Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero

"Oh, LORD. And I thought that MK Advance was bad..."

Typically, when a game series becomes well known, famous, and accepted by the masses, the parent company seeks to make as many spin-offs, sequels, and enough merchandice to keep milking the public until the next big thing comes. Such popular series that have seen this terrible fate include, but are not limited to, Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Labarynth), Mario (Super Mario RPG), Mega Man (Mega Man Battle Network), and the Metroid series (Super Smash Bros. and the upcoming Metroid Pinball).

Now, some of those I listed are actually good games. Super Mario RPG and the Mega Man Battle Network series are examples of platforming games making sucessful translations to RPG formats. But Sonic Labarynth is anything but a fun game, a mix of the Sonic formula of fast gaming with an isomorphic pinball game.

Mortal Kombat Mythologies was Midway's first big shift from the normal Mortal Kombat fighting formula, and to say it was a disaster is being gracious. You might have seen a magazine or two detailing this game, but, being a rather large fan of Sub Zero, I thought I would buy the used cart my retailer had, especially when I got a 10 percent discount. I mean, how bad could it be?

Well, first let's talk graphics. Visually, the game looks like they cobbled together tombs, temples, caverns, and various other real-life areas, but styled them in a 2D Mortal Kombat backgroudn way. While not really bad, they do look very flat, very 2D, and very sloppy. And did I mention that some areas are so dark, that it's near impossible to see the poorly illuminated items you need to collect?

Thankfully you can see your character, but Zero's sprite is just a ripped sprite from any one of the later MK games, though it is sized as if it was the arcade version. While a nice touch, many frames of animation seem to be dropped, making him look choppy. Never mind the bland enemies, which, for the most part, are generic characters, like monks and deamons.

Fortunately, others appear, including such famous faces as Scorpion, Quan-Chi (famous from MK4 and Deadly Alliance), and a few others, though revealing some might spoil the game. It is worth mentioning that some faces reappeared in the later GBA title Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition, a fact that many magazines and web pages seem to miss.

And there is reason they miss this. See, when you start out, you can jump like you normally could in any 2D MK game, you can punch and kick high and low, you can block, you can run, but you can't pull off special moves. Yes, you can't do special moves until you "level up" enough to unlock them, then you have to guess to pull them off. Fortunately, the traditional freeze blast is the first to gain, but there's a teensy problem that kills the game completely:

Fighting.

For a Double Dragon brawler with an engine that is a competant fighter, the first clue that something is wrong occurs when you leap over your foe, try to punch him, but then realize that you are punching thin air. For whatever reason, Midway included the need for the player to push a button to TURN THEIR CHARACTER TO FACE THEIR FOE. This option feels more like a debug gimmick from the 2D fighters rather than a mechanic in a platformer, but it gets worse.

See, every-once-in-a-while, you jump over a foe and press the button, but you end up facing the wrong way, because the game tured you to the enemy before you pressed the button. I wish I could say that I found out why this happened, but the blasted thing did not seem to have a trigger of any kind. Random actions of the CPU trying to do what the developers included a button for you to use just doesn't work out.

I should note that the plot is unusually deep for a platformer from the age of the N64, and the plot features the Older Sub-Zero, who supposedly died in the first Mortal Kombat. But even this, and the mediocre sounds, and the fact that Sub Zero is even associated with it just don't make up for the insulting controls. It's one thing to include a fighting engine like a traditional RPG, but this mish-mash...

Had MK's think tank thought to make this into an RPG, or maybe considered using a better control set-up, the game might have been fine or tolerable. But when you face cheap deaths every time you see a foe, the fun is just gone. There are many horrid games out there, but even Spider Man 3 on the old Game Boy was better than this trash.

Bottom Line: Just look away. If you must have one of the N64 Mortal Kombat titles, get MK Trilogy - play MK the way it was, not the way this spin-off is.

Score: 1 of 10

Best Feature: Plot.
Worst Feature: The controls, and the absolute lack of fun.
If you liked: Pit Figher on the Lynx or Game Boy, as you obviously like bad games.
Guilty Pleasure: If you enjoy watching Sub Zero plummet off of a Temple to his doom because you have no control over him, then I guess that counts.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/16/05