flash-hammer's Full Review: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Subzero for Nintendo 64
Given that within it's three fighting game series entries, the Mortal Kombat series, had chalked up what was possibly one of the most in-depth and enjoyable storylines in a fighting game, creating other offshoots to further enhance the plot was a great idea. Given that the Mortal Kombat universe had so many great characters with awesome back-stories, when Midway announced that it was going to create a series of games, dubbed the Mortal Kombat Mythologies, as single player adventures to give up more of the quickly becoming legendary characters history, fans rejoiced. Would we get to experience firsthand Scorpion's adventures in the Nether-realm? play through the exploits of the original Kung Lao? sample some of Sonya Blade's military missions or play through one of Johnny Cage's movies? well, Midway's plans were initially just to create three games. One based on the Ninja Sub Zero, one based on the mutant Baraka and finally one which told the tales of the series main character Liu Kang. The first was this, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero, which from here on I'll refer to as Sub Zero for the sake of brevity.
Being a huge Mortal Kombat fan, I really loved the look of this game, Sub Zero was one of my favourite characters, and his adventures would also have to take in my out and out favourite character, Scorpion, given that the two are rivals. Sadly, at the time I didn't have either a Sony PlayStation or a Nintendo 64, so this game's release really came and passed for me without much event. It wasn't until years later when, on holiday in Italy, I stumbled accross a copy for the N64 retailing very cheap in the kind of games shop you wish you had local. While the fact that it's the N64 version meant that the game would be missing it's Cut-scenes featuring actors dressed as the characters, and the story would be represented by some stills from them, the game had actually become quite rare since it's release, so I was simply relieved to track down a copy to have in my Mortal Kombat collection.
The game is a single player adventure game, that's basically the bastard child of an 80s Side Scrolling Beat 'em Up, and not of the Double Dragon style, more like Black Belt, where you can't move up and down, the fighting games in the series and any generic adventure game released ever. It's in 2D, and basically feels like the Sub Zero sprite has been taken out of a Mortal Kombat game and put into another type of game. The basic premise is that you run from one end of the screen to another, finding keys, dodging traps and killing enemies, occasionally coming accross a boss character as well. The game also tries to add some spice by taking in the much fabled 'RPG-ELEMENTS' that now must appear in every single 1-Player adventure game ever. In other words, the more you fight, the more 'Experience Points' you gain. When you reach certain amounts, you are granted a new special move, which means you start the game with only punches and kicks, but as things progress, you earn Sub Zero his special moves like the power-slide and freeze. It does raise questions, given that this is a prequel, about why Sub Zero never had some of these moves in the early MK games, but thats really just for the pedantic out there.
Now, while the basic idea of a tarted up 2D Beat 'em Up may not seem bad, hell to me it sounds pretty good, but the game can, at times, be quite horrific to play. As I say, it seems as though Sub Zero has been lifted right out of the last Mortal Kombat game, which at the time was one of the '3' games, and he controls almost exactly the same. That includes pressing 'Up' to jump. Oh Dear. Now, while in a fighting game, up to jump is a necessity, this isn't a fighting game. Sure while having the fighting controls the same as a MK games is a cool idea, and makes the numerous battles with guards and so on so much less repetitive than it should be, trying to time accurate jumps, often while running, using the 'Up' button on the D-Pad is a nightmare. Expect numerous deaths via falling into an abyss.
Further problem is caused by the fact that in fighting games, characters only change direction when their opponent is at the other side of them, pressing the opposite direction of the way they are facing will cause them to walk backwards. As you can imagine, this doesn't quite work in an adventure game. So, instead of maybe coming up with an all new control scheme to try and make the game more playable, Midway opted to put in a turn around button. Yes, you must press a button to perform the act of turning around. This is at least 4 times as cumbersome as it sounds.
You have two energy bars, one is your health, which can be refilled by collecting various power ups, and the other is your ice meter, which gauges how much special move you can use.
And what makes things all the more frustrating, is that every now and again the game gives you a glimmer of hope...something that actually kept the MK fan in me playing. Be it the showdown with Scorpion, who is still human at the time, which can climax with you performing Sub Zero's original fatality, using the same button command, or the general expansion of the Mortal Kombat universe and nice setting up of Mortal Kombat 4 via the game's story, or even some of the fights, most notably the boss encounters, where it simply becomes a MK game...Sub Zero cannot totally be written off, and thats really what makes the thing even more annoying, because it will then go and counterweigh all the goodness with some horrendous decision like making the last boss fight not even a fight and a complete cheat.
The story of the game, set before the first game, is, as I say, really cool. It involves Sub Zero being tricked into allowing the evil Quan Chi access to a mystical amulet that will free the fallen elder god Shinnok to wreak havoc uppon the Earth realm. After the Thunder God, and Earth's best friend, Raiden catches wind of this, he sends Sub Zero on a quest to retrieve the amulet and help save the realm before Shinnok is unleashed and all hell breaks loose. While I'm really not doing a great job of selling it here, it is actually pretty well done, and really does flesh out some elements of the MK story very well. Those who aren't already fans of the series plot will probably be nonplussed by it, but for folks like me it's really cool. Just a shame the game didn't go with it.
Graphically...it's mixed. While the sprites look nice in stills, they aren't animated very well at all. Most of the time only the legs move, which looks really goofy. The backgrounds look ok, and fairly detailed, but they really don't seem to match the sprites at all, making things look overall uneven.
Sonically, it isn't much better. The music keeps up the atmospheric standard of all the prior MK games, but the 'UG' voice effects are pretty shoddy, although that may be down to the N64's horrendous capabilities for such things.
Overall...it's really quite hard to know what to say about Sub Zero. It certainly isn't the worst game ever, but it really does seem to want to try at times, and overall proves nothing more than an excercise in frustration, and possibly one of the worst realisations of a good idea ever, until of course Mortal Kombat Special Forces was released a few years later. Sub Zero holds the 'honour' of being the title that really put the entire MK dynasty on a slippery slope, something that the two newest games, Deadly Alliance and Deception have looked to rectify, but it really is hard to try and cast aside the thought of how Midway cocked this one up so badly. After the sheer panning this title took, plans were immediately scrapped for the Liu Kang and Baraka games, which is a shame, because with a little work, the Mythologies series could have even overtaken the fighting games in terms of greatness. Somehow, Midway actually managed to go one worse the next time they tried to make an adventure game out of Mortal Kombat, with the PlayStation only Special Forces being without a doubt one of the most ridiculously bad games ever. Maybe now that Mortal Kombat has started to regain a respectable name, we may see more of the Mythologies.
And on one last baffling point, why in the hell was Quan Chi on the front of the game, and Sub Zero was nowhere to be seen?
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