What Happened to Mortal Kombat (Part 4 Finally)

If you missed Part 1 Click HERE.

Mortal Kombat: Deception

With the mediocre game that was Deadly Alliance, Midway soon boosted out Mortal Kombat Deception. Mortal Kombat Deception was a lot better than Deadly Alliance, but it still had a similar style. Mortal Kombat games since Deadly Alliance would soon follow this new 3D fighting style but would also add a lot of goodies.For instance, Deception this time around had 26 characters to choose from including Liu Kang who is now a Zombie keeping the continuity of him being dead and all from Deadly Alliance (although this is stupid, A Zombie in anything makes it all better). It was also nice to see Noob-Saibot and Smoke, but for some reason these two were together as a player, and fighting them felt like fighting characters from Marvel Vs Capcom assists. They did look Noob-tastic. Deception‘s storyline was … uninteresting again, for some reason the Mortal Kombat storyline never mattered (ironically only mattered for one, but we’ll get into that later). Something about Raidan protecting something, and this being a sequel to Deadly Alliance, Shang-Tsung  and Quan-Chi turn on each other after defeating Raiden and…Yah…oh look Mortal Kombat Chess!

As much as I loved the idea of having minigames to play (after all the more the better) Mortal Kombat Chess; or Chess Kombat as it wants to be called, sucks. It was slow (mostly due to the loading screens) it was dull and it was just crap. Mind you it was an interesting experience and at least they didn’t sell it as its own disc, it was a distraction…not a good one but a distraction. This is basically how the game played out.  Choose 5 people in a team, load, do whatever you want by setting traps or moving “pieces” and if you run into a person you must fight them, load, beat enemy or have them beat you, load. Repeat.  It’s like playing Chess in which every move you make, you must wait 30 seconds before you’re allowed to do anything…yah not fun.

Deception not only offered 1 minigame but also a second; Puzzle Kombat. I must admit this one was actually fun. It was sort of the same style as Dr.Robotnicks Mean Bean Machine but with a Mortal Kombat twist. You choose Mortal Kombat characters and their “specials” result in randomizing the opponents blocks and so on. Their actually pretty cute too with their little bodies and big heads. Even they have fatalities. I admit I did play this a lot at the time and also because I was fortunate enough to have the Internet for the Playstation 2 I played this online too. Speaking of which you can play online which blew my mind in 2004.

Besides the Arcade/Story mode Deception also added yet another Konquest mode along with the Krypt (Just like Deadly Alliance). The Konquest mode was back and still as awkwardly played and paced as before, but it wasn’t the worse thing I’ve played, I just chose not to play it. The Krypt on the other hand was like the Achievements/Trophies of 2004, they gave you reasons to keep playing the game but unlike Achievements/Trophies, it actually offered you something like behind-the-scenes videos and concept art.Well a Mortal Kombat game wouldn’t be a Mortal Kombat game without Fatalities. Deadly Alliance experimented with Fatalities and Deception improved upon it by adding 2 fatalities instead of one and Hara-kiri. Hara-kiri was like Friendships, meaning they were stupid but entertaining to watch. This time instead of killing the enemy in a brutally fashion, you killed yourself in a brutally fashion, sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s stupid. Here they are.

Deception was in the right step but something about Mortal Kombat and 3D just never sat well with me. It always felt stiff and felt that it should be playing 2D like the old days…we call this Sonic Syndrome.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

Personally I felt that Deception was like an Add-on for Deadly Alliance and I wanted a real new Mortal Kombat game, one that offered a lot of characters like Ultimate Moral Kombat 3. Then the clouds of the heavens opened and we got Mortal Kombat: Armageddon in 2006. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon had a whopping 62 characters to choose from! 62! I didn’t even know there were 62 characters to choose from, but there you go. Everyone from previous Mortal Kombat games came together for Armageddon; it was like a Mortal Kombat reunion. It was a pretty massive roster and they didn’t cheat either (by just switching the Palettes on characters). This was impressive. The game play was more or less like the previous instalments and Stage Fatalities make a return, a lot more of them and a lot more deadly. Armageddon felt like a real new Mortal Kombat game.

 

Naturally they added yet another Konquest mode still uninteresting and still as awkward, but the new mini-game they added was again stupid, but again a joy to play. Motor Kombat…yeah…they went there. Basically a Mario Kart knock off Motor Kombat was a whole game inside a regular game, now-a-days they would charge you this as DLC but before we had DLC it was free! It was a fun little distraction from the main game and it was actually fun. Beside Konquest mode, 62 Characters, Online mode, Motor Kombat you were also allowed to Kreate you own Fatality and Kreate your own player! This game offered a lot! Sure the character creation was a big pile of “meh” but at least it was there for those who wanted to create their own character.

Armageddon was the first Mortal Kombat game to jump to the “Next-Gen” consoles and was available on the Nintendo Wii. If you have to play this game DO NOT PLAY IT ON THE WII. When the Wii came out and we had our illusions to what we thought motion control would consist of (we thought if we mimicked Scorpions hand move then he would do it). That was not the case, the Wii, using its bizarre control scheme made Armageddon unplayable. Instead of doing half-circle A or whatever, you had to motion a half circle with the Wii remote then press A, and because this is in 3D it’s awkward.

