[Editor's note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]
There are certain games and franchises that it's popular for gamers to despise. Final Fantasy VII, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Madden, Dynasty Warriors, etc. On occasion someone will champion these games and a decent dialogue could open but there is one franchise that, no matter who attempts to champion it, continues to be shat on time after time. I speak, of course, Mortal Kombat. It's popular to hate it and hasn't been good since (insert last game this person actually PLAYED in the franchise) and it was always just about the fatalities anyway.
Yet despite this, Mortal Kombat was once shoulder to shoulder with other franchises and remains the ONLY western developed fighting game franchise to have actually become a franchise. How can something so popular be so bad? So I think it's time that I, like Sub-Zero's ending to MK vs DC, take up the mantle of justice. That's right, I'm going to take on both the criticisms as well as why Mortal Kombat is a franchise that deserves at least your begrudging respect in a two part C-blog. Why two parts? Because it's far too in depth of a topic to be limited to one blog.
While the criticisms are far too many to list here, I'll be taking on five of the most common complaints that I've noticed.
"It hasn't been good since ________"
This is, by far, the most common. This statement relies on a certain level of respect for previous iterations in the franchise as high watermarks. The deception within this statement is 100% reliant upon retro goggles. I'm the first to admit MKII is among my favorite of the MK games, but I didn't get there instantly. In fact, unlike other fighting games like Soul Edge, I had to let MK warm up to me. Anyone who says they were instantly hooked by MK is more often lying. Hell, with the arcade machines being balls hard, getting past the third match was a huge hurdle. Most only heard stories of valiance in the face of Goro and Shang Tsung, never experienced them until it hit the home machines. So what, then, made the older ones special?
Simple, you gave them a chance. Every character in MK 1-3 had the same kick and punch range, because they all had the same attacks. This system forced a reliance solely on the special moves to change up your attack pattern. A few characters had additional range with Back+HP (Baraka, Kitana) but all in all, every character only had their super moves to differentiate them. So how, then, were these the better ones? I mean Capcom constantly tries to force new variants into the Shoto characters and with MK 1-3, everyone was more identical than Shoto characters. So the arguement goes than the best MK games were the ones that were the most generic and special move dependant? Okay ... and yet this exact same arguement is lobbied AGAINST every Japanese fighting game that does the same.
"I hate Dial-A-Combo systems"
This one is tricky to react directly against. Why? Because despite being a buzzword used directly against MK and other games, fuck all if anyone has a clear idea of what it is. To some, it's the ability to attack again immediately after the first attack connects. To others it's when the game does additional hits as part of the move, ala Hurrican Kick or Ike's Super Smash. To others still, it's a preset combo sequence planned out in a certain way. So we're going to attack the third mentioned issue.
I could almost see this arguement, if the people making these claims weren't familiar with move buffering or attack timing. Allow me to explain. Ever since Super Street Fighter II, it's been an eastern standard to allow players to start commands on the next attack while the animation of the first attack is going on. The largest offender is, of course, Killer Instinct but eastern examples like Soul Calibur II and Street Fighter IV exists as well. SUPPOSEDLY the difference is that these combos are not set out FOR you but rather happen naturally. Which is exactly why 10-hit combos are explained in detail in the Pause menu in Tekken, because they were natural and not planned in the game code at all ... idiots.
Hate to attack you there but quite honestly, I don't see a difference between Sub-Zero's Ice Sword juggle combo (2 hits) and Law's Rainbow Flip combo (2 hits). Yes, MK has predesigned combo sequences, but that's not all it has by a longshot. You can still get in with a weak attack and follow through with a special attack that can chain into a standard attack. Another example I've heard from a personal friend of mind is the "deception" attack in MK vs. DC like Joker or Lui Kang have. QCB+? did a variety of attacks meant to perplex and confuse your opponent. This move is an unforgivable sin for Mortal Kombat and yet he, favoring Soul Calibur, conveniently forgot this is the exact same command for the Angel Step "deception" attack for Cassandra. Basically the combo system of the 3D Mortal Kombats are rich and while they do have preset sequences, comboing other ways in MK games is fully supported.
