Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat was the first 16 bit game that I played waay back when I was a li'l kid. Thanks to my friend Rohit who was a total video game addict at that time, me and Harman were sucked into the vortex along with him. Mortal Kombat was really fun to play. It was pretty realistic for the time. The game used digitized sprites for actors and consequently looked a lot real than their animated counterparts. The blood and violence made it even more fun. I remember Mileena's fatality in which she ate the person and puked out all the bones. Classic!

Over the years, MK had lost its touch. MK2 was the best. MK3 was also good but it was downhill after that. Their 9th installment named Mortal Kombat was showcased at E3 2010 and it left everyone dumbfounded (including me). Their latest offering looked awesome and was gory as hell. I was desperately waiting for it to release. The release was due in April 2011. I had made up my mind to buy it as soon as I reach India. And I did just that. It was shipped last Monday...but I got to play it only yesterday. 

Needless to say, it has delivered its promise. MK fans would be really happy with the latest MK game. It  looks awesome, gameplay is really fast and the controls are pretty cool to work with. It has a story mode, the conventional arcade mode and a challenge mode.

The story mode is pretty interesting. I am playing the story mode for 2 days straight now. It retells the story of the MK trilogy with the player getting to play with all the main characters in the plot. Its truly awesome and really fun to play. You start with being Johnny Cage, move on to Sonya, Scorpion, Cyrax, Liu Kang, Jax, Smoke, Sub-zero, Kitana, Jade, Kung Lao, Stryker, Kabal, Cyber Subzero, Nightwolf and finally Raiden. So you kinda get to play all the characters. The gameplay is pretty fast and you are as good playing with the fists and kicks as with all the super powers. It has this brand new X-Ray move which lets you see the damage on the internal organs and ohh man! its brutal. When you see knives and swords going into the eye sockets, knees and loads of "creative" places, you are bound to cringe. I think the MK guys are a bunch of sadists. I mean the creativity that they have shown to think of such brutal assaults, is a bit shocking. But thats what every MK fan looks for in Mortal Kombat. 

The cut scenes are of the in-game engine itself and hence the story and the fight blends in seamlessly. Although the backgrounds are spectacular, the players look a bit funny at some places...esp the bare chested ones like Liu Kang and Johnny Cage. Other than that, its flawless. Some of the character models like Subzero, Scorpion, Nightwolf and Smoke are brilliantly done. Even Jax looks really cool. The backgrounds are interactive and you will have something or the other moving. 

The sound in the game is mind blowing. When you get hit, you really feel the hit. The character themes also make the atmosphere around pretty cool for fighting. 

This beats all the other MK versions both in all respects, be it story, graphics or gameplay. It is surely gonna win some awards this year.