Mortal Kombat Trilogy

"The best MK in the series ... but does that mean anything? Absolutely Nothing."

MK as I told previously in my last review, my mk4, is one of my first fighting games to play, not only in fighting games, but in all games too, while MK4 was my second favorite, onde that is the best in the series for sure, is the ''real'' fourth installment in the series,, the name is Mortal Kombat Trilogy, It was one of the first fighting games for psx that I had and also the second in MK series to be published on psx.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy although being great for its time, it was filled with mortal errors, like the cheapness of the bosses and even the non bosses.were incredible cheap. But can it stop the fun of your game? this is what we're gonna see.

-GRAPHICS AND SOUND/FX-
Mortal Kombat Trilogy was a very beautiful 2D game in psx, even being published in 1996 it turned out to be very cool about graphics, well, to startoff, the characters graphics are plain awesome, the caption of the movements that were pretty unrealistic in the previous versions in snes and genesis, are now ultra-realistic and colorful.
The backgrounds were kept the same though, no great chances in them but they are still beautiful as they were when they were in snes and megadrive, but sure not realistic and exciting as psx should have, all the stages are compilations, there are no new stages, but almost all the stages from MK3/2/1 are here, do you need more? Well, you will have, in this game there is MK1 Kano and Raiden and MK2 Jax and Kung Lao, their designs aren’t really beautiful, but they are fun to see to remember the old times.
The sound isn’t a good part though, all the sounds seem to be very mute, except the sound effects,, that are pretty good, well not much but it does its work, the all famous and infamous attack sounds are here, but not without some errors, the cyborg nijas when they are upperpunched as a normal character and all their other movements sound like if he was really a robot.
The sound can get very repetitive after a while, you may get annoyed by the basic punch+punch+kick+uppercut and by the screams of the chars, please mute the TVSet.
Botu graphics and sounds are outdated nowadays, but they are fun to check, give a try.

-GAMEPLAY-
Gameplay can be considered pretty unfair in this game, starting from the character selection, you see that Goro, Shao Kahn, Motaro and Kintaro are already unlocked, well it’s really good to play as them in single player mode, but totally unfair in VS Mode, my friend keeps selecting Motaro (the strongest of the bossess) and I pick normal characters. What the heck is, it? The bosses just should have been playable in single player, in vs is unfair.
Let’s analize the four bosses, Goro, he is really hard to control guy, but he atleast is not as dumb as playing as Shao Kahn, Goro hardly hts the enemy, he is slow and when you are gonna attack the enemy with his punch or kick, he will be avoiding, Let’s Analyze Shao Kahn nao, oh my god, he is horrible if you are controlling him, he is slow, his movements are too slow to attack the enemy, he is a close range character, is hard to attack someone with him, well, basically when he is a boss he is the best char, but when you play as him, he manages to be the worst char in the entire game, now Motaro, uh, this guy is powerful, too powerful and extremely unfair to plau as him, basically you won’t die unless you let yourself be killed, all his attacks take away atleast 25% of the lifebar, you can also teleport to surprise your friend, and kick his but from back, his defense is also high,, if you block, your enemy can keep the day attacking you that you won’t die, seriously, his attacks are punch (unfair), tail attack (unfair) grab and hold and punch (unfair) and firebalkl (unfair), everything in this guy is unfair, now let’s take Kintaro, Goro’s Brother, he is the second best boss in the game, his attacks are also plain unfair, one of his most famous, is the one similar of Shiva, he teleports and squeeze the enemy jumping on them, this takes around 50% of the lifebar of the enemy.
The bosses haven’t fatalities or anything else just atleast 4 attacks (except SK that has more), since you can play as them, it would be a lot more unfair to pull of fatalities.
The character selection is huge, think of all the chars that appeared from MK1 to MK3 and the result is MKTrilogy character selection, all the chars are here, even the bosses as I told above, you can play also as MK2 Jax and K. Lao, MK1 Kano and Raiden, MK1 Kano and Rayden suck , dude, they onky have 3 attacks, the third being fatality, mk2 jax and kung lao are slightly better. Characters missing are MK1 and MK2 Shangtsung, I don’t know why his previous versions weren’t included here, but who the hell cares?.
If you are thinking MK Trilogy has new modes of gameplay, you better desist because there are the same old modes of gameplay, the same and outdated 2 on 2 battles and tournament.
If you played previous MK games, nothing has really changed now, except the lifebars and the nex powerbar, is the aggressor meter, that can let your game even cheaper, once you have full aggressor meter,, you can torture more your enemy.
Well, after that, the battle system keeps the same, the same old unfairness of all the mk games.

-SCORING-
GRAPHICS: 86
SOUND: 60%
GAMEPLAY: 66%
EXTRAS: 24%
REPLAY VALUE: 76%


10 .......... Great Character Selection, Beautiful Graphics for its time

5 ............ Sound can get annoying at times

0 ............ Unfair Game System, Bosses already Avaiable

CLOSING STATEMENT
Mk is the last 2D mk fighting games, and also the best in the series, but not really great, I just recommend it for fans.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/01, Updated 12/15/01