"All it ever had was the gore."
This one annoys me the absolute most. It's like saying all Street Fighter has is the fireballs or all BlazBlue has is cat girl going for it. Yes, Mortal Kombat had gore and yes, that was a feature. Hell, it was so comically done, claiming that was the main reason it got popular is even funnier than watching three heads pop off your opponent. If Gore was all MK had going for it, where are the clones that tried the same route? Where is Way of the Warrior now? What about Kasumi Ninja? What of Eternal Champions (which, to be fair, is an awesome game ... especially on Sega CD)? Or how about the ultimate in Gore focused fighting games, Time Killers where players could chop off arms and legs and heads mid match. If gore was all MK needed to reach it's popularity, why didn't BioFreaks and Wargods, two much more violent franchises from Midway themseves, catch on at all? And why is the highest rated MK in a long time rated T?
Simple answer? Because MK was always more than the gore. The Fatalities were the treat for beating your opponent. Well done, here's a cookie ... on fire ... being thrown off a bridge and into a spiked pit. The blood splats and bones flying were, simply put, icing on a fairly in-depth fighting game system. That's why, of all the gorefighter clones, only Weaponlord (look it up) had any kind of depth. The clones, as well as gamers, mistook the gore as the secret ingredient instead of the icing. The evidence of this point is found even within the MK franchise itself. With MK II came Friendships and Babalities, which were more popular among my friends than the fatalities. Mainly because they were MUCH bigger accomplishments and as such, bigger bragging rights.
"All the Ninjas are the same and Palette Swaps suck."
Of the many, many complaints, this one has the most validity. I won't argue that using these palette swaps to boost a roster count seems lazy. So instead I'll pull a Republican tactic and divert attention away from the original target while calling Street Fighter a socialist. Let's turn back the clock to when MK first came out. Not only were fighting games fairly new, but beat'em ups were large and in charge. Even RPGs were coming into their own. But the hardware? Still a TON of storage limitations and creating all new characters were excessively labor intensive. So let's take a franchise like Street Fighter II, the Golden Child. Obviously Street Fighter would never do something as lame as a palette swap but a head swap is an entirely different thing. It wasn't even until Super Street Fighter II that Ken and Ryu finally started becoming different characters -- just in time to introduce yet another Shoto character. But this was happening in other genres as well.
Red Slime was obviously different from Blue Slime in Dragon Quest just as the Blue Octorock in Zelda was a tougher bastard than a Red Octorock could ever hope to be. But this was the 16-bit era, obviously we left this far behind. Not really. In brawlers like Final Fight, you KNEW Poison was a badass THING when she had pink hair. But later on? Green Hair made her tougher. Fact of the matter is hardware limitations forced the palette swap characters but it was the special moves that pushed MK characters away from each other. Sure, Sub-Zero and Scorpion looked the same, but only an idiot would argue that they played the same. While the franchises first foray into the 3D realm would be a disaster, once fighting styles were introduced into the franchise, none of the palette swap characters could ever be mistaken again.
"_________ mode sucks, thus MK _______ sucks."
Like Tekken and Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat is one of the few series to put so much effort into modes in addition to Versus and Arcade. Which is why it's really frustrating that people have begun mistaking the secondary mode for the main mode. Mortal Kombat, to be fair, only started toying with this idea in their fifth iteration. Before that, the experiments were side stories (MK Mythologies, Special Forces). One was OKAY, the other was an unplayable mess.
Despite this, MK was constantly trying to figure out ways to make the single-player important too. One of their first attempts was Konquest Mode. This elaborate RPG style quest was simplistic and yet somehow convoluted, taking you through an entire lifespan of a new character. At the end of this quest, it's revealed that you are responsible for setting the grand evil free. This character would then join the main roster as an old man for use in Arcade and Versus mode. This, at the time, simply wasn't done. Fighting games had a story, yes, but rarely ever explained why X fought Z. While Konquest was contrived, it also set a tone for licensed fighting games. Dragonball did their story mode similar to Konquest, then so did Naruto games, so on and so forth. Konquest wasn't the best MK had to offer, but aside from unlocking characters, it wasn't forced on you either. Arcade mode was ALWAYS there.
