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Review: Mortal Kombat Trilogy |
The brains over at Midway decided to treat us to more swap palatte characters, a few more childish fatalities, and a very unbalanced gameplay. Ooooh Boy! There are a few good things about Mortal Kombat Trilogy however. Here we go!
The graphics are your basic Mortal Kombat motion captured - digitized characters which look very detailed and move very smoothly in the screen. The huge assortment of swap palette characters really hurt this game, enough is enough. With well over 12 swap palette characters Mortal Kombat feels a bit old for its time. The only difference between playing with Smoke and Scorpion is really minimal (minus a few moves). The bosses look sharp and very huge compared to the little characters, yet there is something weird about Goro - he just looks out of place. He moves rather jerky and unresponsive.
The background graphics are alright but you will never be impressed by their simplicity. A few statues here and there with nothing going on in the backgrounds. I really do not understand why video game companies do not make the backgrounds more exciting like those in Killer Instinct Gold. Interaction and things going on on the backgrounds make the levels funner to play in!
There are no full motion video or still shot endings so the replay value against the computer is really not that good. Sure there might a few treasures to discover, but the computer plays very cheap (as in previous Mortal Kombat Games). Do not expect any special effects, or gory fatalities because they are not here. I have already grown bored of seeing somebody being decapitated - cant you think of something else?
One of the best things about the Sony Playstation version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy are the massive amount of bugs in the game! Yeah, I know having bugs in a game is bad, but this game has the funniest bugs I have ever seen! I will elaborate on that later.
The music is alright but it grows very repetetious because most of the tracks sound almost the same as another. There are a few really great tracks like the Soul Chamber and the church level, but thats where the fun stops. The sound effects are alright but never great. As a matter of fact it becomes annoying - very annoying.
Now on to one of the many bugs in MKT. If you remove the timer in the game and just let the characters stand there or if you put the code for life recovery and little damage and play after a couple of minutes the music will stop and you will be playing the complete silence. Aside from that fact your characters will loose their special moves after a couple of minutes after that! Want more? Sure, if you put the game on pause and unpause quickly you will either here a song that is unrelated to the level or hear “Frienship? Friendship again?” or “Babality”. If you appreciate this type of gameplay then you have a winner on your hands. What were those guys at Midway thinking?
The characters have no problem moving around the screen and they are controlled very effectively with the playstation controller configuration. The moves are easy to do (B,B + FP) so the special moves are very crucial to the gameplay. The combos on the otherhand are one of the worst things ever seen in Mortal Kombat. While we were treated to some of the most difficult combos in Mortal Kombat II, MKT follows the Mortal Kombat III formula - big mistake. Press HK,LK,LK, B+HK and you got yourself a very damaging combo. Anyone with fast fingers can easily pull out 7 hits combos without even knowing. Jax’s 12-13 hit combo takes awhile to master but can be easily done once you get the hang of it.
The characters still have the same basic regular punch, kick moves, so you will figure out almost every character in NO time. The fatalities are easy to do, while the brutalities are god awful and are really not worth the time it takes to accomplish one.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy is a fun multiplayer game to play, but if you are a lonely person this game will bore you in NO time. Mutiplayer options include your regular 2 player game, tournament and a two on two. The tournament however is very boring with only one round per battle, meaning it will take you almost no time to finish the game. Again playing the computer in Mortal Kombat Trilogy can be consider murder. They will usually know how to counter your jump kick or how to uppercut you at the best time. There are well over 50 known bugs in Mortal Kombat Trilogy for the PSX which you may enjoy in laughter.
Ever since the release of Mortal Kombat II (the best Mortal Kombat to date), Mortal Kombat games have declined in quality. Mortal Kombat 3 was horrible, UMK3 was better than MK3 but not that good of an upgrade, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy is just not up for today’s standards. The gameplay is alright, but its really in some serious need for an upgrade while the graphics are a bit overdone. There are many bugs in this game, the sounds and music just alright, so this game is really past its time. Lets just hope Mortal Kombat 4 brings us Mortal Kombat fans some real Mortal Kombat Action.
- HardCore
