Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

The first Kombat game to grace the Wii, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Mortal Kombat is back, and as it's been doing since the arcade days it does not fail to impress. With the new control scheme that intuitively combines motion control with fast paced kombat, all the way to the massive amount of characters in this game, you can't go wrong. Along with the main game, there's enough distractions to keep you playing for a long while, but not long enough.

This game brings back all of the characters to participate in an 'Armageddon'. Now when I say all of the characters, I mean all of the characters. It's just amazing to see how many characters Midway has actually managed to pack into this game, in total there's 63, more then both the PS2 version, and the XBOX version thanks to an extra character Midway decided to put into this game. Every character you ever remember playing will be featured in this huge compilation that calls itself Armageddon.



Apart from the crazy amount of characters, Mortal Kombat Armageddon features many cool.. features! One that I'm sure all Kombat fans will remember includes 'The Krypt.' The Krypt is where everything hidden can be unlocked, for a price that is. As you move along in the game and beat certain people, or just beat the arcade mode in general you'll earn 'Koins.' Hoard these coins as any good Kombat lover would do and you've got yourself some 'Kurrency' ;]. I made that last one up haha, but all jokes aside these Koins can purchase everything that's hidden in the Krypt! From alternate costumes, to over two dozen unlockable stages everything and more is available to unlock, as long as you've got the Koins to pay for it all. All 288 unlockables that is.

As per usual theres the normal Arcade mode which can be played on separate difficulty levels, ranging from easy to hard. The harder you make it for yourself the more Koins you'll win, however don't think you'll be winning to easily, the AI in this game is phenomenal and are actually a challenge if you bump up the difficulty level high enough.

Another usual that we're all used to seeing is Konquest, this time however Konquest doesn't suck. It was horrible in Deception and has been upgraded in Armageddon, thank god for that. In this Konquest a new character is introduced, and you use and customize him to your liking throughout this 7 hour affair. The way each character of the game is introduced, and the cinematics used are truly beautiful. The only thing that is lacking is lasting value with the Konquest mode, just like Super Smash Bros. Brawl Subspace Emissary Mode, this is not really a main attraction, just an attempt at a single player game to keep fans at bay.

Another welcome return is 'Motor Kombat.' What Motor Kombat is, is basically just an attempt at creating a whacked out fun game as a diversion. It's reminiscent of games like Mario Kart, as each character has their own customized Go-kart, and each character has their own power. As you race around the 4 tracks you can pick up power-ups, and collect Koins along the way. This little mini-game is truly fast paced, and could even rival F-Zero in how crazy quick it is! Another interesting side note that might catch your attention, is that this mini-game is played exclusively with the Wiimote flipped on it's side. It's controlled exactly the same way Mario Kart Wii will be controlled, and previous games such as Need For Speed. It's amazing what the Wii Controller can do! You can also go face to face with up to 3 other friends, making it a truly frenzied and bloody battle. This one will keep you playing for a while, but it loses its charm soon after you get over how funny everyone looks in Go-Karts.




Once you're bored with Motor Kombat, you can move onto the infamous 'Kreate-A-Fighter'. This portion of the game is just fantastic, no where have I seen such a customizable pallet. You can basically create whatever character you want. You pick what they look like, name their style of fighting, pick all of their basic, AND special attacks, and even get to name the character. There's potential to spend hours in here choosing exactly what attacks you want your character to have. Heck, you could make a hybrid of all 63 characters if you really wanted to. But, this isn't free every single attack has a 'Koin value', that will eat into the overall amount of Koins that you've got, so unless you've got thousands of Koins, you won't be making a very good character. This feature is definitely for the more advanced player, and might actually put off casual player who are just looking to fight some people because of how vast and complicated it is.



Also exclusive to the Wii version is an Endurance mode, in which you pick a character and fight characters one on one repeatedly and are only healed every so often, see how long you can last before you die.

