Tuesday, June 22, 2010

New Mortal Kombat brings back the pain and gore



Everybody has heard of Mortal Kombat. Period. My girlfriend knows what Mortal Kombat is, my parents know what Mortal Kombat is, heck my grandma knows what Mortal Kombat is. Of course a lot of these "non-gamers" that know of the series only know about it because of the all the controversy it caused in the mid-90's when the games owned both the arcades and the home consoles. Did I buy (ok, I was 12 when it came out, I didn't really "buy" much, so it was bought for me) a Sega Genesis just so that I could play MK with blood and real fatalities (ABACABB FTW), even though I already owned the graphically superior SNES version? Of course I did. I tried my damnedest to get the sweat from the SNES version to just be colored red, in hopes that that would satisfy me. Hours and hours of Game Genie (oh how I loved thee) "hacking", and the closest I got was purple "blood". Not the goal I had, but to a 12 year old that was still pretty flippin' cool.

Anyways, as most original MK fans would agree, the series hasn't really been what it used to be. Ever since the series followed the trend of other fighting games and went 3D, it just hasn't been the same. Well, the upcoming MK iteration is looking to fix that. Just like the super popular Street Fighter 4, the next MK is using the 3D fighters on a 2D fighting plane design. And it looks fantastic!

The team at NetherRealm Studios are going back to the violent roots of the series and bringing back many of the elements that made it so popular in the first place. Having literally defined the mature game category, MK is coming back with the fastest and most brutal installment to date. The team has obviously put a lot of focus on the speed of the gameplay and combo system, in hopes of making the fighting a little deeper than previous MK games. They've also brought back some of the classic background that you'll remember fighting in, transformed with a fresh paint of 3D of course. But the most stunning new feature is in the character models. See each character is actually constructed with 2 models; the exterior model that you normally see, and an inner "skeletal" model. The inner-model gives every character their own visible bone structure and internal organs. This allows the game to be more brutal than ever imagined before. Instead of just being a bloody mess, Fatalities will show off broken bones and even show organ structures, that is when the Fatality doesn't have said organs leaving the body...

There is also new special X-Ray combos. These moves aren't done at the end of a round like Fatalities, they're done during a round. They will zoom into the action and show skulls cracking, bones breaking, etc. All of this is a little easier to be seen than to try and describe, so check out the trailer:



Product Features:
  • Mature Presentation
    • Fatalities make a triumphant return to their original violent form as Mortal Kombat gives its fans what they've been demanding. Graphic details, never before possible are presented with the most sophisticated graphics engine in MK history.
  • All New Game Play
    • By returning to its classic 2D fighting plane, mature presentation, and up to 4 player tag-team kombat; Mortal Kombat introduces an all new fighting mechanic that's both accessible and provides the depth that fighting game players look for.
  • Deep Story Mode
    • Mortal Kombat offers the deepest story mode of any fighting game. Players are taken back to the original Mortal Kombat tournament where they try to alter the events of the past in an attempt to save the future.
  • Graphics & Technology
    • Characters, enviroments and fatalities have never been presented with as much gory detail as in this next generation Mortal Kombat. From internal organs to the most "realistic" blood effects, MK has never looked this good.
  • New Game Modes
    • In addition to an enhanced online feature set, Mortal Kombat introduces Co-op arcade mode and many additional modes to be announced in the upcoming months.

Mortal Kombat is set to be released for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 sometime in 2011.

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