Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

"An Honest Review"

It had been five years since the release of Mortal Kombat 4, which left a sour taste in the mouth of most fans. Some even thought that the Mortal Kombat franchise was left in the dust by newer fighters like Virtua Fighter and Tekken, while others held off hoping for a new Mortal Kombat game for the next gen of systems.

Seemingly out of nowhere, news of Mortal Kombat 5 began to filter through to the masses. By this time Capcom had taken over control of the 2D fighting realm, and new games like DOA and Soul Calibur were clawing their way to the top of the 3D universe. Where would MK fall in the mix of things? Would they go back to 2D? Stick with the MK4 style of 3D? Would they use the same combo system? Will old characters make a return? The questions were endless. But finally in 2002, we would all know the answers.

For the most part, people considered Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance to be "a good first try.” The game was highly flawed, some of the new characters seemed very bland, and Boon and Co. decided to go back to one fatality per character. The most glaring disappointment was the "Kombat" of Mortal Kombat. It was clunky, unresponsive, and required the user to memorize long dial-a-combo strains in order to be effective. Even with that the game sold millions, and another sequel was inevitable.

Mortal Kombat Deception was released in 2004 to mixed reviews. Other than a cheesy little combo breaker addition, nothing about the game play really changed. In fact, some considered it to be a step back because the game play was actually slowed down quite a bit. But we did see a resurgence of "The Pit" like stage fatalities, or Mortal Kombats' version of a Ring Out, and some returning favorites like Baraka, Kabal, and Nightwolf. Also new to the game was Konquest mode, which served as the main story teller for the game. Konquest was vastly regarded as one of the games' high points as it allowed the user to travel through all known realms that exist in the Mortal Kombat universe and learn more about a lot of characters.

All in all, as far as extras go, Deception had it all. But again, the series fell flat on its face in the game play department. But we would not have to wait long to hear news of a sequel. In addition to the announcement of Shaolin Monks, Midway also announced Mortal Kombat 7, the final installment on the current generation of consoles. The game would later be known as Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.

And that brings us to where we are now. What do the end times have to offer? Is the game play any better? What about the story? For the love of god, do Scorpion and Sub-zero finally settle things?!?! Let's get down to business.

Game play - 7

Oh, not wasting any time are I? See. Here's the thing. If you are going to make a 3D fighter, you have to expect it to be compared with the cream of the 3D crop. Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, DOA, Tekken, and whatever other bizarre and unheard of game franchises you may prefer. The major disputes most people have with the MK games is that it is sorely lacking key elements that every 3D fighter should have, and has had since the Playstation era. A balanced reversal/parry system, wake up games, and escapable throws just no name a few. MK has lacked all of these... until now.

Unfortunately the combo breaker system is still embedded in the game. You still only get three per match, so after you use them your opponent can feel free to hit you with that vicious 10-hit combo and there's nothing you can do about it once the first hit has landed.

To help reduce the rate of that happening, the developers decided to add in a parry motion which is done by pressing back and block at the same time, ala DOA. The problem with this is that the timing on it is inconsistent. Sometimes you can hit the parry a full second before the attacker even throws a punch, and still catch them, other times if your movement is not exact, you're toast. Once you do successfully parry, your opponent will be knocked off balance for a second and you can begin your ultra cool 33% damage combo and unless they have a combo breaker saved up, there is nothing they can do about it. The major problem with this system is that a player with enough skill can easily parry your attacks all day and make you pay dearly for even trying to attack them. Since there is no guessing involved as there is in DOA, with whether you have to attempt a parry at a high, medium, or low attack, a skilled person only needs to wait and tap back and block. It's that simple. Ultimately the addition of the parry system seems like it was not thought out at all and just added in to make hardcore fighting game fans happy. Or miserable depending on how you look at it.

The other new addition is the wake up games. After you are knocked on your butt by your opponent, your character no longer blindly automatically rises to their feet to receive another beating. You can now take your time and try to fake out your opponent by doing several things. You could just hold the block button and delay your getting up, or you could press 2 and unleash a rising uppercut that will stun your opponent. Or you could go low by pressing 3 and do a quick little shin kick as you rise to your feet. While the system may not be as advanced as Tekken or Soul Calibur, it is a welcomed addition. This little tactic can get you out of many jams and slow down the pace a bit if your opponent is being relentless.

The final little quirk is the ability to launch an opponent into the air and follow them up to continue beating them senselessly. The Dev. team has cleverly named this "Air Kombat.” First off I just want to say that the entire system feels like it was ripped straight out of Shaolin Monks. It' almost as if they wanted the game to become a hybrid of the two engines. With that said, I would choose a standard juggling system any day of the week. To put it simply, not all launching attacks put your opponent high enough to follow up on it. Sure, you may be able to jump and perform a throw with the 4 button (which never seems to fail), but that puts you at a natural disadvantage to other fighters that can do a 4-hit combo on the ground, follow you to the sky, and do another 4-hit combo in the air ending with a grab. Added to the fact that the controls are so clunky and unresponsive that your opponent may already have begun to fall to the ground before your character even thinks about jumping up. Again, the whole system feels rushed and unpolished. As do most things in this game. Making a return to the game are the dreaded dial a combos. Basically if you don't hit the buttons exactly and with precise timing, you're not doing the combo. This is opposed to most other fighting games where you are actually allowed some slack on timing and the actual button presses. And yet again, added with the unresponsive controls and you are in for a treat! You may have to press a simple down and forward + 1 combination several times before you actually get the move to come out. BOO!! HISS!! There's no excuse for this, period.

