It took one unifying game for the parents of the world to unite against and start the declaration that violent video games are the source of all evil and are corrupting kids one game at a time. The main game that opened that hornet’s nest, known for its intense gore and violence was Mortal Kombat. Video Games were once seen as just an innocent pastime where the most violent thing you’d see was jumping on top of somebody’s head, this was turned upside when the parent saw somebody’s spine being ripped out in a brutal Fatality. The original Mortal Kombat games were never known for more than adequate gameplay but were a renowned series because of the many ways you could hurt people. Now after many years after Mortal Kombat was turned into a 3D fighter, the resurgence of the 2D fighting game has brought Mortal Kombat back to its 2D roots. Now will this return to the basics help bring back the best parts of the franchise or should Mortal Kombat have stayed as a relic of the 90s.

The first thing that’ll jump up at you about the new Mortal Kombat is as the unnumbered nature implies, it’s a complete reboot of the series starting from how the last of the previous generation game ended. Shao Khan the evil emperor and Raiden the good god of lighting are locked in a final showdown for the fate of all the realms. Raiden is losing the battle so as an act of desperation he sends visions to his younger self trying to change to the past prevent his present. So after this you’re taken to the first Mortal Kombat where you are to relive the first three games where there’s a constantly changing focus on characters and hence who you’re playing as. I’ve got to say the story mode is one the most elaborated upon than I’ve seen in a fighting game. While I was impressed with the opening and closing cutscenes from Street Fighter IV this takes it to a whole new level. You’re treated to an entire storyline that feels like it coming straight from a Mortal Kombat movie, in fact I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if it were adapted from what was supposed to be the next movie. Just one thing, just like the Mortal Kombat movies the whole thing is incredibly corny and clichéd. Every chance somebody gets into the even smallest of arguments it caused a best of 3 rounds fight to happen. It’s corny but in a good way, there’s even a few laugh out loud moments. Overall I loved the story mode and the developers took the chance to retcon the original Mortal Kombat, writing in characters earlier into the series than they showed up before and changing some of the characters story in this alternate timeline.

A total reboot of the first three games is nice and all but if the gameplay sucks then it’s not worth the plastic it’s printed on. Fortunately that’s not the case; in fact imagine it takes the best of the first 3 games while trimming the fat like running which is taken and in turn is far more balanced than any other game in the series. Now you know the series, then you’ll know the name of the game is to combo moves. Just like Marvel vs. Capcom 3, characters can string together powerful and long combos taking anywhere from just a small fraction or if you’re good more than three-fifths the opponent’s health bar in a single string. That brings me to the biggest addition to the series and that’s the energy meter located at the bottom of the screen. You’ve got three bars you can fill through being attacked or attacking; at the cost of one bar you can super power any one of your normal moves. Now this second one is where it becomes relevant to the combos I mentioned, with two bars you can perform a combo breaker. Any time you’ve got two bars you can stop what could turn into a devastating combo by your opponent and pushing them away from you giving you a chance to regroup. This stops the possibility of an infinite combo from ever happening and gives players with less experience a chance to battle back. Now if you can fill up your meter entirely that leads to one most powerful uses of the meter, the X-Ray attack. Hit your opponent with this and you’ll end up taking a big chunk of their health, it’s pretty similar to a super move in any other fighting game and something noticeably missing from the original games. Speaking of something basic missing from the old games, they also saw fit to include throws as well a basic fighting game mechanic that breaks up the combat a little bit. What was once a plague in the series, that is tripping and uppercuts have been balanced quite a bit. It’s a lot harder to do a series of trips and the uppercuts seem slightly less powerful. If you’re used to Street Fighter there’s quite an adjustment to be made as the game punishes not being aggressive where you want to be the one hit the all important combo. Staying still just cause you take chip damage and so it becomes quite important to use the game’s practice mode to fine-tune your combo skills. All in all the gameplay seems very solid and definitely will please the Mortal Kombat faithful.

Not only do you have the standard one vs. one but now you’ve got the great addition of an up to four-player tag mode to get more of your friends into the fun at once. Some people might remember that Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 had the idea to put some team combat into Mortal Kombat and it was a pretty half fast version at best. At the time it was just two players controlling four characters but it’s a mode that has some teeth to it. You can tag out whenever you like and line up some pretty cool combos with an tag-out attack making combo breakers ever more important. Multiplayer tag team is something you don’t normally see in a fighting game so I feel it’s a welcome addition and worth your time to check out.

If you’re worried that you’ll run of things to do in Mortal Kombat then you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Not only do you have the story mode that will take you a couple of hours to go through but you’ve got plenty more as well. The game has a giant time sink known as the Challenge Tower. You’ll spend hours doing mini challenges ranging from winning a fight which might have a special condition to it all the way to playing mini games which is something that has always been found in Mortal Kombat games. I had fun playing through the tower, which like the story mode gets you cash for The Krypt. The Krypt is where you go to unlock stuff like cheat codes and new character costumes making it worthwhile to play the challenge tower. There you gain your rewards for playing through all the single player content. Finally there’s the traditional ladder mode like the single player in the traditional games. You can play it in both single and a tag team. Something I found to be a nice touch was they kept individual character endings and instead of a text conclusion you actually get a cutscene for every character seeing what happens if they win the Mortal Kombat tournament.

Obviously one the biggest part of any fighting game is it’s multiplayer and if you won’t play local you’ll play online. The online modes are pretty simple, you can choose an unranked and online match and then you’ve got 1 v 1, Tag and King of the Mountain. The first two is self explanatory and the 3rd one is simply you create a lobby of up to eight people where one person is the king of the mountain and each player takes a turn to try and beat him and become king as the other players watch. The modes are kept simple and while an online tournament mode would have been nice it covers the bases. When playing online I noticed a bit of lag that you wouldn’t get in local multiplayer, it’s not so bad that it’s unplayable but it’s felt like everything I did there’s a few millisecond delay in your inputs. If you get a used copy of Mortal Kombat it needs you to pay to get access to the online, in my opinion it’s a tough sell in this state.

One of my favourite things about this new Mortal Kombat is how it manages to remind me of the 16-bit games without feeling like an old game either. The presentation is focused on bringing on the old Mortal Kombat games to the modern age. All the main stages of the first three games have been recreated as 3D stages. They’re cool to look at from the original Pit in Mortal Kombat 1 to the Subway Station in Mortal Kombat 3 they’re all there looking better than ever with fully animated backgrounds. Another advantage of taking the old formula into the new generation is that all the old tricks look a lot better; for instance Kano’s heart ripping fatality is more gruesome than ever and all the other fatalities are upped with the capabilities of the Xbox 360. Gone are the days of using real models for the characters going with a more traditional 3D generated character, the likeness to the original models is pretty close. As for the sound part of the presentation, the original songs from the first three games have been remixed for the reboot taking the 16-bit tunes to their logical conclusion in the modern era; I enjoyed the nostalgic trip and seeing what they would do to modernize the tunes. The voice acting is on the cheesy side with overly exaggerated acting and constant shouting between all the characters. Fortunately I think that’s the direction they were going in and it seems to work so I’ll give it a pass.

Like Street Fighter IV did for the Street Fighter franchise, Mortal Kombat does for its series, which is to make it relevant again. The game is instantly welcoming for old fans of the series while giving something for the new fighting game fans grasp onto who’ve already been won over by the likes of BlazBlue and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Mortal Kombat is an excellent fighting game and if you’re in the market for something new and you’re not afraid to see gore and maybe even if you are this is totally worth checking out.

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