Mortal Kombat (PS3)...

Fighting games are a genre that I've been largely avoiding since my teens. For one thing, they tend to be a very social experience - best played with buddies in the same room - and I think that I speak for many thirty-somethings when I say that I don't have a lot of time to engage in that kind of stuff. Occasionally however, a fighting game developer tries to add a bit more single-player content to their title, inspiring me to take a look. The last time I actively sought out such a game was SoulCalibur II on the GameCube (2003), so you can tell how infrequent this is.

I'd heard through the grapevine that the new Mortal Kombat (MK9; PS3; NetherRealm) went above and beyond in the single-player department. My understanding is that this isn't new for the series (this is the 9th title) as all of the MK games have included mini games and modes that encourage single-player gaming. Nevertheless, MK9 really has taken this to another level.

The game includes a rather extensive single-player 'story' mode that wraps all of your battles into a long and involved narrative that 'reboots' the overall MK 'universe'. I haven't played the MK games since the 90s, but I do remember that the overall plot was umm... dumb. And yet, somehow this 'story' actually works out quite well. The content is preposterous, of course, but the interstitial cutscenes between fights are entertaining in an 80s action movie sort-of way.

The trend in fighters it seems is to bring back the 2D, side-scrolling style (using 3D rendered characters of course). The over-sexualized female fighters, on the other hand, have laways been there. Image cred here.

The real accomplishment, however, is in how the story actually teaches you how to play the game. In typical fighters, the single-player mode involves fighting through a random series of matches with a single character. In MK9, you switch among a large diversity of characters over the course of the story, forcing you to learn how to effective use each one. Thankfully, MK is a much more simple (playable?) game than the highly technical Japanese fighters, and so while there are some sharp difficulty spikes -Shao Khan's stupid ability to shrug off hits comes to mind - it's never unreasonable (you can also change the AI difficulty at any time).

Beyond the pleasant surprise at how much fun I was having with the game, the most salient thought running through my mind during my playtime was: How in the world do other fighting games get away with charging full price for titles with so little content???

 While fighting games have always had a die-hard, niche following, one could say that the genre experienced a renaissance with the release of Capcom's Street Fighter IV on consoles in 2009. Since then, Capcom has released what feels like a hundred different variants of their game and all of the classic fighting devs (Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, etc.) have dipped back into the fray a few times themselves. Yet most of these titles (the Capcom ones in particular) are just straight fighting games. You get a translation of the arcade mode, a few different variant fighting modes, and janky online play for $60. MK9 offers all of that, plus the long, interesting story mode, other challenge single-player modes, and tons of unlockables.

Drama. Image cred here.

I realize that in 'hardcore fighting game circles' it's accepted that the bulk of the effort in making Capcom games goes into balancing the fighters such that they're cash-money tournament ready. I doubt that the majority of folks who play these games care about that at all, so I'd rather have the content (and the lack of price-gouging on $40 annual 'updates'). I feel as though the hardcore fighters hearken back to the times when gaming was subconsciously divided into people who wanted 'the arcade experience at home', vs. those like me who felt that there were fundamental differences between what made a good home game as compared to a good arcade game.

Oh well, I wonder how long it'll be before I give a dang about a fighting game again? 

Comments

[TheBrummell]

Nice review. But you didn't address the key question for all Mortal Kombat games: Can you rip out someone's spine as a finishing move?

Also, obligatory:
GET OVER HERE!