Despite all my rage I am still just Johnny Cage: Ars reviews Mortal Kombat

Playing the past few Mortal Kombat games was like watching an ex-girlfriend get into a series of bad relationships—there's really nothing you can do to improve the situation, but you remember what it was like when you were together in better times. But for this installment of the popular fighting game series, there is no number at the end of this game; it is just called Mortal Kombat. This is a reboot, a return to form, and a chance for these characters to get back some of the dignity they may have lost in the past.

I can sense your skepticism from here, and it's well earned. This is a game that was first introduced to me at a meeting that I took mostly as a courtesy, but the more I dug in, the more I fell in love with what had been done with the game. Those of us in the press walked out of that room as if we had a secret, and over drinks everyone shared their enthusiasm as if it were shameful. Did a Mortal Kombat game really grab everyone's imagination at this year's Game Developers Conference? Hell yes it did.

Here's what the game does right.

Mortal Kombat

Official site

Available: now

$59.99

The fighting system

The game is absolutely stacked with your favorite fighters from Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3, and we were promised that if we had a favorite character they would be in the game. That was not an idle promise. Furthermore, each character looks and plays differently, a far cry from the franchise's history with palette-swapped characters. The standard disclaimer applies here—things may change and exploits may be found when the competition-level players have their way with the game—but in my time with it all the characters seemed ready to rock, with no obviously weak or overpowered characters.

While other franchises may have you your sweeping your joystick or charging up special moves by holding the joystick in one direction, the vast majority of special moves in Mortal Kombat are unleashed with a series of two directional presses and then a button. So up-forward-X is a move, or back-forward-O. This makes it a very friendly game for players who are new to fighting game, and it has an effective tutorial for teaching you the basics of gameplay. That's not to say the game is shallow, as the questions of when to use moves or how to counter your opponents' strategies are still deeper than they may appear at first, but using the attacks themselves won't be tricky. I may offend purists who like their fighting games impenetrable unless they take a college course, but I found this approach refreshing.

Sadly, Sonya is the most clothed female character in the game

There is also a bar at the bottom of the screen that you fill by taking damage. When you have the first level filled up you can hit the R2 button during a special move to add an extra level of power. These beefed-up special moves look great, and do a great deal more damage. The second level allows you to break out of combos if your opponent begins to wail on you. At the highest level you can hit the R2 and L2 buttons to fire off your X-Ray attack, a brutal beating that breaks multiple bones in your opponent's body, shown with neat little cinemas that show the internal organs and musculature of your character. These can really turn the tide of a fight, and remain fun to watch even in the long haul. They're also something of a "hail Mary" move, as they can be dodged, which completely depletes your special meter.

More important than these specifics is how the fighting feels, and this is where the game excels. Hits look and sound painful, the physics feel "real" in the stylized world, and it's rare that you'll feel cheated during a fight. The feel of a fighting game is hard to put into words, but this game nails it completely. It's simply fun to play, even when you're on the receiving end of a savage beating.

So much to do, so many reasons to do it

The game features a story mode that takes you through a slightly twisted version of the first three Mortal Kombat games, and while the voice acting and animations can be slightly cheesy, fans of the story will find many surprises and fun things to discover in the six to eight hours it takes to finish this mode. You'll even unlock two more fighters. While some backgrounds and fights may recycle, all of this makes for a pretty good time if you're into the lore of Mortal Kombat and want to see how some of the characters came to be.

(It's sad to think the story mode of this fighting game is longer than many single-player games. But I digress.)

I have one more note on the Story Mode and then we'll move on: if the last battle in your game takes it from "Man this is great!" to "I can't wait for this thing to be over," then you've failed pretty badly in the design department. In this respect, the Mortal Kombat team blew it. You guys have fun with that last boss, because I'm never playing that bit of this game again. Terrible.

Mortal Kombat Challenge Tower

Then there is the Challenge Tower, a series of 300 challenges that has you learning fatalities, playing Test Your Might games, fighting under adverse circumstances, and all sorts of other surprises. Some challenges are harder than others, but they are (mostly) all fun, and will help you hone your skills at the game. It will take even the most talented players hours and hours to solve all these challenges. It's fun to see all the different minigames and tweaks the designers have added to the core gameplay, and this is a mode that will also take you hours to get through. Watch the video to get a sense of what we mean, but it's not nearly as interesting to watch as it is to play in person.

On top of all this there is the standard two-player mode where you can fight your friends, a more classical arcade mode when you fight through the characters one by one, and even a tag-team mode for up to four players. These modes are not just tacked on, as each character has their own tag attacks and combos, adding another layer of complexity to the game. You can also take the fight online, where the game includes a King of the Hill mode where the winner stays and the next challengers takes him or her on. (We haven't been able to test the online play as of this writing.)

There is a training mode that teaches you how to do each Fatality, there is plenty of hidden content to be unlocked, and in the more traditional ladder mode each character has an ending that further fleshes things out. There's simply a stupid amount of things to do and content to see in this game, and it does a great job of putting other fighting games to shame in this area. Yes, DLC is coming and that kind of sucks, but the game is already loaded to the gills with things to do and characters to play, so it's hard to complain. This is the first fighting game I put over ten hours into before playing with another human being.