Welcome back to 90’s style Kombat, with all the blood and violence that once made your mothers cry, now back on PC for the first time in 15 years to let you see all the fatalities you once loved in full HD. Bringing back the full host of characters and more with the inclusion of the great DLC characters in one Komplete package on Steam for the fantastic starting price of £25.
Though for those of you who are big PC fighter fans, the only big name you have in your mind is Street Fighter, which looks like a tea party compared to Mortal Kombat. This game however brings everything to the table, making it one of the most fully featured fighters on PC right now. If you’ve never played a Mortal Kombat game? It’s Street Fighter, with character design straight out of Tim Burtons imagination, and finishing fatalities to completely humiliate your opponents. Sure the originals look dated today, but that’s fine, this is the perfect start to the series.
So we haven’t seen Mortal Kombat in the lime light for a while, MK Vs DC was an interesting spin, but removing fatalities is basically removing what makes a Mortal Kombat game, a Mortal Kombat game. So we have all the stops and then some pulled with the release of this game, hell we even have the original nightmare master Freddie Kruger. Still we have all the original characters and then some, including all the other DLC characters that were released on the Console’s since the original release in 2011.
So, what’s new? Well we have Story mode, for those who want to go into the character and universe lore a little bit more, as you play through different characters as they work together to try and bring down Shao Khan. This mode is basically a tutorial for each character, for those who have never tried a game before, start here! You can test out all the characters and choose one to your liking. It’s a cheese story, but not Mortal Kombat movie level of cheesy thankfully, it’s a good pass time and with the extra insight to the characters even long term fans will find something here.
Not only that but there is also the Challenge tower with over 300 to complete, not just fighting against different opponents though, it will have you button mashing to break blocks, or testing your skill on attacking one target in a stack or row of them. There are also matches that have set rules to try and trip you up; playing a match without jumping is something that gets me every time. There is also a fatality training mode so you can make sure you embarrass everyone when you attempt the online mode as well, which seems to of been tweaked from the console version, as the net code and lag seems to of been looked at and fixed in a great way. Don’t forget though, there are secret Babalities as well, a great new addition for those who want to inflict extra shame online.
Fatalities have been improved even more than before; if your mom did scream about Fatalities back then, make sure she doesn’t see this. X-ray lets you see your opponents bones break under the force you inflict with fatalities, and the newly added special moves once you fill your special bar up, necks break, organs rip, and groins rupture depending on which character you want to deal out the pain.
Of course there is the good old fashioned Ladder/Arcade mode to pick your character and fight your way to the top to finish off Shao Khan yourself, of course be prepared here. Shao Khan will take a couple more hits than regular to topple, he has increased health and damage which seems a little off putting. Of course he is supposed to be some kind of god, maybe that was the aim, and regardless it makes beating him even sweeter. At this point I realised I had a couple thousand coins, and then I found the new Krypt where you can spend these coins to unlock concept art, music and costumes, and it’s an understatement to say there is a lot here. You’re looking at around 100 coins a match, and it takes upwards of 300k to unlock everything in the Krypt, to say it will keep perfectionists going for a while is an understatement.
All of this lovely extra content, and now you get to play it at full HD with improved graphics, and the care that has gone into this port shows with how well optimized it is, all the characters look great, but more importantly it’s great to see a company show that they still care about the PC market.
Over all Mortal Kombat 9 is a fantastic return to the throne, the content and value for money on offer here is amazing, and anyone who is a fan of the series owes themselves to play this game, it is the definitive Mortal Kombat, and should not be ignored, it’s just a shame they missed a trick with not including the fantastic original theme here. This game gets a 5/5, there is no doubt about what this game offers, and it does it fantastic.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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