When Mortal Kombat hit arcades back in 92, my friends and I were in awe. Never before had we seen a game display so much blood and over the top violence with no apology. It also featured a never seen before in a fighting game called fatalities. Insanely violent and hilarious finishing moves – Eat your heart out Street Fighter. We were instantly hooked and that game ate up our quarters but as the years droned on, the franchise lost much of its lustre despite the ever increasing cast members. There just seemed to be too much focus on fatalities, babalities, arena specific finishers instead of keeping the game fresh and interesting. Despite a few attempts at regenerating interest in the series, the game was old and tired.

The new MK game manages to feel both old school but new at the same time with the return of character both old and new (28 to be exact + unlockables and however many DLC characters are planned for release)

The developers clearly felt that they needed to breath some new life into the series and one why they did that was by changing up the game play just enough to give it a fresh feel for the hardcore fans but still feel accessible to the casual fighting game fan. Instead of high and low attacks, the buttons are used for their left and right limbs allowing for a more seamless transition between moves and performing combos.

I was more than a little happy to see original fatalities make their comeback but I wasn’t able to perform all of them What I did see was awesome. To the best of what I can tell, the number of fatalities have been dropped down to to just 3 per character (just as violent as ever) though there may be more out there that I’m unaware of and I’m told that babalities are back (I can do without those). Another nice and entertaining function is the power meter that generates depending on how well the fighter does allowing for reversals and “Xray attacks”, totally outrageous attacks that show a cut away of the opponents body from the inside as the punishment is dealt to them in slow motion.

The game has multiple game modes that should keep everyone thoroughly entertained. A story mode where the player takes the role of a variety of different pre-determined characters as they battle their way through the story. A tournament mode which hearkens back to the original series much like a ladder tournament, training modes and online modes (not reviewed adequately as yet – partially because I’m so awful at the game). There’s even a pretty sweet mode called The Challenge Tower that consists of 300 individual challenges from simply winning fights, to testing your Might, Sight and Strike to fights with specific conditions.

Graphically I thought the game looked pretty sharp. The animation was fluid and the environments were nice to look at.

NetherRealm studios has by and large successfully made Mortal Kombat relevant again. Coming from someone who doesn’t really enjoy the fighting genre that’s saying a lot. This is a title worthy of the MK brand. Now, “Get over HERE!” and play this game.

Pros:

• Accessibility to the Fighting Genre inept (Myself)
• Old school feel
• Return of original fatalities
• Game modes

Cons:

• Overwhelming number of moves to memorize for casual gamers (Hardcore fans will love it)

Feed Your Console gives Mortal Kombat an 8 out of 10