Something all fans will remember is the usage of Profiles. In this game you can load hundreds of profiles and save all of your data in it, the data they save is actually very detailed oriented. Your win/loss percentage, your endurance record, your motor kombat record, the amount of koins you've got. Anything you've ever wanted to keep track off, your password protected profile will save for you. Well that is as long as you load your profile before you go ahead and get those achievements.

Well, that's enough with what the game has, but what about how the game plays? Well this game plays as any other Mortal Kombat game would play.. but wait, isn't it on the Wii? Of course it is! This actually does not make such a huge difference. The only difference would be a different controller, and some motion control thrown up in the mix. The only motion controller used during battling is holding the B button, and swinging your controller in a specific manner to perform your characters special attack. Whoah is that to advanced for you? Don't feel comfortable using motion sensors and all that new fangled technology to help you do your special attacks? Well you can always go ahead and plug in your trusty old Gamecube Controller. Oh wait, it's been a long time since you've even played on the Gamecube Controller? Feel like you've forgotten how to play with that? Well then why not plug in your classic controller?! Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, lets you enjoy the game with the Wiimote + Nunchuk, GCN controller, and the classic controller. Talk about versatility!



More talk about game play. Now the game play in this game is what you'd expect from every single Mortal Kombat out there, you're in a horizontal plane duking it out with the person you're fighting, then after you demolish them you 'Finish Him/Her!' Well, normally you'd get your fatality code together, remember the buttons and bash them in to do a really cool personalized fatality on the character. Not anymore. Now, what you do is bash certain buttons to rip off certain parts of the body, or do other gruesome things, it's what Midway calls 'Kreate your own Fatality'. Now, I personally think that this was a horrible idea, I mean we will never get to see Sonya's Kiss of Death Fatality, or Sub-Zero's ripping out the corpse and leaving the body to rot fatality either. Anything that the characters ever had that was personalized is now gone. Sucks doesn't it? Now everyone just does the same things, ooh I ripped your arm off big deal.

Now I'm sure in that video you see some hints of graphics. The graphics in this game aren't extraordinary, but then again they aren't bad. They're good, maybe a little better then good, but they don't have a wow factor. More or less they rival the PS2 and XBOX graphics, which isn't a very good thing as we all know the Wii can do better than that. But the blood oozing out of the characters, the amount of interactivity in the levels, the backgrounds of the levels, the characters in general are all smooth, and the frame rate never suffers from to much action going on in the screen.

With graphics comes sound, the people being hit sound real, and weird enough in a sense recognizable, you'll recognize those cries of anguish from previous games. That's a plus. The background music is also great, and well composed, the levels even make their own noise! If you see a fire crackling, or see an acid pool it'll make noise to represent what it is! Now that's level interactivity, quick throw them in the acid pool and hear their body disintegrate! Hearing your opponent die is a big part of the game, as the gruesome graphics, can only be good if it has the gruesome sound to back the graphics up, and this game sure does.

Now lasting appeal, this game if you've got 2 players in the house will last you ages, it's all about beating up your friends and then laughing at them isn't it? I mean it's not their fault if they weren't ready, just kick the hell out of them =P! Unfortunately for a single player, the Konquest is short lived, the arcade becomes sterile after a while, and the Kreate-A-Fighter, and Motor Kombat can only take you so far. After that what do you do? Wi-Fi? Nope, unfortunately even though Wi-Fi functionality was available on the XBOX and PS2 version, it was ripped out of the Wii version before release, so no Wi-Fi for you single player, you've got to deal with AI's for the rest of your life until your friends come over. This truly hurts the games lasting appeal, and just the games appeal in general, I mean Wi-Fi is always a fun thing to have!

All in all, a huge list of features, a great game for 2 players, not so much for a single player but still worth the money. If you've got the time to be sucked into the world of Kombat drop some money on this game and check it out, be warned though, you might find yourself playing it non-stop in hopes of unlocking all 288 items in the Krypt, or making that invincible character.. all I'm saying is be careful.