Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Midway's current-gen MK swan song is solid, but not perfect.
Published: October 25, 2006
Some of this is alleviated by playing online in matches that allow Kreated fighters (you can always host a game and turn that option off), since you'll never really know what movesets someone has, it ends up being the game's saving grace, but the core combat (or, uh, Kombat) still feels a little too rigid. Luckily, the online play itself is smooth and surprisingly lag-free. There aren't a whole lot of options available to the player, but jumping into a match or being challenged by someone happens almost immediately after you pick a server.
For an engine that was created just a few years ago, it's already starting to show its age. Midway has tweaked and refined things to the point where the game runs like butter, and even supports widescreen and progressive scan, but perhaps it's just the limitations of the RenderWare engine being reached for this kind of game. Again, though, it's insanely smooth, texture resolution is fantastic, and the arenas are rife with detail -- most major pieces of which are just an uppercut away from being interactive in sometimes lengthy displays of brutality.
The initial shock of the gore and bloodiness of the game has likely worn off for most, but little things like the almost comical rivulets of blood running down fighters or the way the screen shakes with particularly hard hits keeps everything feeling very, very meaty. Some of the non-fighting modes like Motor Kombat and the Konquest mode don't share nearly as much of this detail, however. Luckily, once you start ripping off limbs and tearing out vital organs, the comedy more than makes up for it.
The audio, too, is thick and soupy when it comes to hits. Punches and kicks smack with force, blades sing out with every hit, and the always amusing announcer's bloodlust-filled voice is every bit as fun to hear as he's always been. Most of the music shares the sort of passing adoration with Eastern themes that the series as a whole has always had, and it's good stuff, though not particularly striking or memorable. You'll hear a few racing koto-sounding lines and some lumbering, bass-heavy tuned pumped out in Dolby Pro-Logic II, and if you have a good subwoofer, you're going to love cranking things up.
With the sheer amount of crap that's up for unlocking, a few distracting side modes and new Kreate-a... features, there's enough here to potentially keep Kombat fans and OCD gotta-unlock-it-all completists busy for weeks of non-stop play, possibly even months. Midway has delivered a torrent of content on a single disc, and things like online play and character creation options that probably won't be unlocked for dozens of hours mean there's enough longevity to make the entry price well worth it.
It's not the most perfect fighter, nor are all the extras particularly interesting, but what's here is the finest example of what American fighting game developers can produce, and if you're any kind of MK -- old or new -- there's enough here to warrant a purchase. And then some.
