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Review: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon |
So this is Midway’s final Mortal Kombat game for the current generation console (PS2, XBox). And it was suppose to be Midway’s best MK game ever. Well, let’s just see about that.
Anyway, this review is based on the PS2 Premium Edition. And the premium edition includes the following:
-The MK: Armageddon game with “arcade perfect” UMK3.
-A tin game case.
-A cell of the cover of the tin game case.
-Bonus DVD that talks about fatalities and almost all the characters.
So let’s see what features you have in Mugen Kombat MK: Armageddon:
-Arcade: Which is basically beat up 6 random fighters, 1 sub boss (Motaro, Shao Kahn, Goro, Kintaro, Onaga, Moloch), and Blaze
-Kreate a Fighter: A mode that allows you to create your own fighter.
-Konquest: A story mode where you walk around avoiding death traps and beating people up.
-Motor Kombat: A Mario Kart clone, but with fatalities.
-Krypt: A place to unlock things: Costumes, Stages, etc.
-Extras: Includes demos of other Midway games and UMK3.
Arcade/Verses Mode
So let me tell you about the arcade/verses mode. You can choose from over 60 characters from every single MK game. Four characters (Taven, Dragon, Blaze, and Meat) have to be unlocked through Konquest mode. So let’s mention the fighting engine. Well, its the same as MK: Deception: breakers, death traps, fixed combos, picking up weapons, and corner juggle limits. But now there’s parries and aerial kombat.
Parries are kinda like SF3: Third Strike parries. You hit the block button as soon as your opponent is about to hit you. You can even do this in the air. After you successfully parry an attack, your opponent gets stunned a little for a counter attack.
Aerial kombat is basically like the Capcom VS series air combos. You basically launch the opponent from the ground and then you jump at them with a barrage of hits, which could end with a heavy knock down attack or an air throw. You can hit the opponent in the air for up to 8 to 9 times. Like the ground combos, the air combos are fixed and it seems almost everyone have the same air combo. Its basically this:
-Punch, Punch, Bouncy Kick Thing, Punch, Punch, Kick, Throw
I’d like them to see the characters actually use their weapons during air combos, but it seems they have the same thing. Also, it seems you do more damage with ground juggle combos than you do with air combos. Damage scaling seems to kick in after doing a ground launch move. So, if you do the same launcher twice in one combo, your juggle hits will do less damage.
Speaking of ground launches, like Deception, there’s a limit to launch someone. After a launch, you can juggle the same launch move 2 times. At the second time, the game purposely prevents you from attacking, until the opponent hits the ground. Also note that launchers are useless against some big boss characters (Blaze, Moloch, Goro, Kintaro, Onaga). However, some boss characters (Motaro, Shao Kahn) can get launched in the air. Also, they don’t have air combos. Well that’s fair, since they can’t get launched. Unfortunately, Moloch is broken. He has an infinite combo, which is: Square, Square, Up + X. This only works on non big boss characters. I’ll get to brokenness later.
As mentioned before, every single character from all MK games are in this game. Here is one problem with the game. There are no character bios. As in, there is no explanation on how some characters come back to life (Mavado, Kano, Sheeva, Motaro). Other than Shinnok trying to force feed Raiden with a pie, the intro to MK Armageddon never mentioned what happened at the end of MK: Deception. There are endings, but they are just text and your character performing a kata.
Now that I mentioned Shinnok and pie, and yes I could of sworn Shinnok yelled at Raiden, “Would you like a pie?”, Midway still uses gibberish on some special moves. And almost all the male voices, minus Liu Kang, are the same voices. The same goes with female voices and some of them speak gibberish in specials as well.
Another thing changed is that almost all the fighters now only have 1 or 2 fighting styles. Most will have an unarmed style and a weapon style. Some, mainly the big bosses, will only have one style. And only two people (Smoke and Mokap) have 2 unarmed fighting styles. Just like Deadly Alliance and Decepton, you can change styles in a middle of a combo.
And now let’s talk about weapon styles. Well you thought Capcom got lazy with using the same Morrigan sprite in CvS2, here’s even more laziness. Some of the character’s weapons have the same moves as other character’s weapon. Only difference is the name and look. For example: Fujin’s Devestator is the same as Kenshi’s Katana, or Jax’s Tonfas are the same as Stryker’s Nightsticks. Some characters have the same weapon as another character (Cage and Liu Kang both have nunchucks. Mavado and Kabal have Hookswords.). They could at least have Liu Kang duel wield two nunchucks or have Stryker only use one nightstick, like on MK3.
And speaking of lazy, MK: Armageddon got rid of the cinematic fatalities and hari karis, and replaced it with “Kreate a Fatality”, or as most people will call it, “Kreate a Brutality”. That’s right. No more character specific fatalities, like Toasty, Exploding Kiss of Death, etc. All characters have the same boring thing now, but in strings. So basically to start, you have to opening it with a Forward, Forward, Square. And then follow it with more motions and a button. Oh, and you have to end it with a torso rip or a head rip. If you don’t, it doesn’t count as a fatality. You get graded for how many attacks you made, during a fatality. Now if they had gave a fighter a character specific fatality string or ender, like have Scorpion remove his mask and fry the opponent as his ender or have Liu Kang do the flying spin kick from MK1 as a fatality string, then it could of save the fatality engine. Well, there’s a reason for this and it has to do with Kreate a Fighter since there’s no way to create a character specific fatality with this.
