WARNING: As you can expect, this preview will deal with a lot of blood and gore. If you’re at all squeemish, turn away now!
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FIGHT!
FINISH HIM!
FATALITY!
These are all words that ring true to veteran gamers, and they can only mean one franchise: Mortal Kombat. The series is making its triumphant return to its bloody and gory self next spring, and I was able to sit in on a tech demo given by none other than Ed Boon himself.
This new MK looks like it’s making sure to bring games back to what make the original games so good: crisp, clean 2D fighting with combos galore, the characters that gamers have grown to love, including Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Johnny Cage, and of course, lots and lots of blood.
We saw three matches during this demo: Scorpion vs Sub-Zero in the Living Forest, Sektor vs Reptile in The Pit, and a match from the new Tag Team mode pitting Johnny Cage and Nightwolf against Mileena and Kung Lao (these three matches also successfully showing off every character in the demo). All three matches proved that the developers have made it a point to go back to the original Mortal Kombat games, find what made them successful, and put them in this game.
In the first battle, we were treated to some outrageous combos form both fighters, as well as the new X-Ray move. When the meter at the bottom fills, players can execute this X-Ray move, which is a super attack that happens in slow motion, but allows the player to see the broken bones through an "x-ray" of the damaged area. These moves are especially brutal, as it sheds light on just how detailed these character models are. Not only do they move realistically, but they are built realistically as well, from the inside out. Each character has a full set of vital organs just waiting to be spilled, adding to the realism of the gore. At the end of the first match, we were treated to one of the new, and ridiculously gory, Fatalities, in which Scorpion sliced Sub-Zero in half, then beheaded him, kicked the torso away, and finally sliced the head in half. Overkill to say the least. See for yourself:
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In the second match, we were treated to another mainstay of classic MK: Stage Fatalities. The Pit in the new game is taken right from the original: a long fall into sharp spikes. What makes this fatality so much more gruesome is not just the internal organ that stays at the top of the spike, but the position that the victim takes when hitting the spikes. If, God forbid, this situation actually befell someone, I can’t imagine that person looking much different than Reptile did in our demo. One leg was not struck at all, just hanging like a piece of meat, but the spikes did puncture Reptile in various places, leaving him looking like a pin cushion. If this is the Stage Fatality they showed us, I can only imagine what sick demise awaits the Kombatants from stages in the full game.
The last fight was the Tag Team bout, which was very impressive. The fighters tagged in and out a la Tekken Tag Tournament, and combos could be chained between the two teammates. Unlike Tekken, though, the round did not end until both teammates lost their health bars. At the end of this match, Kung Lao was the sole survivor, and he made Johnny Cage remember it…by throwing his hat behind Cage, which beheaded him on the way back, and once Kung Lao caught his hat again, he sliced Cage in half, just for kicks. If there’s one thing I took out of this demo, there’s plenty of gore to go around. The demo ended with a brief montage of some of the other Fatalities we can expect, including:
-Sektor blowing up an opponent’s torso into four pieces with one missile, then targeting the four pieces and blowing them up as well.
-Mileena beheading her opponent, then eating his face.
-Nightwolf sticking both of his axes into his opponent’s head, ripping the head off, and holding his trophy high.
-My personal favorite, Reptile forcing the opponent’s mouth open, then puking acid into the mouth, dissolving his opponent from the inside out.
Oh, and for one last taste, remember that buzz saw move in the reveal trailer? Here it is in all its bloody glory.
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Mortal Kombat looks to make its triumphant return to gaming, bringing all of its blood and guts with it. Look for it in the Spring of 2011.
