Back To The Past: Mortal Kombat Series (Part 2)

In case you missed Part 1, click here. So without further ado, here is Part 2 of NoobFeed Guest Writer Koshai's Back To The Past: Mortal Kombat Series.

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero (1997), Special Forces (2000), and Shaolin Monks (2005)

During 1997 to 1999, the MK team was involved in multiple side projects relating to the Mortal Kombat franchise. In 1997, after the release of MK4, Midway released MK Mythologies: Sub Zero on PS1 and N64. Unlike previous games, MK Mythologies is an adventure game focusing on the main character: The Original Sub Zero. It tells his story as well as his quest to retrieve the amulet that held Shinnok’s power. It also goes into detail on how the hatred between Sub Zero and the Scorpion originated. Some of the events like Quan Chi having the amulet at last carried forward to MK: Deadly Alliance. The game “MK: Special Forces” focuses on the special forces member Jax in his quest to bring back the Black Dragon gang member Kano to justice. Like MK Mythologies: Sub Zero, it is also an adventure game. I haven’t played these two games so I can’t comment on those, however I heard that MK: Special Forces is considered the worst game in the MK series.

I played the final adventure game MK: Shaolin Monks and I actually enjoyed it. Released in 2004, it retells the original MKII story to the point where Shao Kahn has been defeated and focuses on two Shaolin Warriors: Liu Kang and Kung Lao. You beat your opponents and carry red coins, in which you can use in the Krypt for unlocking new moves and fatalities. You can interchange both Liu Kang and Kung Lao as you progress. After you beat the game, you can play as Scorpion or Sub Zero as unlocked characters.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002)

Due to the commercial failures of Mortal Kombat 4 and the two spin offs (Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces), most of the MK team crew--including the main storyteller John Tobias--left the company. At this point, Ed Boon definitely needed a serious change in the franchise. It took them 5 years to release Deadly Alliance at 2002, which was exclusive on consoles (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and GBA). The game brought out massive changes. Instead of all the characters have just the basic moves with different special moves, each character had two sets of moves of different real martial arts fighting styles exclusive to the character as well as a weapon based style.

The character models were also vastly improved. However, they dropped the run feature and also reduced the number of special moves for each character to focus mostly on each combat style. Characters are able to impale a weapon to the foe, thus making the foe lose a little bit of health on time to time. Since there were invisible walls in MK4, the team decided to put a temporary wall in the battleground so that if any player collides with the wall, the player will receive damage. A feature called Konquest mode was also added. It is basically a tutorial feature for practicing various moves but also provides back story for each character. ‘Koins’ were rewarded when the player reaches certain goals Konquest. These Koins could be spent on the Krypt for unlockables. Test Your Might makes a return, and a new minigame called ‘Test Your Sight’ was introduced in this game. Deadly Alliance was also the first game not to feature Liu Kang in the roster, since *SPOILERS!* he dies in this game.

Deadly Alliance’s story takes some elements present in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero. While fleeing from Scorpion, Quan Chi discovered an ancient tomb, containing the mummified armies of the Dragon King, the first emperor of Outworld. When he realized that the army would be invincible and undefeated when resurrected, he formed an alliance with Shang Tsung, and the Deadly Alliance was born. Then they also decided to stop the two beings--Shao Kahn and Liu Kang—who can stop them from reaching their goals. After the false show of allegiance, the two managed to murder Shao Kahn. Later they used a mystical portal, which is accessible to the sorcerers, to travel Earth Realm. There, Shang Tsung attacks Liu Kang. When Shang Tsung was about to fall for defeat, Quan Chi interfered and assisted Shang Tsung to finish off Liu Kang. The undisputed champion had finally fallen. The two sorcerers returned to Outworld where the souls of the fallen warriors would be used to resurrect the army of the Dragon King. On the other side at Earth Realm, Raiden formed another alliance with the greatest warriors to stop this Deadly Alliance.

I played Mortal Kombat: Deception first before jumping in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. So all the wow effect that Deadly Alliance was supposed to give from the changes they made, I got it from Deception (in fact, Deception was a better game overall than the Deadly Alliance). As a result, I was marginally disappointed with this game since there were fewer contents compared to Deception; the game became a little bit boring, in a way. However, I don’t blame Deadly Alliance. It did allow me to explore a lot of characters that were not available in Deception.

Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004)

Ed Boon and his team kept the same formula, but tweaked them up in many possible areas. They increased the special moves for each character, though weapon impalements were not possible. The combo breaker feature returns as a counter for breaking off long combos. The team also made efforts to bring some uniqueness to each character as much as possible, like Sub Zero uses ice power to rise up or Mileena growls after losing a round. Another welcome change is that the stages became more interactive. It was possible for a player to take advantage of some elements in the game to damage the opponent. For example, the player can win the round earlier by making the opponent fall into death traps. Some stage specific weapons can also be found in Deception. Other than that the gameplay is same as that of Deadly Alliance.

The mini-games in Deadly Alliance are replaced with two new ones: Kombat Chess and Kombat Puzzle. Kombat Chess is similar to classical chess but uses character specific pieces. The players must also engage in Kombat in order to win the chess piece. Puzzle Kombat is a Tetris-esque game where player can choose a character (each with their own unique power) and battle against A.I. or another player. The Konquest mode has been changed drastically as well. It has the tutorial portion featured in the previous Deadly Alliance, but it also offers a sandbox type of gameplay with many opportunities. In the Konquest mode you play as Shujinko on his quest and being inevitably deceived by the Dragon King. The player will also meet several playable and non-playable characters in six different realms, interact with them and finish their objectives. Deception also surprised many gamers by revealing that Liu Kang has returned from the dead…but as a zombie.

