Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

"Please Let it Truly be Armageddon"

Mortal Kombat just won't die. Ever since its first appearance in arcades in 1992, Midway has been pumping out Mortal Kombat games nonstop. It's sad to say, however, that the company has been living up to its name in recent years.

Graphics: I'll be generous and give it an 7/10. The graphics aren't bad, I'll give it that much. But the blood really gets me. I'm being generous, though, because I have been taking the Mortal Kombat games as jokes over the last few years. Way more blood being pumped out with simple hits than can possibly be generated by something that weak? Ha! A joke. Funny Midway.

Sound: Grunts, various battle calls during the fight, and of course, Raiden's "whoevenunderstandsthis?" line. [I know he doesn't actually say it, but seriously, who does understand that line?] 7/10 Why? voice acting. Better than Deception's voice work, but still not topnotch. The music is forgettable, we have the same sounding hits making contact and blades flying through the air. La-de-da.

Game play: Oh-ho-ho man. Whoa, nelly! 3/10 This is what I'm looking forward to reviewing [read: tearing apart]. Let's start with the mini-game first. Motor Kombat. I don't know whose bright idea that was, but...WHAT IS THIS? Motor Kombat? It's horrible. If they took the time they spent screwing around in the meeting thinking up "Let's see what new minigames we can use to replace Chess and Puzzle Kombat" and spent it adjusting the actual fighting they could have earned a much better score. Not only is Motor Kombat the cheapest rip-off of Mario Kart that I've ever seen, it goes to a whole other level. "Let's take the puzzle kombat characters' heads, put them in very block-y cars [unintentionally, it seems to me] and sell it as a better mini-game than Chess," is the basic idea. You don't get various powers to use, you get one. And once you're in the lead, you don't even ever need to use the powers because the AI can never seem to pass you no matter what. [Never could me, if it does you, it's your own fault]

Konquest! A vast improvement over Deceptions, but still not great. Shaolin Monks dumbed down, basically. And the cheesy voice-acting from those cheap phone company commercials doesn't help it. It's very linear, it pretty much holds your hand the entire way through. "Go down this path, fight this person. Fend off the attack of the monstrous giant yeti that will rip you to shreds if you don't spam cheap tactics constantly" Every so often you'll fight a character from the world of MK in an actual Kombat arena. You defeat them, and you never see them again despite their threats of coming back to haunt you until you die.

And now, Kombat. Blocky, shoddy, stiff, "not near as good as Tekken," repeat with Dead or Alive, repeat with Street Fighter, repeat with Virtua Fighter, repeat with Soul Calibur, repeat with Shaq Fu [now I'm just trying to show my distaste. Seriously, I went to Shaq Fu as a better game]. That's how the fighting has been described. How do I describe it? Like that, but wait, there's more! Not only can you now play as boss characters with their abusable abilities, you can now abuse normal characters with their special abilities also! Actually, you've been able to do that ever since Deadly Alliance. I got to the point where I just picked out a random character, went through the arcade and used three attacks: special melee attack, special teleport melee attack, and special projectile. That's all I used and I managed to get through it using the same tactic on EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER! Flawed, yes? Wait, there's more! There are broken characters! Isn't that great? Hit a character twice for 20% damage, hit a character into the air, continue into a three hit combo for 45% damage, wow! That's all I'll say about that.

Kreate-A-Kharacter. Bleh, I spent more time on it than anything else, actually. Sure, you can get in depth. I made Nightcrawler and Cyclops from the X-Men and Ghost Rider. I made Akuma, Ryu, Ken, Gen, and Dan [Dan was actually the best of the ones I made, believe it or not] So, yeah, you can get in depth...with copyright infringement! But hey, that's what create-a-character all about, right?

Kreate-A-Fatality. It's neat, sure. La-de-dah. Still just ridiculously bland as the rest of the game. Gore, wow. Over. And over. And over. And ov-Whoa! I just knocked that guy's head off with his own arms! And..that's it.

In the end: Are you a rabid fanboy who won't care what I say at all? Get this game! Are you a "oh, I just want to pick it up" sort of player who won't care what I say at all? Get this game! Are you a serious player who gets so fed up with shoddy and repetitive game play that you'd sooner go play Shaq Fu to get decent fighting? DON'T, for Goodness sakes, GET THIS GAME!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/26/06