Mortal Kombat 3

"A rushed version of the game, which was actually no better then the second."

Mortal Kombat 3 was a good idea, because the Mortal Kombat series had become very popular by then. However, the game was rushed to home consoles to meet deadlines. The third Mortal Kombat in the series was just sub par compared to most of its counter parts.

Game Play

The game was basically made to resemble the arcade version. It came close, but just fell short in a lot of the categories that made the arcade version great. The games single player mode had the “Mortal Kombat Kurse” as always. Basically, the computer players are either stupid as hell and don’t do jack, or whoop your ass like there’s no tomorrow. Of course, there were things you eventually figured out and could counter. But it then became a game of out cheating the cheaters. The game from there became fun for about five minutes. There was also two player mode though. You could go head to head against your friends. This mode proved to be more fun, because you couldn’t predict anything too easily. This too, though, got boring pretty quick. There was an assortment of cheats varying from enabling secret characters to hidden mini-games. There is actually a two player space shooting mini game which was a lot of fun, but only if you had two players. These cheats didn’t really help the game though, because if you enabled the secret characters the game for some reason became harder. There were quite a few new characters added and they threw in the run button as well. Still, even that could not help this game any more.

Audio/Video

The audio was actually one of the good points in this game. There were many different screams and running noises for the various characters along with a few other noises used for the characters special moves. And taken from the arcade pretty well was the stage music, character select music and also the continue music. No complaints on this factor.

The graphics are another story though. When you perform fatalities, many of the moves were shortened or done very poorly. The “FATALITY” graphic which is displayed after you perform fatalities did not drip or flow like the arcade version. The characters were fuzzy as compared to the arcade version and the backgrounds weren’t as detailed. The
graphics felt very rushed and were one of the strong points in the arcade.

Story

Shao Kahn who is from the out world is trying to take over earth. In order to do so he must hold the Mortal Kombat tournament. So the best fighters from both worlds come to the tournament, all with different goals in mind. Lose to Shao Kahn and he takes over the world. Beat him and he is destroyed forever and the world returns to its original state. If you turn the game on and let it run you can read about each characters reason for being at the tournament and some of their background. I think there is also a cheat to read any of the profiles you want. This is one of the points that isn’t bad, because of the variety. Unfortunately, this can’t save the game play.

Replay

This game just fails in this category because of the easy or hard element I stated earlier. Multi-player is fun if you haven't played a Mortal Kombat game in a long while, but if you have played it recently it really doesn't sound that fun. The second Mortal Kombat was great in this category and so was the arcade version of this game. This one was just rushed and overdone.

Overall

The arcade quality sound, a few new characters, and the run feature really doesn’t help this games game play or replay value. My advice is to find a version of Mortal Kombat 2 or read some reviews for some other 2-D fighters.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/01, Updated 01/06/01