Review: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Midway Games, Midway Amusement Games
Available for Playstation 3 & Xbox 360

From the moment Midway announced their plans to develop the strange fighting game mash up, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, I have been watching the game progress with curiosity and some fear as this seemed like a possible recipe for disaster. When any two franchises are brought together, one can always expect the results to be either very good like in the case of the Lego Star Wars or very bad like RoboCop versus The Terminator, and MK vs. DC had many of us wondering what Midway was planning with this concept. Luckily for them, this game has some really cool concepts and managed to fly even without the traditional fatalities system.

In Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the brutal combatants of the Mortal Kombat invade Metropolis and the rest of the DC Universe after Raiden destroys Kahn by blasting him through a portal and at the same time on Earth, Superman defeats Darkseid by blasting the super villain with his heat vision as he enters a teleportation device. These acts do not destroy either of them of the villains, but merges them into an entity known as Dark Kahn, and this causes the DC Universe and Mortal Kombat universes to merge.
The game's Story Mode recounts this crossover invasion from both the DC and Mortal Kombat perspectives, as the DC heroes suspect another Darkseid plot and their Earthrealm counterparts fear another Outworld assault. Infecting both sides is the mysterious rage energy that overwhelms their senses, causing them to see friends as enemies and supercharging their fighting abilities.


In addition to the Story mode, the game also offers a more traditional Arcade Mode featuring the standard Mortal Kombat 10-fight contest from years past. Players can chose to play Mortal Kombat only, DC only and mixed fights, but in either case the ultimate villain is Dark Kahn.

The game features 20 combatants, 10 from each universe, with two unlockable characters. The Mortal Kombat side features Scorpion, Subzero, Sonya, Shang Tsung, Kitana, Jax, Liu Kang, Raiden, Kano and Baraka, while DC is represented by the Joker, Catwoman, the Flash, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, Lex Luther, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern. The unlockables are Darkseid for the DC side and Shao Kahn for Mortal Kombat.

While the Mortal Kombat characters were able to slide through this series with their fatality finishing moves still intact, the DC heroes were given a series of brutality moves which keep with their “Thou shall not kill” attitudes. Keep in mind though that this is a teen rated game so don’t expect to play your favourite MK character with the idea that their finishing moves are going to end in glorious blood and gore because that doesn’t happen. Jax still crushes a skull or two with his big mechanical arms, but their heads do remain intact as they fall to the ground.


The game has online and local versus play which held up pretty well on the Playstation network. The online play had you choosing from a list of 100 people in the a chat room to compete against. You could issue a challenge or wait for someone to issue you one and then either accept, decline or ignore the challenge. The chat room allowed for voice or text chat amongst the other players and you could play against friends but you would have to choose the room to play in before you logged online. Apparently the Xbox 360 version had better player and ranked match system for their online play for those gamers with a choice between the two systems.

While each character’s moves were pretty easy to pick up after a couple hours spent practicing, I found it especially annoying that the finishing moves were only available online and not found anywhere in the game manual or in the in game instructions. Though most people have the internet nowadays, it still seems pretty silly of the developers to assume that all players will be able to track down the control sequence online to pull off the finishing moves for each character. Would it have killed them to publish it in the manual?

Being that I haven’t play a Mortal Kombat game since the third instalment came out in the arcades way back in the day, I was actually a little giddy to finally sit back down with the franchise. The graphics are so different from the video screen shots used on the original Mortal Kombat game and the environments though still so terrifying, have come along way from the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo’s 16 bit screens. Each character and environment reflected the energy of the storyline and had that spectacular comic book feel. I especially loved some of the arenas like Wonder Woman’s Themyscira and Shang Tsung’s Island that had the two worlds actually merging into one as the two combatants fought. Brilliant.


