David Sanders
David SandersI’ve been a fan of the Mortal Kombat franchise for virtually as long as I can remember. My first experience with the series was the PlayStation 2 version of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, which I received as a birthday gift when I was considerably younger. I also have many fond memories of the more story-heavy Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, also on the PS2. I played quite a lot of both of these games over the years, though I cannot truthfully claim to have ever been very skilled at them.
Since my first experience with the franchise was one of the later, more advanced games, and since I didn’t have a chance to play any of the older games for quite some time, I was unaware of quite a few aspects of the series lore when I first began playing Deadly Alliance. For example, I had no idea who those two men were that killed Liu Kang, one of the Mortal Kombat franchise’s most familiar characters, in the game’s opening cinematic.
In fact, I’m not even sure how I knew who Liu Kang was at that time. Regardless, my lack of background knowledge about the series certainly didn’t prevent me from greatly enjoying Deadly Alliance and virtually every Mortal Kombat game released after it, which especially includes one specific game in the franchise.
With the imminent release of Mortal Kombat 11 on the horizon, I thought now would be as appropriate a time as any to revisit an old favorite of mine; the series reboot known colloquially as Mortal Kombat 9 (henceforth referred to as “MK9”). I have many fond memories of this title, as well as several aggravating memories, as you’ll see over the course of this article.
I’m not reviewing MK9 simply for the sake of nostalgia and reminiscence, however; my goals are to judge how well the game holds up since its initial release several years ago, and to determine whether or not I still consider it to be worth playing.
I distinctly remember being extraordinarily excited for the aforementioned ninth installment of the series, which was released on consoles in April 2011 and on PC in mid-2013. As I recall, the PlayStation 3 version of MK9 was the second game I ever pre-ordered in order to ensure that I could get my hands on a copy at launch. After all, the idea of my local electronics retailer selling out of copies of MK9 too quickly was a risk I felt I could not afford to take.
Although MK9 was meant to be a reboot of the entire franchise, I considered that to be a good thing at the time. I hoped that its plot would fill in the remaining holes in my understanding of the series’ lore as a whole. The game’s story would supposedly span the first three games in the Mortal Kombat franchise. I theorized that would at least be close enough to fully catching me up on all the lore I was missing.
As I played through the game’s story mode, I was able to get the gist of a few story aspects of which I was previously unaware, but there were certainly a few things that seemed off to me. I’ll discuss as much of the story within this article as I can while still avoiding spoilers, but that doesn’t leave me very much to discuss. According to my research, MK9‘s story begins during the events of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.
As a direct result of the events which take place during Armageddon, the only two fighters remaining are Raiden and Shao Kahn. Considering that Raiden typically has to surrender the majority of his powers as an Elder God before he’s allowed to take part in “mortal affairs” such as a Mortal Kombat tournament, Raiden finds himself unable to defeat Shao Kahn. Just before Raiden is slain, he uses the last of his powers to send a vague message to an earlier version of himself through a shattered amulet in his possession.
As I alluded to a moment ago, Raiden’s message to his past self is quite vague. The message, in its entirety, is the phrase “he must win.” The past version of Raiden suddenly receives the message from his future self in the form of a premonition. Considering that Earthrealm’s champion Liu Kang was the canonical victor of the Mortal Kombat tournament in the original Mortal Kombat title, Raiden assumes that the message refers to Liu Kang; as such, Raiden prepares to aid Liu Kang as best he can to ensure that Earthrealm is victorious in the upcoming Mortal Kombat tournament.
So long as Liu Kang proves victorious in the tournament, Shao Kahn cannot conquer Earthrealm and claim it as his own, as per the established rules of Mortal Kombat. All I can say at this point without risking spoiling any aspect of the story is that not everything goes exactly according to Raiden’s plan. As far as I’m concerned, everything that doesn’t go according to Raiden’s plan makes for some rather interesting and occasionally quite amusing twists within the story.
For example, my personal favorite moment in the story comes immediately after Raiden realizes he’s made a massive mistake which may have sealed the fate of Earthrealm as a whole. In light of this, Raiden simply states that his mistake “was not supposed to happen” in what may well be the most emotionless, deadpan manner possible. I still find that scene humorous to this day.
However, such twists don’t really serve to fill in any gaps a player such as myself may have in their understanding of the series lore as a whole. Despite that, I’ve found MK9’s story mode to be quite enjoyable and even educational in terms of lore, though the mode can be a bit difficult at times.
I consider it quite necessary for me to clarify, however, that when I say MK9’s story mode can occasionally be somewhat challenging, I’m typically referring to the portions of it that aren’t boss fights. Boss fights are a different beast entirely. These fights in MK9’s story mode are beyond challenging; in my experience, most of them can be downright infuriating and somewhat unfair. Allow me to elaborate.
When I began the process of recording footage from which I extracted the screenshots present throughout this article, I was at the point in the game’s story mode at which you, playing as Liu Kang, must defeat Shao Kahn. I only remembered the final fight of the entire story mode as being incredibly difficult, and I knew I was likely nowhere close to the end of the story; thus, I thought little of the fight I was currently tasked with winning.
That is, of course, until it took me exactly seventeen attempts over the course of fifty-two minutes of footage to actually emerge victorious. I feel compelled to add that all seventeen of those attempts were on the second-easiest difficulty setting. As far as I can tell, this fight is as difficult as it is because it contains several mechanics to which you must become accustomed as quickly as possible in order to prove victorious.
