Deadly. Eye-popping. Graphic. These are some of the words used to describe the Mortal Kombat series since its first debut in 1992. The series has spawned many sequels, movies, comic books, TV series, and a team up game with DC comics. When Netherrealm studios announced they remade the series, it rekindled a lot of M.K. fans. I had the opportunity to play the new Mortal Kombat and I’m glad to tell report a positive review to all you M.K. fans out there.
Story
The game is a contemporary retelling of Mortal Kombat 1-3. You play as different characters, throughout the story line, to see the different personalities and backgrounds. Curious about what Cyrax and Secktor looked like before they became cyborgs? Ever wonder what Scorpion’s slain family looked like? Want to know the Lin Kuei clan’s purpose for entering the tournaments? The story line answers these questions and more. The game combines cinematic story and combat seamlessly allowing the gamer to be engaged without worrying about load times.
COMBAT (or KOMBAT for the fans out there)
Mortal Kombat’s fighting system is smooth, fluid, and swift. The combo attacks, from the last four games are back, allowing chain attacks or the ability to turn the tables on your opponent. Combining these combo attacks with tag battles of special moves allows for some powerful and beautiful fight scenes. Of course, the special moves are back and better than ever. Landing attacks on your opponent reveals shocking damage through out the battle. I was locked into an intense battle that reveal one of the character‘s right arm had a bone sticking out of the skin.
The game introduces a meter bar that fills up when you land attacks on your opponent. Once full, your meter bar can add more damage to your special moves of deploy X-RAY attacks., a powerful attack followed up by an x-ray view of a character‘s organ damage or bones breaking.
FATALITIES
Yes, fatalities are back and better than ever. Each character has two fatalities (the 2ndfatality needs to be unlocked through the Krypt, but yuntwis has provided valuable info for you) and the ability to perform a stage fatality in 9 different stages. At one point, I was fighting in a subway tunnel and I held an opponent’s head against an oncoming train. I won’t spoil you with details, but fatality fans will be entertained. The game even features a fatality practice mode where you can work on perfecting or replaying a warrior’s fatal attack.
ONLINE
Mortal Kombat’s online mechanic has made some decent improvements, but there is still work to do. The online portion allows you to join different lobbies, where you can fight up to 100 different players. This feature is great, especially when you want to build up a winning streak. The lag has been the main problem. Lag slows the quick combat to a screeching halt or caused the match to end. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to pull off a fatality only to have the internet connection ended the match. Hopefully, a new patch will come along and fix this issue. I’ll give you more information on this aspect when the PSN will available.
EXTRAS
One of the biggest impressions to this new installment is the expansion to the simplest things. Practice mode can help you to focus on training, tutorials, fatalities, and even tag team mode. The test your luck mode is a creative way of playing the game with intense and random stipulations. . The game randomly selected a match that involved: no jumping, regenerating health, random missiles falling from the sky, and extra damage with combos. You can imagine the type of fun I experienced when I had to focus on a combatant, whose health regenerates, and random missiles from above. Krypt mode possesses a good amount of interactivity. You want to spend points just to see a helpless victim succumb to a horrible death.
The character deisgns have been given a fresh update, along with the stages. Looking at the stage background can be a treat. The living forest stage shows multiple victims being attacked or tortured by evil trees. The rooftop stage shows dragons and fighter planes in aerial dog fight. These little bits of interactiviy take the game to a new level that fits the next generation consoles.
Mortal Kombat revives its series in a way that lures new fans in without forgetting about the old fans. If you’re a fan of fighting games with violent deaths, then you’ll enjoy this this game.
I give Mortal Kombat a thumbs up.
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