FATALITY!

Doing: Working on an English paper

Listening: Soundtrack Radio on Last.FM

Feeling: Meh…

Hello and welcome to my very first spectator review! If you were not here for my explanation, I decided to use my space on this wonderful blog to give a new type of review: how fun a game is to watch. To kick this off, I’ve decided to take a look at a more recent game: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.

Truth be told, I’ve only recently started watching people play Mortal Kombat. One of my friends is absolutely in LOVE with these games, and they were interesting. I might talk about other Mortal Kombat games some other time, but this review is focused on the MK/DC crossover that my brother purchased out of curiosity one day. Because c’mon! Everybody wanted to see the Batman vs. Scorpion epic battle! I’m kinda "meh" about that certain fight, but that’s because I’m not fond of Scorpion.

I gotta say, when I started watching Bleebs play the story mode, I laughed. The entire storyline is like a bad fanfiction. Because of a... portal malfunction or something, Darksied and Shao Khan merged and became a new force called Dark Khan.

Yeah, that’s right. Dark Khan. Sounds like something that I would’ve come up with in sixth grade. But because of this new menace, Earthrealm is merging with the DC Universe Earth, and each group thinks of the other as the enemy. Of course, they don’t combine their forces until the very final battle. And I mean VERY FINAL battle. They beat the crap out of each other, until only Raiden and Superman are left. They get to Dark Khan and then they’re all like: "Oh wait! We’re on the same side!" Yeah, great job, you guys. They defeat Dark Khan and the big bad de-merges and becomes Darksied and Shao Khan again. The worlds stop merging, and everything is happy again!

Well, on with the review!

Special Note: If you are a HARDCORE MORTAL KOMBAT FAN, this might not be the game for you. The fighting style and fatalities are significantly less gruesome than most other MK games.

Graphics: The graphics in this game are in the "attempting to look like real people" school of graphics that usually I am not very fond of. Yes, on occasion they look good, but I find them to be generally creepy. For some reason, though, the graphics seem to fit this game, mostly because MK has always been the type to use semi-realistic graphics, even when they were 2D games. Then again, the graphics also have a kind of "comic book" appearance that I like. The mouths move a little funny on the characters, and I can’t get over that, though. (Honestly, watch Liu Kang when he talks. It looks ridiculous!)

Overall, graphics get a 4/5

Storyline/Cutscenes: This is where the game excels over most fighting games in my mind. Yes, the story sounds like it was written by a sixth grade me (which, believe me, is a frightening thought), but it was one of those stories that was bad in thought, but ended up being executed extremely well. The best part in my opinion is that there is a cutscene after EVERY battle in story mode, giving the spectator a reason to want to keep watching people beat each other up for a good forty five minutes. I was watching just to see the next installment of the story! And unlike most story modes where you select one character and there are, like, twenty BILLION different story modes, there are only two, one for MK and one for DC, and you play as almost every character on that side. So it’s very enjoyable because you get cutscenes and a variety of people to watch.

Cutscenes and Story get a 5/5.

Variety: This is where the game starts to lack a bit. Mostly because it’s a fighting game, and all you do in fighting games is… well… fight. Once again, in the story mode you play as almost every character, but they’re still doing the same thing over and over: meet the enemy, beat the crap out of the enemy, move on to the next enemy. The moves themselves are very colorful; my favorite movesets to watch are Shang Tsung and the Green Lantern. The additions of Aerial Kombat, Klose Kombat, and Test Your Might also gives the game a little more variety.

The game gets a 3/5 for variety. Good, but the genre keeps it from being more varied.

Soundtrack: Unfortunately, there were no tracks in this soundtrack that really stood out as being amazing, and it was mostly just boring pieces. Then again, MK is not exactly known for its music. But it really must be an unimpressive soundtrack if I don’t remember ANY songs from it. But that means it wasn’t bad either.

So soundtrack gets a 2/5

Now, let’s look at the overall score:

14/20, so a 70%

Not a bad score, but the lack of an interesting soundtrack really brought it down a few notches. Despite its "meh" score, though, it’s a really fun game to watch being played and if you have the chance to, sit down and give it a view, especially if they’re playing story mode. You won’t be disappointed.