Taking its cue from Capcom’s recent back to basics approach to fighting games, Mortal Kombat is returning to its roots. This means 2D gameplay rendered with 3D graphics and a whole lot of violence and gore.
This new return to form for Mortal Kombat was not playable at the show and the presentation was a closed doors affair with no video taping or still photography allowed but in addition to the above video, we were shown a few different matches between several different fighters including Reptile, Kung Lao, Sektor, Mileena, Sub-Zero, Scorpion and Nightwolf. Johnny Cage was on the character select screen but he was never used. In the matches we saw a lot of old favorites back like Fatalities, stage Fatalities, classic character moves and all the gore and blood that you can handle. More if you are a wuss.
As exciting as it was to see all of the old favorites back playing they way they were meant to, there were a lot of new things that really add to the experience. For starters, the graphics have been really updated and fine tuned thanks to no longer having to render a 3D gameplay environment. This means the characters are very detailed both inside and out and as the character takes damage to his costume and body, that damage is shown and maintained throughout the match. So now if someone gets stabbed in the stomach and there should be a big hole there, there will be a big hole there. If a cut exposes ribs then you will see the ribs the rest of the match. In addition to the damage, the characters each have their own pre and post fight behaviors and animations and all the characters look unique which mean no palette swapping going on. This uniqueness extends beyond just the animation and graphics though.
In the old school Mortal Kombat games each of the characters had the same basic move set and they were differentiated by their special moves. So while Liu Kang could shoot fireballs and had a bicycle kick, his sweep and uppercut moves were the same as anyone else. In this new Mortal Kombat all the move sets are unique and every character plays differently with different pacing and strategies needed. That seems basic but for a series where most of the characters in a pretty large roster play more or less the same it is a big step forward.
Another addition that pushes the game forward is the inclusion of a breaker system which allows a player to build up energy to break a combo when they are getting wailed on. You couple this with real time moves instead of the dial-a-combos of old and you have the makings of a much more fluid and exciting game than we have had in the past. With the breaker system you can expect a fair amount more back and forth than in old matches where whoever had the better timing with setting up combos would win.
In addition to the breaker move there is also a new super combo like move called an X-Ray move where your character performs a devastating combo that takes off a huge amount of life and shows you the damage being done as an X-Ray of the bones and other bits of the inside being damaged in various ways. The X-Ray moves we were shown were absolutely brutal and I wouldn’t have thought that the fatalities could get much worse but they have really stepped the fatalities up as well . If you are a fan of gore and violence then you have come to the right place.
Rounding out the new features is the Tag Team mode which is pretty much the standard Tag Team mode where you have your extra character as a back up that you can flip back and forth between. This is not really new to fighting games at all but it is new to the series and seems implemented pretty well.
Mortal Kombat II really helped me get through my first ever break-up so the series has been close to my heart. I’ve been playing it since the first game and I’ve followed it through all of its ups and downs. I’ve liked some of the later iterations but I still think that MKII was the best of them and seeing the series go back to that playstyle with a bunch of extra stuff to make it better sounds awesome to me. If the matches shown at E3 were any indication the game is definitely on the right track. Of course, it may look great and play horribly but I have my fingers crossed for this and next to Rock Band 3 and the 3DS this was what I was most excited about.
