I was lucky enough to recently be sent the latest Mortal Kombat game, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (MKVSDCU) on my Xbox360 and I admit to approaching the game with equal amounts of anticipation and trepadation.
Mortal Kombat is undoubtedly one of my favourite beat-em up’s of all time and was the front runner of the new-age hyper-violence games offering dismemberment and decapitations galore for those unfortunate to lose, to the victor go the spoils as they say, bragging rights and part of your opponents anatomy.
Mortal Kombat is undoubtedly one of the most iconic games of the 1990′s it had everything the maturing gaming market was desiring at the time without the media coverage to destroy its reputation and it’s popularity spawned numerous sequels although few would deny that in the last decade the franchise has been trampled upon to such a point that it had become a fractured representation of its former self, some of the later games almost entirely ignoring it’s beat-em up roots.
This is where the trepedation for the game ended, the anticipation of course was that it just *might* be a return to form for a beloved franchise, more so for the fact that the DC Universe section was new but promised to go back to the regular beat-em up roots that I was brought up on between Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 3.
DC Universe is an interesting choice, particularly in a franchise like Mortal Kombat where the onus is on blood and gore as opposed to something such as Street Fighter where this is the opposite and of course where we have seen both Marvel and X-Men in the past. I will admit to not being a comic book nut, I seldom read any as a youth, however I did follow the cartoons which steered away from the darker roots of the comics but were none-the-less engaging for someone of that age, and for what it matters, I still believe the X-Men and Spiderman cartoons are the finest ever made of their kind, sadly for this game they are both Marvel and as a result, not in this game.
Don’t be disheartened though because DC comics aren’t without a few familar names of their own such as Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash and of course, the greatest of all super heroes, Batman. Not too bad then, although that is pretty much where the stellar cast ends before you start naming the nemesees of those characters (The Joker, Catwoman and Lex Luthor are all there).
What will be interesting to those who are intrigued is to how the fatality system allows for the usage of characters such as The Green Lantern, The Flash, Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel being that they make up the ‘good guy’ element on the DC Universe side and that is that they don’t have Fatalities, rather they have ‘Heroic Brutalities’, which are basically the same but without the clear death of their opponents. This isn’t the case for the good guys in Mortal Kombat though, they have Fatalities as per usual.
Where this game does shine is that it looks both pretty and new thanks to the Unreal Engine, but plays very old-school, almost like Mortal Kombat 3 but with the ability to rotate around in 3D (I know this was done in Mortal Kombat 4, but this time it’s done well). Also included are the new freefall modes where you can slam an opponent through a wall and down a cliff face hitting a succession of buttons to inflict damage up to a possible 30% off your opponents health, the flipside of that is that in hitting the buttons, if your opponent presses the same button your positions are flipped and the damage reversed. In a very similar (read: exactly the same) method is the new ‘Klose Kombat’, where you grab your opponent and can deal up to 4 devastating blows to your opponent. Neither are ground breaking but both are beneficial to the experience though there is certainly room for improvement with the environments and being smashed through walls, the environment always plays the same, just on a different level of a cliff face, hopefully Midway look at Dead or Alive and how their dynamic environments can influence the flow of play and attempt to duplicate it.
In MKVSDCU is the staple ‘Arcade Mode’, a climb up the tower of fighters til you reach the boss, beat them and receive the ending, very predictable and run of the mill, it works well and will always do the job. Also included is versus mode where beat em ups should always be played, also as part of versus mode is the ability to play over the Internet via Sony’s PSN or Microsofts XBox Live service, my impressions of this were very good, I found a match almost immediately and encountered zero lag, although that is mainly to do with your opponents Internet connection more than anything else. Also included is the new Story mode which contains multiple chapters as characters from either Universe (and as a result there are 2 stories to be completed). It doesn’t have the most overly complex story, but it’s not an RPG and anyone expecting anything amazing will be sorely disappointed, but it’s also stronger than most stories in these games so there is very little to complain about. Lastly are the Kombo Challenges where you choose one of the 20 available characters and attempt to complete 10 individual trials made up of gradually harder combinations (or is that kombinations?), a more complex version of training and something that would have a massively beneficial effect on your ability to play the game.
Of course, nothing is perfect and this is definitely the case here. Firstly the fatalities are a lot more civilised than those seen in previous iterations, I originally put this down to familiarity with violence in other games, but on closer inspection they are undoubtedly more tame. No more do we have Kano reaching into someones chest and ripping out a still beating heart, nor to we have Jax simply tearing someones arms clean off. These have been replaced with throwing a couple of knives at someone and hitting someone hard, flattening their head and whilst the latter is especially amusing it has zero shock factor. No fatalities have spurting blood nor over graphic representations of violent actions and whilst this doesn’t take away from the solid nature of the beat em up action within the title it does leave a little to be desired when it’s several step backwards over what we’ve already seen. Secondly, the character choices could have been better on the Mortal Kombat side. We have many peoples favourites here such as Liu Kang, Raiden, Sonya Blade, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Shang Tsung and Kano, but Jax, Baraka and Kitana are in there over characters such as Johnny Cage, Kung Lao and Reptile and that’s a massive disappointment for me as I was a massive fan of many MK3 characters and it seems odd to have Sub Zero and Scorpion but only one of Kitana and Mileena. Lastly is that each character is blessed with 2 fatalities, but gone are the always entertaining Babalities, Brutalities, Mercy’s, Animalities, Friendships and Stage Fatalities. These were always interesting endings as you never really knew what your opponent was going to do following a loss, sadly now you only have Fatalities/Heroic Brutalities to see, a bit more variety would be nice.
The overall impression of this game is that it’s a massive return to form for a franchise thought dead for a decade and for me is the finest release this year and with the new Street Fighter 4 arriving next year it’s defintiely a positive to see so many beat em ups return.
For anyone wanting a new fighting experience and pondering whether or not to get it shouldn’t worry, MKVSDCU can be had for the princely sum of £20 and at that price I would definitely say it’s worth your money, the negative of that fact is that the Xbox360 d-pad is clearly not perfect, something that becomes apparent in the Kombo Challenges section where some of them become ridiculously difficult, if you have an arcade stick then I’d definitely recommend sticking with that, those on the PS3 don’t have to worry as you already have a perfectly good d-pad for it. I for one am hoping that they kick on with the franchise adding more and put a few more finishing touches on a fantastic return to form for an aging franchise, MK could be great again.
