Backlog Beatdown: MORTAL KOMBAT!!!

As a franchise, Mortal Kombat needs very little introduction. It is one of the principle beat-em-up games that became popular in the 1990s, one of the few franchises to survive the decade. The version I’m playing is the 2011 re-boot. I’ve had it for a while, and I’ve always had a lot of fun with it. Here’s why:

The game design is brilliant. Usually when a game developer talks about taking a game franchise ‘back to its roots,’ it means they’ve completely lost the plot and are trying to make a dying series work to keep feeding their cash cow. The difference is that with Mortal Kombat, it actually worked. It bought back the 2D fighting system but improved the graphics. It acknowledges the contrived storyline developed over seven games, but brought a new and well-done story into the re-boot. It’s done away with the multiple fighting styles and weapons, and made an excellent job of utilising what was left. It’s done away with most of the characters we didn’t care about (basically any that were introduced after MKIII) and filled its roster with characters from Mortal Kombat I-III. Finally, it brings the gameplay back to what Mortal Kombat was all about, which, quoting one of the developers, is: “I’m going to kick the shit out of you and rip your head off.”

There’s been a lot of debate over the years as to which fighting game franchise is better, with Street Fighter being its obvious rival. Having enjoyed both games, and others besides, I’m not going to get caught up in that. I will, though, say what I enjoy about Mortal Kombat in general and this iteration in particular:

Of all the fighting games, I think Mortal Kombat has always had the richest lore. Even though the plot is ridiculous, it works. For one thing, there actually appears to be a reason for this particular fighting tournament: It is the safeguard against the invasion of Earthrealm by the sinister Outworld. There are multiple factions playing each other off for power, wealth and supremacy: The Shaolin Monks, the Lin Kuei, the Black Dragon, the Tarkartans, the Shokans, the Special Forces, and then there are the people who are fighting for their own reasons and agendas. The characters have unsteady alliances, bitter rivalries, and tragic back-stories, but this time there seems to have been something of a sense of humour in them. It’s like the writers said to themselves “Yeah, we know this is camp and cheesy, let’s play that up as much as we can.” The end result is that, for the brief time you spend with each character, you know what they’re fighting for – and you enjoy it.

EVERYONE loves Scorpion...

The fighting is pretty good as well. The controls are designed with the controller in mind, as opposed to Street Fighter which is very much still designed for the Arcade. The game does a good job of giving you a basic move/combo set, but leaves it up to you to discover how to spam the combos and special moves to become unstoppable. Balancing is an issue, though. The basic ‘Ladder’ mode has ten fights. You’ll do the first six without trying, even on Hard mode (my preferred difficulty.) After that, there’s a massive difficulty spike as the AI suddenly becomes competent one moment, and spams all the boss character’s special moves the next. Shao Khan in particular, the game’s final boss, takes a long time to beat if you don’t know what you’re doing, and even then, it’s a lot of luck rather than judgement. That’s always been the case with Mortal Kombat for as long as I can remember, and isn’t news to anybody.

There’s a few different modes I’m going through at the moment, and I always enjoy playing it online, but now that I’ve beaten the game with all the characters that start off unlocked, I might put Mortal Kombat to bed for a while. That’s the kind of game this is – you can enjoy it for a while, then come back to it months or even years later and have just as much fun, if not more. I can always look forward to coming back to it!