Mortal Review 2 (Corny title)Welcome to my review for the famous Mortal Kombat. This'll be a rather interesting review. I mean, it's for an M-rated game. I've actually never done this before. Before I start, if you're willing to check out this game, be warned, there's blood and gore...and a lot of it. We all know how Mortal Kombat became famous. Mortal Kombat became famous for its blood and gore, and most importantly, the fatalities. When Mortal Kombat 1 was released in the early 90's, Sub-Zero's "Spine Rip" move sparked a lot of controversy, as well as Kano's heart rip. Mortal Kombat even spawned the pointless rating system, the ESRB. That's right, we're digging deep into the reason you couldn't play Resident Evil in your childhood. Mortal Kombat was without a doubt the bane of every parent's nightmare. They believed their children would become bullies or criminals, as if ripping someone's head off is physically possible. But now, we're focusing on the sequel that was better in every way, more violent, more gruesome, Mortal Kombat 2. Let's dig in!
Graphics: 9/10
You've probably heard of Mortal Kombat 9, released in 2011. That game had excellent graphics, but this is a different story. Mortal Kombat was released back when video games were family friendly. If this game was released on the Atari or NES, or any other 8-bit system or just had bad graphics in general, that's a different story. But when Mortal Kombat 2 has graphics such as this, it's no wonder parents were biting their nails when they took their children to the arcades. Mortal Kombat utilized digital graphics. Every character is a real person doing the moves. Cool, huh? This makes the characters more realistic. The blood and gore in this game is great, but the blood looks a bit like ketchup. It was 1994, but back then, the blood in this game was like nothing ever witnessed. The gore is actually pretty realistic for Super Nintendo standards. The characters have smooth textures, as well as the stages themselves. The stages had very smooth textures, and everything was distinguishable. This game was ported to many other consoles, some which upgraded the graphics, like the port on the Sega 32X having smoother and brighter graphics. Overall, the Mortal Kombat 2 graphics are amazing, so this is why I'm scoring this category with a nine.
Sound: 8/10
I'm just gonna put it out there that Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 are the two Super Nintendo games with the best sound. Let's start with the music. I honestly couldn't care for the music. It can be difficult to hear, and it isn't exactly up-beat. It's actually kind of dark and uninteresting. However, that's not all. Let's jump to the narration. At the beginning and ends of fights, and occasionally in the middle, you'll hear a voice that's identical to the narrator of every PG-13 and R rated movie trailer. The character who narrates is Shao Kahn, the main villain, and I have to say, it sounds excellent for the Super Nintendo. You can actually hear the voice clearly. Shao Kahn surely does have a very sexy voice indeed. His laughing can catch you by surprise, and the narrating sounds top notch, especially when he says, "Fight!" and "Flawless victory" and "Fatality!". Now let's start with the other voice acting. Occasionally, the face of Dan Forden, one of the Mortal Kombat developers who worked for Midway, will pop up at the bottom right corner. He would say, "Toasty!". When he says it, it actually opened my eyes. First of all, it sounds hilarious, and also the compression sounds amazing, just as good as Shao Kahn's narrating. Next, there's the cries the characters let out when getting beat up. They can be really cheesy, especially the one you here when someone is falling into the Pit, but it still sounds top notch for a Super Nintendo game. All the other sound effects, like the gong and the attacks are on key and match what's going on. A lot of them can be cartoony, which is funny considering how dark this game is. The sound in this game opened my eyes even further than the game itself, and this is the only Super Nintendo game that's made me feel this way about the sound.
