Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

"MK Armageddon: What We've Been Waiting For?"

Here we are, what everyone has been waiting for, all throughout the year. Everyone from the old school kombatants, to the next gen kombatants, wondering if this will indeed be the greatest MK everyone was hoping for. Let's take a look at the goodies Midway and the MK team has given us:
Arcade Mode, 60 + characters to choose from, Motor Kombat (for anyone that doesn't know, this is like Mario Kart) Konquest Mode (like Shaolin Monks) a Krypt with plenty of unlockables, a Kreate a Kharacter option, and let's not forget online play. Okay, so, all this sounds like a great sell all on it's own. But, just when you think there could not be anything possibly wrong...there's plenty to acknowledge:

Story: 7/10: Well, MK is pretty much the only fighting franchise to ever deliver a story in the fighting game genre. Even though the intro of the game sums it up, you're only wanting to know the characters ending afterwards if you finish with any of them in Arcade mode. Like every MK game, some you will like, some you won't. The Konquest story is different however, the character you play with is named Taven in this mode, and to make a long story short, the mode delivers it pretty much alright. His ending is different in Arcade mode, if you unlock him after you finish the Konquest mode, however. So t's pretty much intro/character ending. I pretty much didn't care for some of the endings, but that's just me. So, this didn't blow me away, and it probably won't for you.

Sound: 6/10: Nothing really to get excited about here. The only sounds that sound pretty good are of course when you knock your opponents into a stage fatality, but that's pretty much the best one to me. It's not all entirely bad, but other fighting games deliver much better sound than this. The music in the game is not so bad, MK usually delivers good music in all the MK games, but other MK games had better music (especially the old school ones.)
Heck, I think some of the old school games probably had better sound on them as well too.

Graphics 8/10: The graphics have never been bad in any MK game, and this game doesn't surprise either. The blood of course is the number one best. Hitting your opponent and seeing lots of your opponents life flow all over the ground is pretty cool. The characters look decent as well, as always. The development to try to bring out the sight of the game isn't mind-blowing, but it's probably what they worked on the best in this game, and they did a good job on this.

Replay Value: 7/10: Well this is where it gets corny. This just depends on if you actually like the game first. If you do, the review would get a 9. If you don't it could be a 6. What I mean by this is the game's fighting engine may or may not disappoint you. Many say it's broken, many say it's not bad. I think it's both. The MK series never really was the most fluent fighter anyway, but when I play this particular fighter, I feel the system could have been a lot better. This game has really changed from it's last two predecessors, in which the kombat is only limited to 2 styles per character, and it also introduces air kombat, where you do what's called a combo "pop-up" move, knock your enemy in the air, and you jump and go to town with a few combos. If you are expecting Marvel vs. Capcom style air combos, you'll be disappointed. This system could have been left out, I love air combos, but I didn't care for this. As a matter of fact, the whole combo system didn't keep me entertained much at all, they may as well kept it old school style, it would have been much a lot more fun that way to me, or at least Midway should have did like they did in MK3, and gave us the option to turn them off. Now, last and certainly not least the Fatality system, in which they now call "Kreate A Fatality". No it's not what you think. All this has become basically is now you can do simple configurations to annihilate your enemy, from ripping off a limb, to drawing your weapon and dishing out multiple slashings, seeing your enemy fall to shreds. Personally...this disappointed me. I would have preferred original fatalities. This is asking a lot, but I was hoping each character could have had at least 5 of their own personal ones. But time is of the essence, a game has so much space to handle, and I guess this not so brilliant plan of fatalities came into play, only to make me taste the sour note of it. Now to sum up Konquest, it's fun to play. As I mentioned, this is like Shaolin Monks (Deception had Konquest also). There are 4 unlockable characters, all 4 are unlocked throughout this mode, as well as many other goodies. The Motor Kombat is fun, but gets repetitive quick. The Krypt is not so hot, you'll need to collect 'koins' to purchase items from here, and every mode has these koins, most of them through Konquest of course. The alternate costumes is probably the best unlockables to go after, most you can unlock through Konquest. Save your money for Kreate a Kharacter.; and this is another thing. It's pretty nice how in-depth Midway put into this, and if you are indeed crazy about this sort of stuff like I am, they put most of their emphasis on this option as well. Not bad here.

Overall: 7/10
Call me picky, but this game had every intention to be great. It really does want to make you say, "Man, if I were behind the scenes, I would have done this." Yeah, if you catch my drift. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't entirely bad, but a lot of this game just gave too much of my hopes up. I also think they could have come up with a better boss, as well as better tactics, he wasn't very impressive to me. He's cool at first, but his presence in the game now just annoyed me. But like I said, this game has to have your taste. Do not by all means buy this game first...unless you are a die hard MK fan, or a major fighting game fan, then you should buy it. For those that were curious like me, wondering how great this game should have been, there's just a lot of flaws. I'm just advising you rent it first, then buy if you like. Unless you plan to finish the game with lots of already unlocked characters, the replay value will be up on your shelf in no time. Konquest mode can be beaten within a week, at most. So overall: Get a taste of the recipe first, if it's great, then cook and serve. Otherwise, I'm just saying you should keep an open mind when you play this over-rated MK game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/06