Kreate a Fighter
Now that I mentioned it, Kreate a Fighter is kinda like Soul Calibur 3’s Create a Soul. You basically dress up a character and give it some specials and moves. There are even costumes that let you recreate a classic version of you favorite pallet swap ninja. What’s interesting is that most of the costumes resemble the same clothes characters from Street Fighter wear: Ryu’s Karate gi, Chun Li’s dress, Sakura’s Sailor Fuku, etc. Is like Midway wants you to make a SF vs MK.
Another thing interesting is that you can create your own character ending. All you do is goto the Biography section and have fun with making your own silly ending.
So anyway, the disappointing part about this is that the fight style moves seem limited. All of the command moves for the styles are the same and there’s no combo that can switch to a weapon style. Also, you only have two weapon styles: sword and axe. Now here’s where it gets broken. That right. As in create a broken fighter. If you can find the right set of combo moves, you can create a combo that can juggle your opponent forever. Well, until he hits a wall, death trap, or uses a breaker. Hell, you can also make your character big so you have a higher chance of hitting the infinite.
Konquest
Not going to mention Konquest mode that much, but it is almost like in the last game. Except that you can die this time. Anyway, Konquest mode lets you unlock stuff in the Krypt for free, like Stages, Costumes, etc. All you do is find treasure chest that contain them. You can also find relics that can help you unlock 3 of the 4 unlockable characters or even everything in the Krypt.
Now the game play for Konquest mode. Well, its like Shaolin Monks, but minus the jumping. Also, sometime you’ll have to fight MK characters the same way in arcade style.
Oh, but there is one thing annoying about Konquest mode is that Konquest mode is linear. Once you get pass a checkpoint, you can never go back where you came from. So if you miss one relic after passing a checkpoint, you will have to beat the game first in order to replay that area again. That right. There is no way you can go back to previous levels to get the missing relics.
Motor Kombat
Well, didn’t mess with this mode a lot but think of a combination of Mario Kart and Artic Thunder (A Midway racing game), but with death traps.
Krypt
Well this is basically the same as the last 2 games. But now its easier to buy things. The last two games had like 6 different types of koins to unlock stuff. Here, its just one. There are lots of ways to get koins:
-Collect them in Konquest or Motor Kombat.
-Play arcade mode and do combos, perform fatalities, get flawless victory, and defeat opponent to get coins. The higher the difficulty, the more koins you earn.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
OK, here’s another disappointing thing about Midway. Like how MK1 was included in the Premium Edition of MK: Deception, UMK3 is included in MK: Armageddon. What’s disappointing: just like the MK games on Midway Arcade Treasures 2, they maybe playable, but they are buggy as hell. It appears they haven’t learned from their mistakes from Midway Arcade Treasures 2. Remember the Start button bug where it prevents you from random selecting and fighting Smoke in MK2. Well its still here, along with the Midway Arcade Treasure 2 menu interface. However just like MK3 on Midway Arcade Treasures 2, Random Select is now performed with Up and X.
Also since Midway is so lazy and not put a save feature in UMK3, you have to reunlock Classic Sub Zero, Mileena, and Ermac everytime you start UMK3. The least they could do is have them unlocked immediately. I mean, the Tekken games on Tekken 5 had the time released characters unlocked at the start. That’s because Namco wasn’t lazy and made some modifications with the ROMs. Which is why you noticed the copyright date 2005 in the title screen on the Tekken games. So if they manage to make Up and X Random Select, why not just have these characters unlocked immediately or at least make the goddamn ROM save as soon as you leave UMK3? At least Human Smoke doesn’t need the stupid Ultimate Kombat Kode, and he’s still broken the best hidden charcter.
Another thing is that the game seems to be slower than the original arcade version. And it also appears that it has loading as well. Well I know Midway had some problems emulating their MK games, but the later MAME doesn’t seem to have major problems with emulating the MK games. Only problems with playing it on MAME is the puke looking colors on the “Select Your Fighter” screen, once the 3 secret characters get unlocks. Well, that glitch is also present in here. Plus, Kano sometimes dissappears when he headbutts during the HP, HP, Down + LP, Down + HP combo.
Also, there is no way you could setup your own controls. You have to play this game with the default controls. So basically its pretty much hard to play this with an arcade stick, since I can’t set it up like how it was in the arcade.
Fortunately, the Xbox Live version is actually better than this one, mainly the fact that Classic Sub Zero, Mileena, and Ermac stay unlocked. However, you still can’t set up your controls. And from what I heard, the 360 controller sucks for this game.
Bonus Disc
Besides the Demos, the Premium Edition does include a DVD about Fatalities. Now I was expecting them to show every single fatality from all the games, but they just talked about how they came up with the idea, the origin of the other “alities”, etc. It also includes the character cards from MK: Deception, and MK: Armageddon as well.
Conclusion
Well all I have to say is that this game’s basically MK: Deception v2, but just with tons of characters. I felt like this game was one of those “rush jobs”. I would have to say that maybe just rent this game. If you are planning to buy it, just buy the regular version. Nothing much was on the bonus disc anyway. And if you are planning to get the premium version just for UMK3, I suggest you just play this on Xbox Live instead.