Playability: 9/10
Just like a lot of tournament fighters such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Super Smash Brothers, and more, this certainly is an addicting tournament fighter. One thing that makes this one more addicting than others is the smooth movement and the gore and fatalities. It's fun trying new characters and trying out their fatalities. Everything else about this game makes it very addicting, but something about the blood and gore captures a lot of Mortal Kombat fans. If you have a buddy, you can play 2-player mode of which you face each other. Sometimes, it can be addicting knocking them to their doom with spikes, turning them into a baby, ripping body parts off, doing a friendship, burning them, and much much more. People wanna see that stuff. It's surprising to be in a Super Nintendo game, but it's a number one reason of why Mortal Kombat can be very addicting. There's always the factor of the graphics, sound, etc, but the blood and gore seem to attract many people. This tied in with the tournament fighting genre like Street Fighter, can make a really addicting game. Overall, I think Mortal Kombat can be a rather addicting game. It's difficulty, sound, and graphics will lure you in and convince you to keep playing. Mortal Kombat makes a great tournament fighter, but not really a beat-em-up game (Ahem, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero). Overall, Mortal Kombat 2 is a very illusive game.
Story: 7/10
Mortal Kombat has a very convoluted story, despite it being a beat-em-up game. The story takes place thousands of years ago (Even though Hollywood somehow exists). War has begun in the Earth realm. To settle the war, a bunch of mortals and immortals have one-on-one martial arts fights. A very deceptive way to settle a war, but anyways, the leader of the tournament is Shao Kahn. The goal is to defeat Shang Tsung, the shape-shifting demon, then to face Shao Kahn himself to end the war. What I like about the story is that each character has a back-story. It makes the story more interesting, but I only rated the story a seven because it just ends up as one of those "there's an evil guy, go beat up a bunch of people to reach him" cliche. And one thing that doesn't make sense is that there's a couple of immortal characters in "Mortal Kombat." Kintaro is an immortal tiger/horse beast, and Raiden is a literal god. In fact, he's the god of thunder, yet he somehow sheds blood. Other than that, it's all mortal. You have an actor named Johnny Cage from Hollywood who somehow got involved into an ancient martial arts tournament, a hell-spawn ninja, three female ninjas, two other ninjas, a Chinese martial arts fighter (Of course), I could go on. There's still a lot of things needed to be explained in the plot like how Johnny Cage got involved in the plot and how Sonya, who apparently is a human from another realm, is even a human, who actually wants to defend Earth. Overall, the story is good, but could use a bit of work in my opinion.
Depth: 6/10
Mortal Kombat doesn't offer a ton, because it is one of the first tournament fighters out there, but this game still offers a decent amount. Let's start with the 2-player mode. You can fight your friend, which I would not be able to live without. Mortal Kombat is definitely a more enjoyable experience with a friend. You can fight an unlimited amount of rounds, and it even keeps track of how many fights you've fought. Now, let's cover the hidden characters. There's more of them in later games, and some of them become regular playable characters, but you can fight hidden characters. They will give you hints rarely on how to reach them. There's Smoke, the ninja that spouts smoke from his mask, Noob Saibot, a plain black version of Scorpion (The name referencing the last names of the two main developers of the game. Read them backwards. The two main developers had the two last names of Boon and Tobias), and finally there's Jade, the female ninja in green. It can be tricky to reach these guys. For an example, wanna fight Noob? Play through 50 matches of 2-player mode continuously (25 in Sega Genesis version). Wanna fight Smoke? Do a specific button combination at a specific stage, at a specific time.
