The original Mortal Kombat was a fantastic game- it took the 2D one-on-one fighting found in games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters, and added digitized actors (as seen in Atari’s earlier Pit Fighter) to up the cool factor. The other things that put it over the top were the excessive blood and gore found in the game, and the numerous “secrets” that players discovered. In these pre world wide web days, secrets were handed down from older players to younger ones, distributed arcade by arcade. Many a quarter was spent trying to figure out exactly how you could make Reptile appear.
The fatalities were obviously a large part of the appeal, because who hasn’t wanted to rip someone’s spine out while their body crumples to the ground at least once? As Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 came out, the secrets got to be more and more ridiculous, with the addition of “brutalities” and “babalities”. But the game kept true to its roots, using live action graphics, which is what set the series apart from it’s more cartoony competitors.
3D fighting games took over once the technology was good enough, with Tekken and Virtua Fighter ruling the genre for a while, leading to great games such as Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive.
This is cool.
Now it’s 2011, and the most hyped Mortal Kombat in a decade has just been released. As an avid fighting game fan, one might think I’d be excited about this, except Mortal Kombat ruined its appeal, because it is now just another 3D fighting game with computer animated characters. If I can’t look at video capture of an actual person with animated blood spurting out of their chest, I’m not interested in Mortal Kombat.
This is boring.
So shame on you WB Games, with your boring attempt to reboot this series by making it basically the same as every other 3D fighter out there. I haven’t played it, and won’t- if I want to see 3D modeled characters fighting, I’ll stick with the hot chicks from Dead or Alive.
