters featured from "Mortal Kombat 4" through "Mortal Kombat: Armageddon" are featured, which would have blown this game's software engine to the max and leading to a lot of confusion over which lethal character you want to play as the most.
"Mortal Kombat" does have a lot to offer gamers. Interestingly enough, you don't really need to have played any of the previous games to understand the story and what's going on here. Although it would help to have a little prior knowledge since you're not seeing an entirely accurate retelling of events, since things in this "Mortal Kombat" are slightly altered (I won't spoil by revealing what, but just know that things are changed here). I do wonder, though, will this game make all the previous games irrelevant and non-canonical? Can an entirely new series of fighting games based on this re-booted storyline be on the horizon?
In terms of features, "Mortal Kombat" has plenty. The most welcomed is the seriously revamped fighting engine that includes faster game-play, smooth and more-realistic graphics, two-dimensional fighting with three-dimensional characters (replacing the all-out 3D arena fighting of the last several entries), beautifully rendered backgrounds, and lots of brutal gore and violence that fans of this series love so much. What will surely appease gore-hounds is the new "x-ray" feature, which allows a fighter to deliver a series of punishing strikes to his/her opponents and true to the name of this feature, the camera allows the player to see inside his/her opponent's body as bones are broken, organs are ruptured, and weapons enter places where they shouldn't. It's cool, fast, and it's brutal.
There's a re-booted single-player version of the "Mortal Kombat" storyline, which thankfully consists mostly of one-on-one fights, mostly. Other times, you're facing tag-teams that can sometimes consist of up to four opponents at a time! It's certainly challenging and nerve-wracking but for serious gamers, it's not impossible to accomplish. (One of the worst aspects of this are the boss battles, especially with Shao Kahn; I'm going to say flat-out right now that I lost one of my controllers battling him because simply put, he's impossible to beat. The only way to win a battle against him is to edge your character to the side of the screen and just constantly launch projectile attacks at him while simultaneously avoiding attacks of his own. This uneven level of difficulty is also indicative of "Mortal Kombat's" most significant design flaw.)
More features include a new "Krypt" that features over 500 items of unlock-able content, character and fatality training modes, the four-player tag-team mode, and the new "Challenge Tower" that allows players to complete 300 different challenges meant to sharpen a player's fighting abilities (or test their patience, whichever is more relevant). The ultimate prize does appear to be worth it (as of now I've only completed 150 of the challenges) - especially if you're a guy, like me - since you've already seen what the ultimate prize is if you've played through the storyline mode. But the fun doesn't end there: there's also a wealth of additional content that can be downloaded off the Internet and will add to the game-play, and that additional content consists of new characters, alternate costumes, and one new ultra-secret character (hint: he's a famous horror movie icon). Finally, there's also online Kombat.
"Mortal Kombat" is a fitting addition to this revolutionary series of fighting games. Its uneven difficulty in some places - namely the seemingly impossible boss battles and tag-team matches - is this game's greatest weakness and can be extremely frustrating, even for experienced gamers like myself. Still, though, "Mortal Kombat" is simply marvelous. I can't believe it was all started just to rival the success of "Street Fighter II," which I also adore, by the way.
9/10
P.S.: Be sure to go out and get the soundtrack for this game, also! Like the game itself, it absolutely rocks!