Mortal Kombat vs anyone willing
There are two essential pieces of knowledge required in order to fully tolerate this review: one, I am not a fan of fighting games. I tend to prefer a game with strong storytelling and more involved than beating the blood, teeth, and other body parts out of your enemies. Mostly, I can’t stand the idea of a game where you can work tirelessly to learn all of the right moves with your character of choice, only to have someone massacre you with button-mashing. The second thing is that I had to try and wipe away my preconceived notions pertaining to this game in order to justify spending $50+ on it. I’ll admit, I was one of “those gamers.” The ones who immediately deemed this game a crap sandwich covered in an array of condiments made of all things terrible.
Keeping this in mind, I will admit that Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is a surprisingly good game. Not a great game, but hardly as bad as I had imagined it to be. Let’s take a look at what makes this game worth giving a chance, shall we?In terms of single-player enjoyability, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is an okay game. The story, which is split into the DC and Mortal Kombat sides, is all right. It’s not deep. It’s not gripping. It won’t leave you pondering hidden sub-texts that, let’s face it, couldn’t ever hope to exist in a Mortal Kombat game. However, it’s entertaining and helps string together an otherwise mindless series of battles between characters from their respective universes. The storylines, regardless of which the player chooses, ends with the same pain-in-the-ass, obscenely unbalanced final boss. While, yes, this could be considered a test of a fighting game enthusiast’s overall abilities it’s mostly just a great way to get casual gamers to break controllers. I played through the DC Universe side, which ends with Raiden duking it out with the previously mentioned final boss. Raiden is bulky, slow, and not ideal for a fight in which the larger, bulkier fighter is much faster and much stronger. I’m not entirely ashamed to say it took my girlfriend and I a dozen or so painful tries before I finally managed to win through the power of spamming Raiden’s Superman move. The ending? Not really worth it.
For those who aren’t eager to leap into the fifth grade-quality plot to Story Mode, there’s always Arcade (or Arkade, I suppose) Mode. Standard choose-your-character, choose-the-universe (or universes), and fight routine. Unlike in Story Mode, there’s the added perks of Fatalities. The Fatalities seem, in some cases, surprisingly easy to pull off. In any event, there’s something extremely satisfying in viciously slaughtering quite a number of the characters from each side. Captain Marvel comes to mind.
New gameplay elements help revive the Mortal Kombat series, at least to some degree. Adding up-close, hand-to-hand combat isn’t what I’d say is enough of a new feature to really spice up a game series that spans virtually every generation of video game consoles. The aerial combat is pretty enjoyable, having a button-mashing tug-of-war with your opponent as you tumble down towards the ground. Rage and Breaker moves, the former being like giving the fighter a hefty dose of steroids and the latter being a relatively cheap way of blocking and countering a move, are okay, but Rage only seems like a way of cheapening the overall combat mechanics. In a way, yes, it makes it easy for a sudden come-back. Alternatively, it makes it a lot easier to just mindlessly wail on your opponent.
With the previously mentioned things in mind, multi-player isn’t anything remarkably new and exciting. It’s fun, yes, but it’s an experience that can be replicated relatively easily by playing any previous installments in the Mortal Kombat series.
The character selection isn’t anything to complain about, really, but it feels lacking in some areas. Where the hell are characters like Smoke or Reptile? I mean, I understand a need for balance in terms of characters on each side, but…Captain Marvel? What the hell? Supposedly, there will be new characters available in the downloadable content, but that remains to be seen. As I have no means to connect my 360 to XBOX Live currently, I’ll have to wait and hope.
Overall, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is a decent game. Just not a game worth $50.
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