In Third Person

When you think about Mortal Kombat as a series, you think about blood and fatalities. Do you think about it’s rich and deep fighting game engines? Probably not. Mortal Kombat has traditionally, been a fighting game series built primarily on style over substance. For Midway/Warner Brothers, this lead to consistently good sales throughout the series history among more casual fighting game fans, but the hardcore have pretty much shunned it. Case in point: Super Street Fighter II Turbo is still being played at major fighting game tournaments this year, while the entire Mortal Kombat scene has virtually never had any sort of tournament scene to speak of.

I loved Mortal Kombat I-III, but having grown into a hardcore fighting game player these last few years has really coloured my perspective on those games in hindsight. I can still have a ton of fun playing the Street Fighter II series games of the same era, but those early Mortal Kombat games just don’t have the depth of gameplay to hold my attention nowadays. With that said, Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat, said this new one was aiming to cater to the hardcore crowd. I’ve only spent a few hours with it playing the story mode, tutorial and some versus matches with my coworkers, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to pass final judgment about the game now. But what I can tell you about are my experiences with the game so far, is that from a gameplay systems perspective, this is probably the deepest Mortal Kombat ever.

For all the talk people have been saying about this game being a return to its roots, I generally feel that this is a surface-level assessment. Yes, you can play it like the old games in the sense that the input of special moves and fatalities are the same, and in the sense that sweeps and uppercuts are still here. However, you’d be selling the game mechanics short. I’m glad to see that Nether Realm Studios has taken the time to flesh out the fighting experience for those that want to sink their teeth into something meatier.

During my initial sessions with the new game, the game’s combo system feels like it’s been completely revamped. To me, Mortal Kombat’s combo system was nothing more than finishing Scorpion’s spear with an uppercut, mashing high punch repeatedly until your opponent staggers back, or dialing in canned combo sequences.  While you totally can still finish Scorpion’s spear with an uppercut, there are a a ton of other (and better) options at your disposal, thanks to character-specific normal moves, throws and a much better thought out combo system.

While the basis of the dial-a-combo still lives (which originated in Mortal Kombat 3), the sequences are much shorter and aren’t nearly as restrictive. The new combo system gives you more creativity to link together combo sequences and special moves in neat ways, such as through the use of air juggles and ground bounces. For the first few hours of the game, I was aimlessly mashing buttons and spamming special moves. But most recently, during my story mode play time with Cyber Sub Zero, I was able to create my own cool combo by understanding the game’s systems and applying them on the fly. It was quite the breakthrough for me to be able to put it all together like that on my own, which went a long way in warming me up to this game.

The other major change that’s worth flagging is the 3-part meter at the bottom. Having the meter as an additional resource definitely adds to the strategy. Using one bar of meter allows you to do an enhanced version of a special move. For instance, with Liu Kang, if you hit someone with an enhanced fireball, they stay stunned for a longer period of time, which makes it easier for you to close the distance and follow-up with a combo. Using two bars allows you to use a breaker, which is a great defensive maneuver to stop an opponent’s combo at any point. Using all three bars lets you execute an X-Ray Move, which is the equivalent of Street Fighter IV’s Ultra Combo. At this point in my skills, I simply stock up meter for X-Ray Moves because I don’t know how to effectively use enhanced moves or combo breakers yet, but it’s great to have this meter as an additional resource to deepen the fighting mechanics.

I initially had concerns about this game playing as shallow as prior installments in the series, but so far this feels like the real deal. At the very least, this game has more good gameplay depth to it than any other Mortal Kombat I’ve played before. Casual fighting game fans who have liked MK in the past I think will eat this up. However, for you hardcore folk who pour over the intricacies of things like tick throws, resets, juggles, footsies and Yomi, rest assured that many of the deeper elements you’d expect in a fighting game are here. Kudos to Nether Realm Studios for taking Mortal Kombat in this direction, as I feel that this sea change is long overdue. I’ll be sure to play more of this game and see if I can move up from scrub tier.

My apologies to anyone who was hoping for more of a high-level look of the overall package. I’ll write about all of that in a future post!