Review #808: Mortal Kombat(Vita)

 Vitality!

 Mortal Kombat is, in my opinion, the most important game in the franchise because it's when the series finally got really good. Like REALLY really good. Abandoning most of the silly element from the 3-D era of Mortal Kombat, they went back to their 2-D roots with a sequel reboot, one that was billed as one instead of the Final Fantasy VII Remake switcheroo, that did everything right and put Mortal Kombat back on everyone's radar... for a good reason.

 Let's get the elephant out of the room first, this Mortal Kombat never looked good. The character models were ugly, the faces, the figures, everything. Males, like Liu Kang have the most awful faces and weird looking arms, while the females have bodies with huge shoulders and tiny waists alongside the same giant breasts on every single lady in the cast. Their heads are really weird, like they have too much depth, and Kitana is one of the ugliest characters ever made. And while Netherealms Studios finally started getting good at animating... there are still some very, very ugly animations in here. There are some very good ones, but some truly awful ones.  It was an ugly game, and on Vita it looks like a very sharp Playstation 2 game. I had to check, so I ran Tekken 5 on the PS2 and it looks miles better than this game, from the models' complexity to the textures.... this is not a good looking game. And I can live with that, because the game excels everywhere else. To make up for that we get about 13 new costumes, mostly retro costumes for the Ninjas and female Ninjas, as well as an entire new 200-floor challenge tower as well as new Test your Swipe and Test your Balance minigames that use the Vita's features. Test your Swipe is particularly amazing because it's a Fruit Ninja clone but with heads instead of fruit! Its only shortcoming is the fact that it always plays the same, the same power ups and bombs will show up at whatever time they first showed up, so it ends up being very predictable instead of random, which would've been WAY more fun.

 While the game is missing VS CPU, there's an enormous wealth of content to go through. First, the Story mode. It's a bit gimped by the fact that it's divided into character, so, for instance, you play as Johnnie Cage first for four fights, then as Sonya for four fights, then as Cyrax for four fights, and so on, this means that a character loses most of their relevance after their chapter, and the story only pushes forward from the viewpoint whatever character you are playing as. I also disagree with Sub-Zero's fate, stop doing my boy dirty, yo! It uses cutscenes from the console game, so these look really good... even if it can be a bit jarring when it switches to the Vita graphics. Then you've got the Arcade Ladder mode, as well as a Tag Arcade ladder, because this game also had a pretty neat, if barebones, tag mode! Lastly, you get a 200-floor challenge tower, as well as a new, bonus, 200-floor challenge tower. The new tower puts the spotlight on the DLC characters and on the Vita's features, so expect a lot of tilting, touching, swiping and shaking. I tend to hate everything that isn't a button input, but since this is a bonus, I'm perfectly OK with it. The bonus towers did have a few too many fights against Shao Khan which I didn't really enjoy since they are very unfair, and when you are forced to use him... he feels so clunky and you can't really spam moves like CPU SK can. The new tower also has you playing as Tremor one time, and fighting him another... and it kinda sucks that they didn't turn him into a new bonus fighter for the Vita.

 The game was fantastic back then, and it still does. You have four attack buttons: Left and Right punch, as well as Left and Right Kick, although the game calls them Forward and Back because a character's stance can change. There's also a block button. The game uses a mixture of pre-set attack strings, like Tekken, but also uses input special moves, like Street Fighter, and it works really well. You have a three-tier energy gauge that you can use to pull of EX special moves, with extra damage and/or effects or Kombo breakers to break away from your opponent. You could also use all three tiers to perform a brutal X-Ray moves that remove a huge chunk of health... if they land. That said, on hindsight, I was into this game back when I was really into the FGC and would watch every single tournament of every single game, and not just EVO. Regardless, knowing how competitive tournaments used play, as well has having played the game extensively back in the day, I can clearly see that the game can very easily turn into a keep away game, because most characters have at least one projectile, and they are very easy to spam and not many ways to go through them.

 Mortal Kombat is a pretty decent purchase for the Vita. The graphics took a huge hit, but it plays just as well as its big console counterpart, plus, the exclusive extra content is really nice. Far from the best Fighter of its era, but even all these years later, Mortal Kombat 9 is still a fantastic fighting game that makes up for its shortcomings with a meaty amount of content. It's not a fighting game that you play just for its gameplay, but one that you play for its lore, for its story mode, for all the silly challenges you can find on the Challenge Towers. It's the whole package and then some.
 8.5 out of 10