Which brings up to the other modes. Puzzle, Kart Racing, Chess ... suddenly fun little side things were being compared to fully fleshed out competitors. This is 100% unique to Mortal Kombat. Their gem puzzle game was compared directly to Puzzle Fighter, Panel De Pon, and Puyo Pop. Kart Racing was being compared to Mario Kart, Jak Extreme Racing, and Crash Nitro Kart. Chess's AI was being compared to the AI in Chessmaster. To let you know how absurd of a scenario this was, nobody EVER docked Rival Schools points in a review just because their Home Run Derby mode wasn't as good as MLB 97 from EA Sports. The reason? It's a fucking retarded thing to do. Of COURSE MK Kart wasn't as good as Mario Kart. You know why? Because MK was a fighting game first, a Kart Racer sometime way down the road. There was more attention paid to the bruising system in MK than the entire Kart Racing mode. It was MEANT as a "haha" thing, not an entire game. Of course Midway couldn't compete with Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo Edition. But you know what? Midway didn't want $40 for that mode by itself. It was a bonus. It was something Midway threw in for fun while mocking the state of the game industry at the time. And if you were one of the people who said MK sucks because of these bonuses, just die in a fire.
Well, there it was, the top five complaints I've noticed and how all of them are beyond retarded. You may disagree. Go ahead, leave a comment. My next Blog post will be all about what MK has done to deserve it's place in the industry, and your hearts.
Contest:
8:00 AM on 08.30.2009
| 
Great read, I look forward to your next write-up.
All I really want to accomplish was getting a few people to laugh at my photochops and MAYBE go "oh yeah... that kind of makes sense."
But thanks all for the read. I know it was a long one.
What most people call dial a combo are those sequences of buttons you need to hit to do a canned combo animation that existed in most of the early MK games (I haven't played anything past MK4). The problem with them is that they don't make any sense. It's just a sequence of random buttons that you have to learn for each character. The combos in Capcom games on the other hand are based on rules that apply to all characters and that you can learn and experiment with to find different combos for different situations. Even the VS games in which you can chain practically any move into any other have rules and limitations within which you can have a lot of variety.
As you say Tekken also have those kinds of combos and that's one of the reasons why I'm not much into it either.
I love you.
For the last two years, Destructoid has hated my love for Mortal Kombat.
With one internet post you've redeemed everything they've ever done.
I was always turned off by the graphics. I hated the digitized look, especially when compared to the sprites of SNK and Capcom. The animation in MK was horrible but II was much better; still not as good as hand drawn sprites. The block button is another dislike I have for the game. When MK was released, most players were already used to the convention of holding away for block. Adding in the button was counterintuitive.
The commands in MK don't make much sense and are awkward. Both Capcom and SNK used movements that were simple and suited for a joystick. Charges and quarter circles are much easier to perform than MK's commands which were choppy. Consider this: in SF, Ryu's hadouken is a quarter circle forward and that's how he performs the move. He crouches, leans forward and releases the fireball. Zangief's spinning piledriver is the a 360 degree spin of the joystick, just like the move performed. On the other hand, Scorpion's line is back, back + punch.
What really killed MK for me was the competition. When I went into an arcade, lots of people were playing SFII and SamSho. There were usually a few people playing MK but they were just into the gore of the game. If I had some serious competition to play against, maybe I would have bothered taking it somewhat seriously. When you factor in the charm of hand-drawn sprites, the larger competition base and the more elegant fighting systems, there was no choice for me.
"Anyone who says they were instantly hooked by MK is more often lying."
It might be hard to take anyone who says this seriously unless you were there with them in the arcades in 1993. MK1 was pretty shallow and lame, but MK2 brought players in with the gorgeous visuals and crisp sound, and kept them there with great gameplay and fierce competition (from other players, not the CPU. If you were only playing against the CPU AI, you were playing one of the worst games ever made).
I was instantly hooked by MK2, and I can assure you, I'm not lying. It still has a strong (and very competitive) following today. (ps3 and kaillera)
"A few characters had additional range with Back+HP (Baraka, Kitana) but all in all, every character only had their super moves to differentiate them."