Finally the audio is always fantastic in the Mortal Kombat games with appropriately intense music and the loud cracks of hand-to-hand combat. Moves like uppercuts and ground slams are accompanied by some great, deep bass that will shake your surroundings if you're appropriately equipped. While there's plenty of great new sound, there's also some old stuff like Scorpion's "get over here” and the announcer’s “Fight” & “Flawless Victory” which both sound like they are straight out of the old games.

While I was unsure at first about this weird, little mash up of the Mortal Kombat series, I am happy to say that my favourite fighting franchise is still as wonderful as ever. Though my fatalities may not be as brutal as I want them to be and my Joker isn’t voiced by Mark Hamill, I can push those tiny flaws aside to enjoy the fact that Mortal Kombat is still an amazing fighting game which great characters, wicked combos and a good storyline to finish it all off. Fans of the series will be happy with what Midway had done to renew the series and hopefully some DC fans will come over to embrace the series as well.

Rating 8 out of 10
Buy it!

Videogame Art from Maria Sunderland

I love to feature artists on my site and a while back I promised to post about an artist known as Maria Sunderland from Deviant Art.

Her real name is Jessika and she lives in Ottawa, Canada. She became interested in the arts when she was 13-years-old and is a huge fan of Sailor Moon and Sonic the Hedgehog. Jessika has a college degree in Fine Arts and a bachelor's degree in Arts and Design. Her art style tends to be more comic book and though she started her artwork as a hobby, she now takes orders for commissioned pieces.
Jessika has done several videogame fan art pieces for BioShock, Silent Hill, Kingdom Hearts, Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil. I've posted a few of my favorite pieces from her Deviant Art page here, but please check out the whole gallery to see all her work and also check out her webcomic, Drunk Duck.

Honorable Mentions of 2008

Game with Best Character Name - Mirror's Edge (Faith)
Any game with a character that shares the same name as me has to be mentioned. Best of all, I didn't even have to bride anyone at EA or DICE to get a character named Faith.

Best Indie Title - World of Goo
Getting to spend hours making structures with little balls of goo that make cute little noises is pure ecstasy to me and I'm happy to see this little title make it big.

Best Mashup Title - Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
I think we all laughed our butts off when this game was announced but despite a lack of fatalities this game is pretty cool to play. I've already finished the DC storyline and plan to tack the MK side soon.

Best New Game Character in Need of Merchandising - Sackboy (LittleBigPlanet)
This character screams make a plushie out of me and while we're on the topic, how about a LittleBigPlanet TV Show, breakfast cereal and "How to Knit" series of books.

Best Revamp of a Series - Prince of Persia
Personally I hate the Prince of Persia series and could never get pass the few couple of levels in any of the game series without giving up due to boredom or frustration, but the newest installation in the series is amazing and I love its Assassin's Creed feel. The art style is also a wonderful new change.

Best Use of Colour - de Blob
This game was addicting as it was fun. Both a colourful and enjoyable game to play, de Blob was a great third party title on the Nintendo Wii which was a hard thing to find this year amongst all the hundreds of garage titles.

Midway Release Character Roster for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Midway announced the complete cast of characters in its newest epic fighter, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe this week. Rounding out the final line-up are the villains Shao Kahn, Darkseid, Baraka and Lex Luthor.

I was hoping to see Johnny Cage on the Mortal Kombat side and apparently I'm not alone. A lot of people are disappointed to see Johnny Cage missing and this is not a good move on Midway's part. Killing off Johnny Cage is pretty much what bombed the second Mortal Kombat movie, so what does a missing Johnny mean for MK vs DC?

Mortal Kombat
Scorpion
Sub-Zero
Sonya
Jax
Shang Tsung
Liu Kang
Raiden
Kitana
Kano
Baraka
Shao Kahn

DC Universe
Batman
Superman
Catwoman
Green Lantern
The Joker
Shazam
The Flash
Wonder Woman
Deathstroke
Lex Luthor
Darkseid

The game hits store shelves this November on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

First Look at Scorpion's Fatality Move

Midway released new pictures of Scorpion's new fatality move in their upcoming title, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe.

Very similar to Scorpion's past fatality moves, it looks like Scorpion will tear off his mask revealing his true face, a skull and then deliver the fatal blow, a devastating fireball from his mouth to set his enemies a blaze.

I think true Mortal Kombat fans will be happy to see Midway resurrect this classic fatality.

X'08 Hands On Impressions: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Midway was on hand at X'08 to show of a couple of their upcoming games including the much anticipated Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. While Midway is still keeping the storyline behind this crazy mash up title to themselves, I'm guessing it has something to do with the general premise for the whole Mortal Kombat series: the Emperor comes to the DC Universe wanting to take over the realm and who better to compete in tournament to save the world but the super heroes from that world?

Even though Midway did sent a rep to over see the demos at the event, Reid wasn't exactly familiar with MK vs DC, so I had to feel my way through the demo. It was nice to finally meet the guy behind all my press releases though.

Midway has only released a partial list of the available characters in the game and only a small portion of those characters like Superman, Scorpion, Batman, Sonia Blade were playable characters in the demo. I chose to fight with Catwoman because she's my favourite baddie in the DC universe.

My first fight was against Scorpion and he was really easy to take down. Almost too easy. You’d think the demo was set on easy "journalist" mode or something to make us feel like experts at the game. Most of the moves are pretty straight forward - kick, punch, jump, round kick, etc, and catwoman could scratch at her opponents and use her whip on them.

When you managed to send your opponent flying over the edge of the level, your character would jump on top and continue to fight on the way down. This fighting was accomplished with a series of buttons that you plugged in as they popped up on the screen. Get them in right and you land on top of your opponent when you both hit the ground, but get them wrong and you become the landing pad.

Some levels allowed you to do this more than once and other levels changed the falling sequence with smashing through a series of walls. You still had to follow the series of buttons though to come out on top.

My second and third opponents were Superman and Sonya Blade which were much harder than Scorpion to defeat. Sonya as my third level enemy actually managed to defeat me in a round and that's when I gave up the controller to someone standing behind me.

I didn't manage to uncover any brutalities or fatalities, nor did my rep know how to active them, but they are included the game. Each character has a normal finishing cinematic with a basic defeat: Catwoman cracked her whip after each time I finished off my opponent with a normal kick or punch.




I was quite impressed with the game visually and how it played. The characters are quite detailed and Midway has been working with the DC artists to make sure everything is just right about each character. MK fans will be happy to know that some characters like the Joker do have fatality moves as seen in the newest video released by Midway.

Expect a full length review later when the game is released in stores.

Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe Trailer: Superman kicks everyone's ass

Though I'm too if I like the idea of Mortal Kombat character beating up on DC Super Heroes, expecially if there isn't going to be any fatalities finishing moves, I do think the game trailer look pretty darn good looking. So even if the game bombing, at least it will leave a good looking corpse.

My biggest problem with using DC characters is the life long problem with Superman being way too powerful for anyone to take him down, so unless the Mortal Kombat characters come equipped with Kryptonite, then anyone being able to KO Superman is impossible by DC standards.

Smash Oscar: Oscar/Smash Bros. mash up

This sweet video is the vision of The Action Room. They took the Oscar hopefuls and put them into a Super Smash Bros./Mortal Kombat fighting style game. I love the impressions and the ending is so wrong it's funny.

[Via The BBPS.com]

Motor Kombat!!! I mean Mortal Kombat car.

So, what the "A" from?

I came out from the grocery store yesterday and found this crappy Jeep parked in front of me with the coolest hood design. It was the Mortal Kombat Deception logo. SWEET!

Too bad, the car is falling apart. It had tons of dents and the front license plate missing. I could see the owner of this car being a huge hardcore gamer who bought this car just because it had the MK logo.

"Who cares if it runs or not. It was the MK logo on it. I WANT IT!