Mortal Kombat : PS3
Test your might!
When the original Mortal Kombat found its way onto the MegaDrive, myself and a group of friends played it to death, favouring Sub Zero and Scorpion over the more mundane other characters. A little while later and the local burger place got a Mortal Kombat 2 machine and plenty of 20p pieces (and £1s…) went into mastering Kitana in my own way. Then Mortal Kombat kind of went away and became a messy franchise of badly designed 3D games which I never really took notice of. Fifteen or so years later and my radar picked up the whiff of the new Mortal Kombat reboot on the PS3. With a semi-regular Sunday slot in the house where a friend comes over and plays fighting games until the early hours of Monday morning, it called to me. We downloaded the demo and I offered to buy the game if the demo impressed us and though the demo only showcased four characters, it was hard to put it down after an hour or so and return to regular street fighting. I bought the game at full price some time after - that’s rare, these days.
And to cut a long story short, it’s brilliant.
The new Mortal Kombat touches every button that the old Mortal Kombat did. It feels the same (only very much updated) and muscle memory takes over with a subconscious smile. Playing Sub Zero, Scorpion and Kitana again was an absolute joy and new moves were learned alongside old beloved combos to form a fighting experience which was competing against both Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for current generation brilliance and it fulfils the most important criteria for any game; it is so much bloody fun!
The developers have done everything they can to make Mortal Kombat a good experience. The Vs. game modes alone include three and four player options, tag team fighting, co-operative fighting and the obvious online stuff. The one player modes are also extensive, with a 300 event long challenge mode and the very brilliant story mode. It has all the longevity you want out of a £40 title and it never stops being enjoyable.
It was with the story mode that I found myself spending the most time. It’s just not possible to always have friends around, and having a one player mode that felt like they had put time and effort into making an actual single player experience worth playing was a joy. In Mortal Kombat’s story mode, you get to follow the plotlines from the earlier games with a little bit of a twist and in doing so, the game makes you give a go to most of the character roster; something which stops it from becoming stale as well as making you branch out more than you might do otherwise. The story is a giggle, with plenty of touches which old players will enjoy and though the combat against the AI is occasionally reduced to finding the one move that works and repeating it until they drop, it never becomes annoying. The story mode took me two entire days of play to complete, and for a game which I bought for the multi-player aspect to provide such an unexpected bonus, it was a real treat.
Mortal Kombat is not the best fighting game out there, in truth: Street Fighter IV is still the king, but it’s an essential addition to any fighting game aficionado’s collection. The gameplay is easy enough for beginners to get stuck right in and experienced players to show their skill and the amusing attitude the game has (yup, this is Mortal Kombat complete with all the blood and silly gore that entrails) adds to the experience rather than detracts from it. I loved it in 1992, and I love it again almost 20 years later.
I do wish it had the theme tune from the film in it though!