For one, Shao Kahn’s attacks seem to inflict considerably more damage than normal, while your attacks seem under-powered to some degree. Secondly, it seems that you must inflict considerable damage to Kahn with your attacks in order to interrupt most of his special moves. Thirdly, to borrow a term from the lexicon of professional wrestling, Kahn can apparently “no-sell” your attacks in a seemingly random manner.
That is, your attacks still damage him, but they don’t interrupt his special moves or cause him to stagger as they would against most non-boss opponents. As far as I’m aware, every character designated as a “boss” in the story mode (which includes Goro, Kintaro, and Shao Kahn, if memory serves) has this “no-sell” ability. In my experience, however, only Shao Kahn is so exceedingly difficult to defeat.
Boss fights aside, though, MK9 has much more to offer than just a story mode which can be unduly aggravating from time to time. When I decide I need a break from a somewhat-unfair boss fight in the story mode, there are other in-game methods for me to relieve my pent-up aggression.
Of course, as is tradition among the more recent Mortal Kombat games, there exists a standard “arcade mode”. This mode is great if you’re in the mood to just choose any character on the roster and proceed to take out any pent-up anger on a series of AI opponents who dare stand in your way.
Alternatively, if you’re in the mood for something different that doesn’t involve quite the same degree of mindless violence, the first iteration of the “Challenge Tower” mode might be just what you’re looking for. Not only does this mode revive the classic “Test Your Might” and “Test Your Sight” mini-games of yesteryear; it also provides unique fighting experiences under altered rule sets.
The various levels of the Challenge Tower task you with meeting specific stipulations in a given scenario as a specific character. For example, one of the earlier challenges on the tower requires you, as Jax, to defeat a version of Reptile which is immune to damage while invisible; to get around this obstacle, you must use Jax’s ground pound special move to interrupt Reptile’s invisibility.
So, based on what I have and haven’t discussed so far in this review, I feel a question may be justifiably raised at this point. Aside from the various newer game modes present within MK9, what’s new about the central concept of the game, the “kombat” itself? Well, I consider there to be two main answers to that question.
The first of these answers is the “meter system,” for severe lack of a more descriptive phrase. Throughout most fights, both fighters will build up this meter. As the meter fills, fighters will gain access to certain abilities. These abilities vary, such as a maneuver which allows a player to break one of their opponent’s combos, an “enhanced” version of one of their special moves, and most importantly, that which is referred to as an “X-Ray move.”
These X-Ray moves are quite powerful in terms of the damage they inflict; the catch is that most of them can be blocked, dodged, or interrupted. As such, they should only be used when they’re most likely to successfully connect. In fact, Johnny Cage’s X-Ray move requires his opponent to land a hit on him within a small window of time after he engages his X-Ray move in order for the move to actually be performed. As I’m sure you can imagine, such moves are typically easily telegraphed and, thus, avoided.
The second answer to the question I raised earlier is the expanded finishing move system. MK9 couldn’t dare call itself a Mortal Kombat game if it didn’t retain the series trademark finishing moves, known as Fatalities. These moves are present in spades within MK9; each character has at least two unique Fatalities to their name. Additionally, characters also have “Stage Fatalities” which can only be used on stages which contain fatal hazards, such as spikes or oncoming trains.
I should also mention that each character has a “secret” finishing move which hearkens back to a much earlier point in Mortal Kombat’s history; that’s all I’ll say on the matter for the sake of avoiding spoilers. Of course, since each Fatality has its own unique button combination, it’s entirely possible for you to just look up a list of all such combinations online, but I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way whenever possible.
Before I begin my closing statements and conclude this review, there’s one last aspect of MK9 which I feel compelled to mention; I consider passing along this warning to be part of my civic duty as a Mortal Kombat fan. I’ve noticed that the PC ports of virtually every game developed by Netherrealm Studios; a list which currently includes MK9, Mortal Kombat X, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Injustice 2, are rather poorly-optimized for the modern PCs on which I’ve run these games in the past.
In theory, my computer should be able to handle MK9 on high graphics settings relatively easily. However, in my experience, MK9 runs exceptionally poorly if it fails to maintain a constant 60-FPS frame rate. The game has a tendency to slow to a crawl during most cutscenes and, more annoyingly, certain fights if the frame rate happens to dip even slightly. Frame rate fluctuation and input lag are two things that absolutely should not be in any fighting game worth its salt, yet the PC version of MK9 unfortunately has quite a bit of both.
To conclude this review, I shall state clearly and proudly that I believe MK9 is worth its current asking price on Steam. However, in the interest of transparency, I acknowledge that I may very well hold that belief entirely due to nostalgia. I’ve found that MK9 is typically significantly discounted during most prominent Steam sales, though. With that in mind, if you can find it on sale, and if you can deal with its optimization issues (or don’t mind locking it to a lower frame rate), I recommend picking it up if you consider yourself any degree of a Mortal Kombat fan.
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🔥2.3 KMortal Kombat Komplete Edition
$11.99 USD
Pros
- In-Depth Story Mode
- Variation of Game Modes is Refreshing
Cons
- Poor Optimization Can Affect Gameplay
- Difficulty Curve Can Become Overwhelming