Let's move on to the playable characters. Mortal Kombat 2 offers more characters than its predecessor. The playable characters are Liu Kang the Chinese martial arts fighter, Kung Lao the magician/bounty hunter, Johnny Cage the actor, Reptile the human/reptile ninja, Sub-Zero the ice ninja, Shang Tsung the shape-shifting demon, Kitana the female ninja, Jax the...fighter, Mileena the Kitana rip-off, Baraka the swamp monster, and Raiden the god of thunder. Every character has their own unique moves. It's fun to experiment with all the characters too. The hidden three can also be played as if defeated. Next, there is the famous fatalities. When one of the fighters is defeated twice (one fight is two rounds like Street Fighter), the fighter gets dizzy. Shao Kahn says, "FINISH HIM/HER." The other fighter must finish the dizzy one off. You can be lame and punch him or her or something or you can do a fatality. To do a specific fatality, you need to do a specific button combination. Special moves have their own button combinations too, but fatalities only work at those "FINISH HIM/HER" moments. Every character has their own unique fatalities. There are also stage fatalities, which work on specific stages. Maybe it's knocking the opponent into spikes. There is a LOT of fatalities in this game, and the number of total fatalities in the franchise is incomprehensible. Something new that mortal Kombat 2 added are Friendships and Babalities. They're just like fatalities; finishing moves, but different. These were added as a joke of how much violence there is in Mortal Kombat. When a Babality is done, the victim turns into a baby. With Friendships, the one doing the Friendship does something that would be a sign of friendship. Shang Tsung makes a rainbow with his hands, Baraka gives the victim a present, Johnny Cage signs an autograph, Scorpion offers a Scorpion doll, etc. A lot of the friendships can be very embarrassing, and they embarrass you more than you embarrass the opponent, but some of the Friendships are actually well thought out.
In this game, you must fight everybody. You win, you move on to the next opponent at the next stage. There's only three stages of which the stage fatalities can be used, which is a real disappointment, really, because the stage fatalities are actually pretty good. In between, there can be rare hidden mini-games. In fact, in Mortal Kombat 1, you can play...get ready for this...Pong. No crap. The mini-games are a nice edition. They're not as useless as the mini-games in Final Fantasy VII, but they're actually fun and provide entertainment. What's sad is that they're so rare. I'd be surprised if you could unlock one. A few bonuses in this game are the ability to control whether there's blood in the game or not. Think of it was parental controls...that any child could easily undo. You also can change the controls, as if the control configuration in the Retro Game Room wasn't enough for you. You can also edit the CPU difficulty and the sound setting. A lot of the options are pointless really, but it's...something that's there, right? If you beat the game, you can actually play as the bosses like Shao Kahn, Kintaro, and even Goro. However, if you play as one of these characters, there's no way you can possibly lose, so it's a game breaker.
There's not really much more to explain about this game. I think I've covered all there is to know about the depth of the game. This game does offer a decent amount for an early tournament fighter, and that's an advantage to a lot of other fighting games from the time this game was made.
Difficulty: 6/10
This game is honestly not that difficult for many reasons. Let's start with the fact that there's a lot of moves in this game you can just spam the hell out of. There's also the option to edit the difficulty of the CPU's, so all of these things make this game kinda easy. However, if you play this game legitimately, it can actually be pretty tough. As you progress, the CPU's get stronger. You may think you can just spam your favorite moves, but there's a point where they can dodge those moves. The end of the game is definitely where the game gets difficult. If you want an easy fighting game, I'd recommend something else like Street Fighter. If you play this game right, it can be pretty easy. It's hard to do a perfect run of this game without cheating or spamming a move a few times, or using a cheat code. But I wouldn't say this game is too difficult like I Wanna Be The Guy or trying to play Street Fighter Alpha 3 without doing a Hadouken. Mortal Kombat 2 is actually the easiest of the Super Nintendo trilogy, but don't let your guard down, there's still challenge to come in this game.
Overall: 8.9/10
Being fair, Mortal Kombat 2 is one of my favorite fighting games ever. Everything about this game seems to be just great. The blood, violence, graphics, sound, character,s I don't know why, but Mortal Kombat is the only fighting game other than Super Smash Brothers that made me feel this way. Mortal Kombat 2 seems to have that spark of a genius. I highly recommend you at least try this game, even though you've most likely not even read this review. But this game is a pure classic. The only thing I hate about this game is how the characters can be unoriginal. Seven ninjas, four identical female ninjas, four cops, a Bruce Lee rip-off, three identical cyborgs, and an Asian Thor (Raiden). But this game has certainly made my list of favorite video games.
Graphics
9 Sound
8 Addictive
9 Depth
6 Story
7 Difficulty
6
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