YOU ARE WEAK
Written: Sep 21 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stages, Music,Atmosphere
Cons: Yucky Combo System, running out of steam, character ommissions/inclusions, a run button?
The Bottom Line: While MK3 isn't the worst game ever, the same console has Ultimate MK3, and it isn't that great a game anyway
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: Mortal Kombat 3 for Sega Genesis |
When the second Mortal Kombat was such a hit, for good reason, there was a natural buzz surrounding the release of Mortal Kombat 3. I even remember wanting it so much, that I traded in three games to get it half price. The majority of players were a little disapointed with the game. 2 had been an absolute masterpiece, and while 3 wasn't a disaster, it certainly wasn't up to the standard set by the previous installment.
The game is, as with the two previous installments, a one-on-one fighting game where the idea is to beat your opponent until their energy bar is empty twice out of 3 rounds using basic attacks or special moves. MK is of course famous for its 'alitites'. When you defeat your opponent for good, they are still left standing in a daze and "Finish Him/Her!" appears on the screen. At this point, you are prompted to enter a button combination to perform a spectacular and gory finishing move, or 'Fatality'. MK2 added Friendships, where you spared the life and performed a party trick for your opponent, and babalites, where you turned them into a baby. While the latter two were stupid, as well as Fatalitys they have made it into MK3. New additions to this are Mercy and Animality. Mercy gives your fallen enemy a little life back, and Animality turns your fighter into some variety of creature to perform the killing blow. The catch here is that Animalitys can only be performed after a Mercy.
MK3 also saw a pretty drastic change to the MK engine. Fighters now unleashed Combos at a rapid rate, and they were performed very easily be simply pressing the attack buttons in the correct order, with the occasional direction thrown in. The fact that most of these could be easily button mashed really miffed some MK veterans, and quite rightly I would say. I would find it quite insulting had I put in a lot of time learning special moves and combos, only to have the game's makers laugh at you by putting in devastating moves, the combos can't be broken by the way, which are activated via simple button mashing. The Animalitys, while cool sounding on paper, in execution were pretty rubbish. Not only did you have to perform the difficult Mercy, but then hit the opponent once or twice and input another difficult move? it wouldn't be so bad if the pay-off wasn't so underwhelming. The animals are more like Skeletons with a primary colour glow around them. Its hard to describe but they look stupid.
The gameplay was just so disapointing after the perfection that was 2 that I never could enjoy the game the way I did the first two titles.
The collision detection is decent enough, but far from perfect. Expect sweeps to connect that shouldn't and such.
The story for this entry is that Shao Kahn apparently foresaw his men getting whupped by the Earth Realm a while ago, because a plan he put into effect 1000 years ago is about to come to fruitition. When he took over Edenia, Kitana's home, he took her mother, Queen Sindel as his unwilling bride. When she died, he enacted a spell in which she would not only be reincarnated, loyal to him, but would possess the power to open up the gate between Outworld and the Earth realm. Aided by his sorcerer buddy Shang Tsung, Sindel has been awoken and the majority of the Earth's population has seen their souls stolen by Shao Kahn and his death squads and the Earth is beggining to resemble the Outworld.
Among the casualties is Johnny Cage, and Raiden is absent due to the Outworld gods taking power over Earth. The world's fate once again falls into the hands of Liu Kang, reigning champion of Mortal Kombat, Sonya Blade the special forces officer who was captured by Kahn while chasing a foe, but was freed at the end of the second game, Jax her powerhouse of a partner, who has now seen fit to equip himself with metal arms, Kano, their arch enemy, who was also captured by Kahn, but conviced him that he could help in the invasion of Earth, Sub Zero, now on the run from his clan after rejecting their plans to convert all of their Ninja to Cyborgs, he now fights unmasked, Sektor a robot of Sub Zero's clan, out to kill him, Cyrax, another Lin Kuie clan Ninja Cyborg, Kung Lao, the ancient warrior and relative of Liu Kang's, Sindel, Kahn's brainwashed Queen, Sheeva a four-armed Shokan female, disgruntled that Kahn has snubbed her in favour of a Centaur, she is Sindel's bodyguard, Shang Tsung, the ever scheming wizard,Kabal, a former ally of Kano who is now a nomad who only lives via complicated breathing aparatus, Stryker, a Los Angeles riot Cop who finds himself caught up in the madness and Nightwolf, a native American chief whose tribe only survived the slaughter because they are on sacred land. Also hidden in the game is the now Cyborg Smoke.
