Mortal Kombat 3

""You Suck""

Mortal Kombat is probably one of the most recognized and worn out fighting game series in the Arcade video game world. With the amount of characters that you have in Mortal Kombat 3, you’ll find that some of the old favorites have been taken out and some new, rather interesting characters have been added. A couple of new features have been put in with the hope of creating something rather nice, but ending up having a game that subtracts more than what it’s really worth!

In this adventure, you take on Shao Kahn and his minions in a battle to the finish. Each of the characters that you now have at your control are survivors of the great take over by Kahn and his armies in his insane quest to conquer Earth. With little more than a spark of hope and some deadly moves, it is up to you and the character of your choice to defeat several opponents and finally take on the big man in a fight to the finish. What you have is a more in-depth story feature, though you really won’t find anything too complex that couldn’t be explained by the instruction manual.

-The Game Play -

It's got some new fighters and new looks for the old ones. But that doesn't save it from being the same storyline as before, only with different characters. Innovation was starting to slip with this Mortal Kombat, all the time was spent now for giving the game more moves and finishers, instead of actual variation! There are no endurance rounds; there were no Test-Your-Might rounds, nothing...just straight through fighting. That can, and does, get on your nerves after doing it with this type of game for so long. Something else that has been added to the game is the addition of the combination system that allows you to nail off a three to six hit combination with the right button presses, all corresponding to the different high and low attack buttons.

While this is something new, there isn’t much variation here in the way that you can do the combinations other than throwing in a jump attack at either the end or the beginning! You’ll find that this game just doesn’t have anything to offer other than more mindless violence with a combination system added in for good measure. With the addition of a run button, it’s hard to really get through the game with all of the control in check. They’ve taken out Scorpion and added in Cyrax and Sektor. All in all, you’ve got more subtractions than you actually have additions to the overall game!

Now if you’re playing up against a skilled player, you’ll get your ass handed to you simply because once you start a combination, you can’t stop it until you are finished with the button presses, or it hits at some point. This brings a little more challenge to the game, but really doesn’t do much but force you to learn a new facet of Mortal Kombat and one that the game could do without in the long run!

The control that you find here is another feature that you have to work with. One of the worst things that could have been added, is that the game has a run button feature that allows you to either run into battle or run away from it. With some of the fatalities in the game requiring you to use this Run button, you’ll have to learn how to re-work the controls in the game! Aside from that, there isn’t much here that takes a brain surgeon to figure out and any fighting game fan should be able to pick it up.

-The Visuals -

Most of the character animations are there, although they tend to breakdown when the action starts getting heavy. The backgrounds are nicely drawn, but again, they suffer from a grainy texture that you won't find appealing to the eye. The interaction on the backgrounds, is a plus, having paper blow around your fighter's feet, or the swirling in the distance, all nicely done, but it still doesn't make up for the graininess. The character animations are spectacular to watch, but you'll notice while playing, that sometimes they cut out in mid move, or the fatalities don't quite match up. Some blaze through, while others seem to miss, and then the camera kind of adjusts to make up for it! All of these things do tend to run together and you might have a problem actually getting used to the way that the game looks as opposed to the spectacularly clean Mortal Kombat II!

-The Audio -

There is hardly anything that seems to match up with what you're doing when you pull off a special move. Hard to hear at certain points of the game and can be a little disappointing when you want to hear what the game has to offer! Even though the game music has returned for the most part, there are some issues that can be taken with the overall quality of what you hear. All in all, this is one of the more lack-luster games in the Mortal Kombat series that has very little to give you in the audio department.

-The Verdict -

For a sequel, the additions might be enough to actually have fun with it. However, with the addition of Ultimate, there really is no need to play through the game other than to have a little fun and excitement of seeing what the true differences are between 3 and Ultimate. If you can wait it out, then you’d be better off heading towards the Mortal Kombat Trilogy and leaving this title alone to rot. Even though there are some pretty cool animations and the characters have been retouched since Mortal Kombat II, it doesn’t account for the fact that the loading times are the true fatality.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/02, Updated 10/01/02