Armageddon had 62 characters to choose from, and all these special features to choose from, we all thought if this is was the Playstation 2 could offer imagine what the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 would offer, I mean, it had a lot of space on the disk this time around. We couldn’t wait to see the new fatalities and new stage fatalities. We had no idea what the next game would be until we saw this.

 

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Holy hell! We never expected that! Scorpion vs. Bat-Man?! That’s like every nerds wet dream. It made sense; I mean Marvel Vs Capcom was an unexpected success so of course Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe would be too. We were already thinking, 60 characters! 30 from the MK side and 30 from the DC side. Lots and lots of fatalities. Lots of extra content and concept art. Oh man we get to finally rip off Super-man’s head! That bastard only dies with Kryptonite? Ha! We laughed and snugged our pants.Then it came out, right away Mortal Kombat fans had a pickle with it. Every Mortal Kombat game thus far had an M rating; in fact Mortal Kombat was one of the main contributors for the ESRB rating to exist. We all saw the bad ass trailer but we all saw the rating too. Rated T…for Teen. No that can’t be right.

 

It was unfortunately due to licensing reasons you cannot kill the DC characters (well you can but it was crap). The DC characters could not kill because it’s their thing, they just don’t. They will beat the living urethra out of you but they won’t kill you. The fatalities were all terrible, seriously they were bad. Because there were only 11 characters on either side you only had 11 fatalities to choose from, and it was under-whelming. Meanwhile the DC characters had “Heroic Brutalities” which were just “meh”.  I think the problem with Mortal Kombat vs. DC (besides allowing licenses to take over) was that after Armageddon we expected more…not less.

There was online play, and arcade mode. No Krypt, No Puzzle Kombat, no Motor Kombat nothing. Luckily the storyline for the first time in a Mortal Kombat game was interesting. Surprisingly interesting actually. It was refreshing to want to see the cut scenes. Nothing is better than hearing the Joker parodying the Kahn joke. Or having The Joker punch Scorpion in the back of the head with a giant boxing glove. Having both sides saying “you’re the intruder” was a joy and the Rage or whatever they called was a damn good call. I mean no one can beat Super-Man, unless everyone’s powers are drained due to Rage making everyone pretty much equal. Joker is even surprised in this when he actually beats someone up (in this case being Sonya Blade).

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was just an average fighting game. There was nothing that made it a must play. Sure the mixture of DC characters in Mortal Kombat characters was nice but after having 62 characters before to just about 22 characters, it really affected it. Especially knowing how many characters there are to choose from both worlds. I mean even Marvel Vs Capcom had a lot to choose from. There was no excuse for MK vs. DC to not have a lot. Mixed that in with the “meh” game play, lack of features or replay value, and OK graphics. MK vs. DC was not the next Mortal Kombat game we were hoping for.

So What Happened to Mortal Kombat? From what I’ve gathered, like Sonic, only true fans really enjoyed the Mortal Kombat games. Casual players or people who have heard of it before didn’t care too much for the newer games. The first 3 were great because it was the first of its kind to feature such gore. Then the amount of characters and storylines really hurt the franchise. Like Sonic I personally felt 3D ruined the game play as well. Mortal Kombat never felt as fluent as Street Fighter because they used motion captured actors instead of animated characters, so once it hit 3D it was stiff and slow. It also seemed that with time we wanted more and more blood and gore (I guess we have become desensitized to it) and all they kept doing was taking it away. Especially in MK vs. DC where they full out did take it away. Or did they?

I mean I guess what really happened to Mortal Kombat was us. We want more and more and more, and we no longer allow the game to experiement. We have become blood thirsty Tarantulas that just want to see blood. Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe was not a terrible game, but people turned the other cheek and flat out ignored it because they heard the fatalities are crap. In my opinion this was a decent fighting game, it felt like Tekken or Virtua Fighter but with blood and DC characters. Well it’s not all our fault, the 3D game play was never intended for Mortal Kombat (stupid Mortal Kombat 4 and your experimenting with 3D for the first time).  Then again Mortal Kombat did lure us in with all the gore and then they did take that away. Really though, if they just make the game back to 2D and add gore again everything will be alright…

 

…Yes! That’s what we’re talking about! Hopefully Mortal Kombat 9 will redeem itself. From what we can tell it’s a 2D/3D fighting game, that’s dark, moody, and bloody. I never thought I would ever say “Wow look at how awesome and bloody that fatality looks” but so far from the Mortal Kombat trailer, they managed to do so. Seriously seen it about 50 times and every time it looks better and better. I’ve pre ordered mine (and it comes with an arcade joystick cabinet!) and will post a review up once it’s completed. But still let’s all keep our expectations low and hopefully Mortal Kombat will be back.

So that is what happened to Mortal Kombat.

Here is Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 if you missed it.