The story continues where Deadly Alliance left off. The Earth Realm warriors failed to stop the Deadly Alliance. Some got killed but a few of them survived. Raiden was granted to fight against them by the elder gods. However, Raiden could not stop the combined power of both Quan Chi and Shang Tsung; he was finally defeated after putting up a valiant effort. Shortly after, Shang Tsung turned against Quan Chi for the amulet. However Quan Chi’s power was too much for him and he, too, was defeated. As Quan Chi stood alone—and to his horror--the Dragon King Onaga had arrived with his army. Quan Chi tried to blast projectiles at Onaga but had no effect. Shang Tsung and Raiden also joined Quan Chi to repel him. Realizing that they were no match for Onaga, Raiden focused his power and inflicted a huge blast that destroyed everything inside the palace…including himself. However, Onaga was unaffected, and claimed the amulet his.

In my point of view, Mortal Kombat Deception is the second best game in the franchise after the Mortal Kombat 3 series. The game’s Konquest mode took me hours to complete but was still interesting from start to finish. Also, battling for Koins for unlockables motivated me enough to complete this game 100%. One of the reasons why Sub Zero is my all-time favorite is because of this game. He had skill sets that were just perfect for my tastes. He also had some stances and actions that made it seem like he is too awesome compared to other characters. The biggest surprise I got is that they included Liu Kang in this game as well. There was no news before release or anything inside the game or whatsoever that would provide me clues for Liu Kang’s existence. I got the biggest kick when I spent some Koins on a random tomb in the Krypt and I unlocked Zombie Liu Kang. Deception was also the game where Liu Kang impressed me most with his destructive skill sets.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006)

Armageddon was supposed to be the final episode of the whole Mortal Kombat universe. Released in 2006, every single character included in the entire Mortal Kombat lore appeared in this game. The gameplay didn’t change and they kept the same formula from Deception in this game. However, there were no character specific Fatality moves. Rather, they made it up with a Kreate a Fighter system, where players can apply different killing moves before the timer runs out. The more brutal the Fatality, the more Koins the player earns. The Kreate a Fighter system also gave players the opportunity to make a new character from scratch with their own moves. The Konquest mode makes a return in Armageddon as well, but this time the player has to control a character named Taven on a quest to be the successor of the Defender of Edenia. The two mini-games featured in Deception were removed in favor of a single mini-game called Motor Kombat, which was basically the Mortal Kombat version of Nintendo’s Mario Kart.

As far as MK: Armageddon’s story goes, basically the warriors were becoming too strong for the MK universe to handle. Their powers threaten to destroy the very fabric of MK Universe, resulting in Armageddon. These warriors fought each other in a single battle that would rip the realms apart. Without warning, a pyramid rose up with fire blazing at the tip of the pyramid. Out of curiosity, the fighters battled each other to reach the top. However, Blaze, a creation of elder gods revealed himself to destroy the fighters to stop Armageddon. This was to be the warriors’ last battle, in which their actions will determine the fate of all the realms.

Due to heavy similarities with Deception, I didn’t find the game not interesting enough. The Konquest mode was quite big though, and I liked the inclusion of all the characters in the game. However, the absence of character specific Fatalities really disappointed me. Another thing is that since this was the last Mortal Kombat in the entire storyline, it could have been better if I had got a chance to know what actually happened in the end. The game left me with a lot of mysteries to solve.

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (2008)

This is considered the last MK game by Midway, when the company went bankrupt at this time. It is a spin-off of the franchise that featured popular characters from the MK Universe you know and love as well as the ones hailing from DC Comics. Gameplay-wise, it followed the basic moves assigned to the characters instead of martial art style. Some scratch marks could be visible and even some portion of clothes could be seen torn when the fight went on for long periods of time. Unlike Deception--where players could throw opponents outside the battleground for extra damage--in here the player can also join in the fall and both players can fight against each other on air. The biggest change is the absence of the MK-trademark gore level in the game. MK characters could have 2 Fatalities while the good DC characters had 2 Heroic brutalities, which are finishing moves that do not involve killing the opponent. Due to absence of gore level the game received a T rating; a first in the series.

Since I haven’t played this game, I won’t be able to tell the story that much. In short, after reading about it from various websites, I’ve familiarized myself with the game’s story: Shao Kahn was defeated by Raiden and was set to explode. Similarly in DC World, Superman defeated Darkseid and set him up for the same fate. The explosions do not kill them, but rather, merge them into one: Dark Kahn. The two universes also started to merge and a mysterious force called Kombat Rage also spread within the warriors. The story can be played in two different perspectives depending on which type of character you take: an MK character or a DC character.

In my point of view, the absence of gore level really made the game quite tamed. It really disappointed some hardcore MK fans. However, due to the inclusion of comic book characters in the game, these comic book characters also appealed to a younger audience as well. I think it was a necessary step to tone down the violence.

So that’s it. I just finished this article. Since I was fulfilling my own request by writing this, I am satisfied with what I’ve written. BTTP is a feature blog that focuses on the past games as well as my personal experiences playing them. The elements in BTTP could be random and may include something else other than the typical write-up. And since BTTP is motivated by users’ requests or from my own, I would like to hear more from you; what games should I explore next? I currently have two requests pending from Ron and Tanya, so please feel free to put up requests by commenting below. In the meantime, let me wait for the new MK game to come out (which is now!).

Request fulfilled: Koshai

Syed Rubayyat Akbar, NoobFeed