I bought Mortal Kombat on a whim at some point earlier in
the year, as part of a package that contained the first three games in the
series. I’ve been playing it on and off, as it is one of the few games I play
on my laptop that doesn’t require the use of a controller or a mouse (I’d have
preferred to use a controller, but I couldn’t get either of the ones I own to
work!) so I can definitely pick it up and have a play. And after a few months,
I finally beat the game with all seven characters.
 |
| "GET OVER HERE!!!" |
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game set in a fictional universe
where a centennial fighting tournament safeguards Earthrealm from invasion from
the other realms, including the mysterious Outworld. The first three games of
the series used digitized fighters; real people photographed in combat poses
became the player avatars. There was blood, gore, and the opportunity to finish
off your opponent once you had won the match. There was an obvious rivalry to
Street Fighter back in the day, but while the latter has always produced a
sufficiently solid fighting game, Mortal Kombat pushed a lot of boundaries – if
only to discover where the boundaries were.
 |
| Cage takes revenge for his $500 sunglasses... |
In the game, you choose one of the seven fighters and take
them up the ranks of the tournament to become the Grand Master. Your first six
fights are relatively straightforward, taking down each of the other fighters.
The seventh fight is a mirror match – a fight between you and your own avatar.
The following three fights are endurance matches, between you and two other
opponents – the second one enters where the first one falls, and these matches
are the bulk of the game’s challenge, as they are extremely difficult to beat.
After that, you take on the reigning champion Goro, a four-armed half human /
dragon, who has lots of power but presents a very large target. Finally, you
take on the sinister Shang Tsung, a soul-wielding sorcerer who can take the
form of any of the other fighters. Beat him, and you win the game, and are
rewarded with an ending for your chosen character.
 |
| Yeah, and don't you forget it... |
The most prominent question to ask of any fighting game is:
Is the fighting good? And here’s where the quality of Mortal Kombat starts varying
wildly. There were seven characters, but apart from their special moves and
some very subtle differences with their reach, the move set for each character was
identical. There was no real combo system, though it was possible to set up a
combo by doing your attacks in a certain order. It inadvertently managed to
invent juggling – a combination of attacks to keep the opponent in the air. The
endurance matches were a huge difficulty spike; the only way I found to beat
them is to spam your flying kick and I’m in no way surprised that this was the
only Mortal Kombat game where these occurred. And the controls had a clunk to
them that never really got fixed in any iteration of the game that I’ve played.
The presentation of Mortal Kombat was beyond excellent for
the time; digitised avatars were a new development and for the first time there
seemed to be some stakes involved in the fighting tournament. I played the DOS
version, which is probably as close to the original arcade version as you can
get in a home copy; the graphics aren’t quite up to their original polish but
are still a good version of the game. The sound is as clear as it needs to be;
the voices are implemented a little too often, but they work, and the music is
thematic and sinister. The controls are a little wonky, since fighting games don’t
lend themselves well to keyboard controls, but with practice you can make them
work.
With all that having been said, I’ve had a tonne of fun
playing through this. Very few other games make me feel like punching the air
in triumph when I finally beat them! But many aspects of the game were improved
upon in later iterations, making Mortal Kombat very difficult to recommend as a
stand-alone game.
Final Score: 2/5: If you’re sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment