- Title: Mortal Kombat Armageddon
- Platform: Xbox
- Publisher: Midway
- Developer: Midway
- ESRB: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Fighting
- Pros: Tons of characters; lots of modes; fighting is simple, but can be fun; fast load times
- Cons: No character specific fatalities; no character profiles; lame endings; gameplay pales in comparison to real fighters; doesn’t do enough to celebrate the end of MK in its current form
Story
This is the last Mortal Kombat on the current generation of systems, and the MK team plans to completely rebuild and re-imagine Mortal Kombat for the PS3 and 360 in the future. Part of that process means pruning the character roster down to key players, and since Armageddon is actually part of the MK storyline rather than a “dream match” scenario, the characters that die in this game are gone for good. Unfortunately, the endings are insanely lame for each character, and the ones that die do so in pretty anticlimactic fashion.
Also disappointing is the fact there aren’t any bios or profiles for all of the different characters. This is supposed to be a great sendoff for MK as we know it, but where is the love and attention these characters deserve? The best part about MK is the characters and their connections to each other, but you don’t really get a sense of that here.
"Fight!"
The gameplay in Armageddon is just like it was in Deadly Alliance and Deception, which can be good or bad depending on your feelings about 3D Mortal Kombat. There are a couple of key changes that make Armageddon play a little better, but it still in no way matches up to a real fighting game like Soul Calibur or DOA. The first change is that you only have one hand-to-hand fighting style and one weapon style. This simplifies the game quite a bit and actually makes it play a lot like the older MKs. Now the game plays with more emphasis on special moves, faster and smaller combos, and more air juggles, just like oldschool MK. Once you get into the flow of things and start blocking and countering and making good use of the limited moves available to you, MK Armageddon is surprisingly fun to play. Add on top of this the 60+ different characters and you’ll find there is quite a lot to see and do and experience before you get tired of the fighting engine. There are a lot of moments where you’ll pick a character and go “I wonder if I can still do this…” and then you bust out a nifty special move you remember from ten years ago and all is right with the world. The gameplay isn’t great, but it is definitely fun in the short term.