On the surface, it looks like all the basic moves are the same, but the beauty of it is that you need to dig a bit deeper to get the truth.
ie: Do you know which characters have effective aaRH (anti-air roundhouse kick), and which characters' aaRH are worthless? Which characters are easily punched out of the air with an aaHP? Which characters have sharp or soft jump kicks?
All of these things are essential knowledge in competitive MK2, and that's not even getting into general character strategy involving special moves..
My above comments are all referring to MK2. I won't talk about the other games in the series, because they're all worthless.
If there was any way out of it, I didn't know it back then and I still don't
know it now.
In other news, T6:BR Asuka's 1+4 doesn't hit grounded anymore! Fuck!
The things they had going for them were the konquest mode, which was pretty fun in Armageddon. I think the different fighting styles for each character were decent, but I just don't think it holds up.
And those game modes were related to those things because they were bastardized versions of them. Those game modes could have used a little more depth, it just came off that they through a bunch of shit in there just to have it there, but it was all pretty lacking.
@nilcam
The funny part with me, in the neighborhood I grew up in I came across way more MK cabinets/competition than we had SF cabinets/competition. I remember every day before school there was a cabinet in one of the stores and there were always a group of kids fighting each other on the UMK3 Machine. It was great.
I've never been a Mortal Kombat fan, but the article was still worth reading just for that tidbit.
I really hope you'll have your next post out soon.
"f*** all if anyone has a clear idea of what it is" - no, most players know exactly what dial a combos are. Instead of being a series of normal moves being executed one after another, you just start dialing a phone number after the first hit connects. A combo in MK3 is exactly like dialing a phone number on your phone, and those attacks only exist within the pre-programmed combo.
"SUPPOSEDLY the difference is that these combos are not set out FOR you but rather happen naturally. Which is exactly why 10-hit combos are explained in detail in the Pause menu in Tekken, because they were natural and not planned in the game code at all ... idiots."
Um... you have it completely backwards! The complaint is that they ARE set out for you and DO NOT happen naturally. The complaint that they ARE preprogrammed into the game. You can't discover it or invent your own, they are telling you "the combo is 12343332424" and that's all there is to it. And by the way, none of the series inside of it (such as 3332424) will be a combo by themselves.
The other four complaints (palette swaps and so on) have nothing to do with the gameplay and are all very weak excuses to complain. The gameplay is all that matters.
Chess is a great game, but half of the video game crowd would probably complain about the lack of detail on the characters and the total lack of animations. (The Wii players would probably love that you get to interact with it using your hands though.)
Armageddon was slightly disappointing because they cut out a lot of backgrounds from Deception for no reason, and they sliced and diced everyone's styles so they could redistribute the moves to characters who weren't in deception or deadly alliance.
Boon has hinted strongly that something MKSM related is coming down the pipe, perhaps even in MK9 so it has a chance to be another great game.
Really good article though, well written!
I haven't put many hours into MK over the years but like a lot of other American kids I grew up with a fascination for MK and it's bloodlust. My cousins and I would experiment with fatalities for hours and hours. I remember when I had a Genesis and they all had SNES' and they were so pissed mine had blood and theirs didn't. Haha, great times.
MK has always held a special place in my heart despite the hate and since I'm not nearly knowledgable enough to defend the franchise I love I'm glad there are people like you doing it! Thank you!
That said, they are simply a different animal from Capcom fighters, the same way that SNK fighters are different and Arksys fighters are different. I'd say the main "hate" comes from the aesthetics, but the gameplay complaints are valid, too, as being proficient in MK is NOTHING like being proficient in SF. It all breaks down to differing preferences, of course.
I happen to love the MK mythology and characters. The last 4 3D games have been great fun, and I enjoy all the extra's. I look forward to reading the next article.
I personally have played every Mortal Kombat since the first, and I've managed to find enjoyment in all of them. I still like that Kart Kombat in Armageddon almost more than the game iteself.
I personally have played every Mortal Kombat since the first, and I've managed to find enjoyment in all of them. I still like that Kart Kombat in Armageddon almost more than the game itself.
