Well, I’ll start this review right away by saying that I’m not a Mortal Kombat fan. I’m not a huge fan of the fighting system, thus the reason it took me so long to check this out. That being said, such a random mix of characters was interesting enough for me to want to check it out.

The idea of Superman fighting Scorpion indeed made me quite curious, but does it work? Read on!

Story
They managed to make the story here relatively interesting. Divided in 2 “sides”, the MK and the DC side, with 7 chapters in the MK side and 8 in the DC side(1 character per chapter, with a few you don’t end up using in the story mode), each side gives you that “team’s” point of view on the events.
The story starts similarly in both side. Superman is fighting Darkseid and Raiden is fighting Shao Kahn, and both open up a portal, at the very same time, and at the very same time superman uses his heat vision on Darkseid and Raiden shoots lightning at Shao Kahn. Obviously, this screws up stuff and both worlds start merging. As a result of this, characters from both sides think characters from the other side are invading them. At the same time, characters are consumed by “Rage”, which makes them more violent and sometimes delusional. This results in multiple fights between characters from both sides and amongst each other.
The story works relatively well. It’s nothing incredibly good, but it does the job very well, and makes both universes work relatively well with each other, despite being quite different. The only “problem” is the T rating that DC imposed, making it a lot less violent and bloody than MK normally is.
One thing I’ll mention is that the cutscenes transition from to battle really smoothly. At first it felt almost seamless. After a while you see that it’s not entirely seamless, but it’s really well done.

Graphics
The characters look great. They’ve never looked better. Very detailed, and they really look just like you’d expect them to. There’s other fun details like cuts and bruises appearing on characters during fights that carry on to the next rounds. The animations are also relatively nice, I have no problems with them at all.
Otherwise, the environments are… okay. Nothing special. Really not much more to say here. They’re appropriate.

Gameplay
Okay, like I mentionned before, I’m not really fond of the usual Mortal Kombat fighting system. Usually because I find it to be too stiff. While this does not completely correct the problem, I find this to be a lot smoother than previous MK games. Maybe it’s because I have more experience in fighting games than before, but I have a lot less trouble pulling off combos and special moves. The movement and jumping and such just feels a lot betterr than what I’m used to with MK games. Now, there’s still some stiffness and still has ways to go before I get comfortable with the fighting system, but this is a good step forward IMO.
 So the fighting itself is pretty much the same as in previous MK games. The basic combos are simple enough, and higher-level players(AKA not me) can experiment to make their own combos, the special moves are simple, mostly requiring tapping 2 directions and then an attack button. Fatalities you have to figure out the motions and distance, but they’re relatively easy to do when you get the hang of them. Fun little scenes, but nothing as brutal as you’d expect.

Some new stuff
New things here including the close quarter combat mode and the freefall mode (don’t know if those are official names, but I don’t care). Close Quarter happens when you do a certain grab, and it becomes a sort of button mashing thing, where the attacker presses a button, and before he does so the other must quickly guess when button he’s gonna press, otherwise he gets hit. If he guesses it right, he counters the attack and you get out of close combat. The freefal works pretty much the same way. For each attack the attacker lands, a bit of a bar on the left goes from green to red.  If the defender guesses the button the attacker will press, the positions are changed, and the defender will bethe one doing damage on the landing. That’s the annoying part, 30% damage for that is quite a lot. 

There’s also a “mode” in certain stages where there’s no freefall that goes on when you small an opponent against a wall, and then you’ll charge into them and have to button mash while crashing though multiple walls, acucmulating damage on the way. Not great, but whatever >_>

Added to that is Rage mode. This is a bar that fills up when you attack or get attacked. When it’s full, pressing L2 and R2 at the same time will initiate Rage. Rage raises your attack power, and if you do multiple hits while the opponent is blocking, their block will break. Also, you get a super armor. This makes you pretty uber, but it only lasts around…4 -5 seconds, so it’s not too long, but it can change the pace of the fight pretty easily.

Characters
There is a slight balance issue. Mostly having to do with The Flash, who is really fast and has lots of cheap attacks, and a few characters are a bit weaker than the other, more particularily The Joker and Catwoman according to “pros”. Overall though I play just about as well with each character.

Speaking of characters, that’s one of the big incentives here: the DC characters. And overall I find that they did a good job here. Their movesets are pretty nice, giving a few of them moves similar to what you’d expect from them. Some I’m not too sure because I’m not too familiar with them (Wonder Woman, DeathStroke, Catwoman), but overall they’re pretty cool and fun to play as.

Games modes
Other than story mode, there’s the usual arcade mode and practice mode. Added to that is the Kombo Challenge mode, which gives you different combos you can do, and doing them all gives you a trophy… Yay. It does help in knowing the different things you can do with each character.
Otherwise there’s Versus and Online modes, which are just as you’d expect. I get my ass kicked online so I can’t REALLY say how good it is, since I just spend my time getting killed on there.

Overall
Surprisingly, I think this is a good game. Still not a huge fan of the MK fighting style, but this is one of the better incarnations for me. The T rating is a bit disappointing though, the violence you’ve come to expect from the series is nowhere to be found,, most is censored.
Overall this is a fun game, the DC characters are cool and it’s a random mix of characters that they managed to make work well.

jobocan Games, Review