E3: First Look Mortal Kombat

Posted in Gaming by Aaron, June 15, 2010 at 2:32 pm | 29,990 views, 126 comments

Unfortunately, we were contacted by WB asking us to remove the photos. They did promise to send us good quality, official picks asap, so we’ll throw those up when we have them. Sorry guys, we’re caving to big business pressure.

After a long wait, I got in to see the first screening on the day of the new Mortal Kombat. While the demo wasn’t playable by us, it was presented by three of the developers, who played it for us.

I took pictures with my camera, higher quality shots will be posted when we have them.

The first thing we saw was the select screen.

The characters shown were Scorpion, Mileena, Reptile, Subzero, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Nightwolf and Sektor.

The two guys with controllers selected Scorpion and Sub Zero and began the fight.

We’re told that they’re all fans of the old Mortal Kombat games, so this new one is going to be done very much like the old ones, on a 2D plane (but with 3D graphics – like Street Fighter 4).

True to form, the combat looks a lot faster and more fluid, like the older games. Even the levels they showed us, the living forest, the pit and Shao Khans throne (complete with Sonia Blade in chains) are based off the originals, with a new coat of paint.

Blood and combat damage appears on characters as they take a beating, and remains round-to-round until the end of the match. Yeah, I know, this was done before – but it’s looking really good, really gory here. Not the crayon-like effects seen in previous games.

At one point during the match, Subzero freezes Scorpion just before he’s about to land – he frozen in place, in the jumping animation in mid air. It draws applause.

Second match is Reptile vs. Sektor. Moves remain largely the same, and I was told button combos to pull them off will remain the same.

The new addition to the fighting game is the super meter. Similar to other fighting games with a super meter, this one has three levels.

Level one makes whatever attack you’re pulling off stronger. Fireballs become larger, and attacks like Sektor’s teleport punch add another hit to the combo.

Level two is a combo-breaker – pretty basic, same stuff we’ve seen before.

Level three is the most exciting. Currently dubbed the x-ray attack, it’s a brutal attack that goes into an x-ray mode to show you what you’re doing. Like showing fingers penetrating the skull through the eyes, or breaking someones ribs. In Johnny Cage’s case, it’s the meat sack of the pelvis rupturing after his famous ball-buster.

We were also shown tag team, 2 vs. 2 combat. It seems pretty similar to any tag team fighter – tag out at any time, throw a move while tagging in, use the super meter to do special attack. In all, it looks fun and fluid.

The game looks really good actually, and everyone has custom animations. There’s a real focus on the characters here.

Finally, we’re shown a video of the fatalities. It’s been six years since we saw proper, character specific fatalities in a Mortal Kombat game. MK vs. DC no one was killed, and Armageddon had custom fatalities. As the developers pointed out, it doesn’t feel right doing a fatality with SubZero if you can’t freeze your opponent.

The fatalities were properly gory too. Peoples heads were split open, reptile spit acid into his enemies mouth, Sektor blows someone into smaller chunks, then targets and blows up those chunks in mid-air.

This MK looks like a real return to form. Hopefully it does for the franchise what Street Fighter 4 did last year.

To contact the author of this post: aaron.chatha@wildgunmen.com