I was going to get this up a couple hours after picking it up at midnight, but I delayed it for two reasons. One, I was engulfed by the story mode and was obsessed with beating it (as well as the game in general and had trouble pulling myself away from it). Two, the game is a lot bigger than I originally thought as far as the amount of modes, so even to do a First Impressions, I felt I needed a bit more game time.
This is also typically called Mortal Kombat 9, due to it being the ninth game in the series, but being that it is a reboot (much like Star Trek had an in continuity reboot), they decided to just call it Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat took a dive into 3-D fighters with Mortal Kombat Dealy Alliance in 2002 (I don’t consider MK4 a real 3-D fighter). Since then, they have strictly been a 3-D fighting series, with a little bit of 2-D elements sprinkled throughout. After MK vs. DC Universe, Midway fell apart and the MK team (now Netherealm Studios) was bought by WB Games. With this new beginning, NS decided to go back to MK’s roots, making this game a 2-D planed fighter, with 3-D graphics (much like Street Fighter 4 and MVC3).
This game plays like a cross between MK II and UMK3. The dial-a-combos are dialed back, and the combos feel more organic, as well as the fact you can customize the combos to a much greater degree. The graphics look great and everything feels really fluid. There is an enhancement bar that fills up like a hyper combo gauge. Level one is an enhancement for your special moves. Level two allows you to do two of the super special moves or one combo breaker. Level three allows you to do the devastating X-ray moves (which lets you see the damage you’re causing your opponents from the inside).
The game contains modes like normal arcade/tower progression, a tag team tower, a tutorial section (which includes a fatality practice mode), a interesting challenge mode, a story mode, as well as online features (which I have not touched yet).
I love the story mode. The story starts out with Raiden fighting Shao Kahn at the end of MK: Armageddon. Shao Kahn is about to kill Raiden, when he sends a message to the Raiden of the first MK game to try to prevent the future. This hurtles you into the timeline of the first three games (five if you count UMK3 and Trilogy as separate games). This timeline is heavily altered if you’re familiar with the story elements from the original trilogy. There are things that can’t be explained by Raiden’s visions, like the costumes in the story mode from the first tournament are different and characters that were not involved with the first tournament in the original timeline are present. All of the other changes can be brushed off as the butterfly effect, but regardless, a non hardcore fan is not going to notice this and the hard core fans may not care considering the game itself (thus far) is great.
There is a tag team mode, I’ve dabbled with it a bit. It’s not as extensive as MVC3’s, but it adds an interesting aspect to the game. Two players can be on the same team, so that adds a level of playability that I think a purely competitive experience limits.
Stylistically the game draws on the older games, but with a larger amount of detail on everything from the characters to the backgrounds. The white toast leveled down violence from MKvDCU is gone. This game is insanely violent. The X-ray moves show you the damage you’re causing on your opponents form the inside. The fatalities are better than in any of the previous games… period. My favorite thus far is where Scoprion takes out his sword, slices the loser in half, but their upper half is still sitting on the lower half, does the same thing to his opponent’s head, then kicks the body out from under the head and slices the head in half vertically. Holy crap.
My full on review will be in a week or so, anything I’ve missed or haven’t experienced yet, I’ll touch on then.
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