Speaking of moves, the Dev. team did make a wise decision in having characters be fluent in one hand to hand style and one weapon style (for most). This reduces the amount of switching styles and memorizing ungodly long style branch combos. And also it does allow for a little more freedom in doing combos as there are more combos per style now. Hey now, I said a LITTLE freedom. You can't press nearly any combination of buttons and get a combo, unlike Soul Calibur and DOA, so don't get your hopes up for some originality between players.

Perhaps the most staggering aspect of the game is its roster. The game features nearly every MK character ever created, in 3D glory. This does prove to be a minor drawback at the same time though. First, a lot of the styles found in the previous two games have been swapped over to new characters, so you really aren't seeing anything new in terms of the fighting. Consider this MK Trilogy 2, if you so desire.

Being that there are so many characters, I'm sure there are some awesome fatalities right? Wrong. There are no, I repeat, NO character specific fatalities. Instead, we are subjected to using the kreate a fatality system. Basically you have a limited amount of time in order to enter certain commands to do a fatality. There are chainers, which are simply punches and kicks that keep the fatality going, and enders which are the moves that actually finish off your opponent. The object is to do as many chainers as possible and then finish with an ender. The higher number of chainers you do increases the "rank" of your fatality. You can achieve a Bloody fatality, Excellent fatality, Mortal fatality, Ultimate fatality, etc. Getting a higher rank doesn't do anything except give you more koins at the end of the fatality, which are used to unlock stuff in the Krypt. Thanks, but I'd like to have my Toasty! back.

Chances are you will see a lot of the same things if you are playing online. Certain moves take less time to perform so they are the ones that people do to keep the chain going. Why do a move that takes 1.8 seconds when you can do one that takes .4 seconds? Fatalities have always been the one thing that made MK stand out from everything else. Now, they have been dumbed down to the point where I don't even want to do them. No more Kung Lao hat slice, or Liu Kang Dragon, just simple and repetitive decapitations or neck snaps. This system would have been fine for your KAF, but not for standard characters. I expect more. I can only guess that they could not come up with 62 original and unique fatalities.

Most of the characters are unlocked from the start, which is a personal bummer because I like unlocking things. There are no bios to unlock, and no way to view an ending again after you have cleared the game with a specific character.

That's if you would even want to. The endings have all been removed so to speak. Instead of even getting a neat little image with the announcer telling you what happens, you merely get to watch your character do a kata routine as the announcer speaks. Ooook....

As mentioned before the Krypt makes its return to the series, but works a little differently this time. Instead of getting six different types of koins, there is one type which is used to unlock most things. The trick is that you can find most of the things in Konquest. But if you don't feel like playing through Konquest, you can always just outright buy whatever you want. Most of it consists of concept drawings and such, nothing too great other than Alt costumes (all that art work and no image during the endings??).

Konquest has also been reworked a bit. It still has the same basic concept, except that it is much more linear this time around. You will fight generic baddies as you run around on foot and main character interactions will cause you to actually enter Kombat. This is another instance of the Shaolin Monks influence. The story is not as interesting (to me anyway) as previous MK's, and the Konquest character seems even more lame than Shujinko.

Lastly what I want to mention is this years' mini-game, which is called Motor Kombat. It was bad enough you had to rip off Super Puzzle Fighter in Deception. But now you rip off Mario Kart? Come on guys, really.

In the end, the wake up games are a great addition, the parry system is over powering, the air kombat is stale, no escapable throws are still lame, and the combo breaker system still sucks. I really think that if the animation and controls were a little more fluid and responsive, it would have done a lot to spice up the game play. The air Kombat would have been more enjoyable, that's for sure.

Graphics - 8

There's not much to ogle over here, but the backgrounds do seem to be a little more detailed. The character models from the previous games were just cut and pasted, and that's it. Some of the returning characters not in the last two games were given nice make overs though.

The opening movie is a highlight.

Audio - 9

Better voice actors? You bet ya! The dialogue isn't half as painful to listen to this time. All the normal sound effects for specials and such are there are crisp as bacon. The music is what you would come to expect from MK, which is always greatness.

Controls - 5

I think I went over everything in the game play section already.

Fun Factor - 6

Don't let that big roster fool you. Other than looks, the characters just feel uninspired. Not having character specific fatalities is probably a big part of it. That was always a part of the characters' identity. Remember the first time you saw Scorpion do the Toasty in the original Mortal Kombat? There's really not much to unlock that is useful, I can live without the artwork, they should have given you half the characters to start with or something. Moreover, no bios and no viewable endings really hurt.

And Motor Kombat is a cheap imitation. At least Puzzle Kombat was fun.

Overall - 7

This is a forgetful journey to be had. MK Armageddon just does not offer up the game play we expect or the extras we are used to. While it does look like they actually tried to make the game better this time, maybe they should take a page from everyone else's book and not try to bring a game out every two years JUST to cash in. Every other series offers up substantial tweaks to the game play. It's bad when Budokai 3 has better 3D fighter game play than you do. Take your time, make it right, and TEST the friggin game!!

Rent or buy? RENT!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/06