Even though the normal moves were the same (uppercut, sweep, etc) they all had different ranges and priorities. Very few people notice that.
Good first blog, keep it up!
And MK really has done an exceptional job at trying to innovate with single-player in fighting games. Armageddon had that action-adventure game that was decent. Just gave a justification for fighting the computer and added context to it all.
MK really is a good fighting series. But seriously, Street Fighter is better. Should've brought up how stiff MK feels.
And one last thing. Street Fighter and Tekken are staples of Evo tourneys. When was the last time you saw a MK game in a major tourney???
You haven't. And there is a reason for that.
For the record, it is a fact that the 3D MK games have been bad fighting games. Not to say you can't have fun with them (I enjoy MK:Armageddon now and then), but as far as fighting games goes they are not good. And the reason has little to do with asinine things like color swaps, extra modes, or even dial-a-combos.
And please don't mention ten-strings. The fact that you even mentioned them presumptively discredits you.
@WastedYears
UMKIII is a tourney worthy-game. It's just old-as-hell and has had to bear the stigma of everything that MK has ended up becoming. MKII is one of the highest downloads on the PSN right now. If UMKIII was available, I would guarantee that it would be up there with MVC2 in terms of downloads. Would it be brought to Evo? Probably not, but that has more to do with player support than quality. Tekken 4 was a horrible game, but it still (I think) went to Evo and all that during it's time.
WarGods and Biofreaks came out YEARS after gamers decided they wanted gameplay, not blood and gore.
Now, SFIV, on the other hand, teaches you how to chain moves together, but you'll gradually realize that you can substitute a standing punch with a standing kick within some combos, whereas certain special attacks can easily replace others within combos to allow for slightly different effects. None of the older MK games had that, although they did, thankfully, have juggles.
Coming back to Deception, you claim that the story mode wasn't supposed to be the main feature. Sure there was arcade mode, but in order to get a full roster, you had to play through the story mode at least once to unlock a few characters.
This however you used as a negative point. I however see it as one of Deceptions best qualities. By including the story mode, even though it was quite poor in some aspects, it really changed the whole "A is fighting B because of C" story that all other major fighters still use today, while not compromising the fighting gameplay mechanics. It gave us a reason to care for characters (kinda) and not just choose characters based on their movesets. I'm decent with Kobra but couldn't give two fucks about him. I much prefer Shujinko but I can't use him for shit. The Konquest mode helped achieve that.
Anywho... perhaps I respond to some feedback.
I'm sorry I didn't get to some peoples complaint points. As I said, I took on the ones I hear about the most. Personally, I too feel the animations are really stiff and obviously clip driven with no sense of transitions. But this was something no one else I knew complained about. In fact, when I had it in a preview of this article I was working on, my friend jokingly called me an "art fag." So it got chopped. Good thing too because the defense was rather week and essentially amounted to "transitional animations are hard... why do you think they were JUST RECENTLY added to EA sports?" Thanks a weak sauce defense no matter how you look at it.
Dial-A-Combo was a hard issue to tackle just because it was hard nailing down just what that meant. And considering two other versions have shown up in the comments, I consider that some level of vindication. Although it means I have tackled the wrong version of dial-a-combo for most.
UMK3 was a hard one for me to talk about just because I didn't get into it at all. Apparently I missed out and will have to plug in my Saturn to see what I was missing. I didn't care much for the run. BUT I've been having cravings recently so maybe I'll give UMK3 a fresh look in a new light.
@hood_954
I see where you're coming from but to me it felt half realized. Invisible walls and talking to Thug A and having to beat him with a poison handicap. In other words, it FELT to me like a better visual representation of Soul Calibur's quest mode from a long time ago. While it was great, it was also flawed and I would have loved to have seen them continue this concept in the current generation. Although to be fair, MK vs DCs story mode is by far my favorite out of any fighting game I ever played. They even find a way to narratively explain the rage meter...
All in all, thanks everyone for the feedback. This helps me understand where I'm right and where I'm wrong. More importantly, it encourages me to improve.