When the last one standing is clear, they will then have to take on Shao Kahn's Centaurian bodyguard Motaro, before battling the Overlord himself.
All is looking good on the story front, while slightly miffed that they done away with it actually being a fighting tournament, the story is still solid enough to make me forgive it.
Im slightly less forgiving about the character choices though. The main offenders being the omissions of Scorpion and Johnny Cage, especially when a berk like Stryker made the cut. This was slightly remedied in the upgrade that was Ultimate MK3, where Scorpion was added, but that game had it's own issues, which I will cover when I get round to reviewing it.
Graphically, the game is actually a step backwards from the second title in terms of the character sprites. Not only are they a lot smaller than their counterparts in the previous game, but the digitised actors are now a lot more grainy and fuzzy looking. They fall somewhere in between how the characters look in the first two games. Better than the first game, but not as good as the second.
The game now sports a 'Square off' style screen for multiplayer fights, where we see large pictures of the two fighters squaring off. These are superb looking, especially the one of Sonya, as now played by the dreamy Kerri Hoskins.
The backgrounds, however, are not only very well designed, but also very well realised. You have to love the awesome stages like the Soul Chamber, complete with swirling soul pillar, and a lot of the stages are multi-stages. For instance, when fighting in the Subway, if you connect with an uppercut, the battle takes to the street above. This is a pretty nice touch, that while hardly a game-making feature, is still enough to make you smile if you plant an uppercut on a friend in a 2-Player battle to send them through the roof.
Sound in the game is pretty good. The music is, for the most part, cool and atmospheric, and suits the fighting while the end of the world is happening theme beatifully. Of course you get the odd terrible track, such as the one which features the grunts of the female fighters remixed into a sort of morbid dance track is diabolically silly.
The voices themselves are pretty well captured, with the most amusing being one of Sonya's battle cries, which sounds a lot like she shouts "F**K".
Controls work very closely to how the last two games worked on the console.
On the 6-Button Controler, they look like this:
X:High Punch
A:Low Punch
B:Block
Y:Run
Z:High Kick
C:Low Kick
and on the 3-Button, I really have no idea how it works, A somehow controls both High and Low punch, B is block, C is both kicks and start is run. Naturally, unless you have some variety of Six-Button controler, this game isn't even worth thinking about.
When using the 6-Button, which I do, I really don't have all that many control complaints. As with all MK games, having to press a button to block in a 2D game is scandalous, and I doubt I will ever truly get used to it, and the Run button adds confusion to matters. Why didn't Midway just use double-tapping forward? having to press a button to run is a waste of controller space.
The controls do respond fairly well however, which is always a nice.
On the whole, Mortal Kombat 3 was just a disapointment. You cannot imagine how angry I was when I first played it, and discovered my favourite character, nay, two of my favourite characters, and staples of the series had been axed for a chubby cop and the now incredibly New Romantic looking Shang Tsung.
Motaro was also an enormous let down. Goro and Kintaro had often been tougher than the final boss, and here we have a centaur that is incredibly easy to beat, just keep jump kicking him.
The game actually harks back to my views on the original game's Sega port, in that it has gameplay that really isn't very good, but it slightly compensates with a great atmosphere, brilliantly designed stages and spot on music. When I think about it, the gameplay here is slightly better than in the first game, but I still don't feel it deserves any higher a score.
Three stars and a No is all regular MK3 is going to get from me. It is decidedly average, and given that there is an update available for the console, there really is no reason that anyone should want regular MK3 for the Sega. It's marks are mostly made up by the awesome stages and music, but the game was never going to be able to follow in the footsteps of the second installment when all Midway could come up with was Animalitys and a horrible combo system.
Even if you are a fan of the MK series, there really isn't any reason to track down this port of MK3. The console sports a version of the upgrade, which has everything from this game, with the odd exception of Shiva, and more, and is generally worth your money more than this. It isn't the worst fighting game ever, or even the worst fighting game for the genesis, but it certainly isn't very good either.
In case you were wondering, the three games were Spiderman and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, Galaxy Force 2 and King of the Monsters, was it worth it? you decide.
Related Reviews
Games
Mortal Kombat for Sega Genesis
Mortal Kombat for Super Nintendo
Mortal Kombat 2 for Super Nintendo
Mortal Kombat 2 for Sega Genesis
Movies
Mortal Kombat
Recommended:
No
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flash-hammer
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