Mortal Kombats in the past have always been remembered for their excessive gore and not for their fighting engines. The latest Mortal Kombat is an amazing competitive fighter. The single-player modes are rife with imbalances, but the core experience in Mortal Kombat is exciting and challenging.
Mortal Kombat sees you reliving the events of Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3, so newcomers to the series won’t actually be lost here. The story is weak compared to other recent, non-MK video game efforts. The story is entertaining from start to finish — partly because of all the dismembered bodies.
Mortal Kombat has returned to a 2D plane. Other game modes include one-on-one and tag team matches, so there’s plenty of options when you’re setting up a fight. When it comes to the basics, each character has a set of simple moves as well as a bunch of special attacks. I found combos and special attacks easy to execute, but stringing together attacks and keeping an opponent stunned/juggled will take some time to get.
The main part of Mortal Kombat’s fighting engine is the super gauge, which fills as you give and receive damage. This is where a fair amount of Mortal Kombat’s strategy comes into play. The gauge is divided into three segments, and those segments can be spent in different ways. Expending one segment will enhance any of your character’s special moves. So instead of Nightwolf’s single glowing green arrow, he fires three.
If you fill the gauge more and spend two segments, you can break out of an opponent’s combo. This is a critical defensive option if you find yourself flailing through the air with a rapidly depleting health bar. Lastly, spending the whole shebang will unleash a devastating x-ray attack, which deals terrible, terrible damage to your victim. It can turn the tide of a fight, but missing it will put you in an awful spot with no super gauge to spend.
So with exciting combat, bloody Fatalities, and tons of things to unlock, Mortal Kombat sounds awesome, right? It is, especially when playing with friends locally or online. Local play is the best because it doesn’t suffer from any lag, whereas I detected a slight delay in online play.
