Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: A Crossover That Solved Its Fatality Problem Sideways

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe landed on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 16, 2008, with a premise that sounded like a joke and played like a dare. Midway Games developed it; WB Games and Midway Games published it. It was the eighth main installment in the Mortal Kombat franchise, a crossover with the DC Universe, and the first Mortal Kombat built solely for the seventh generation of consoles, running on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3. It was also the last Mortal Kombat Midway made before the company went bankrupt in 2009 and sold the franchise to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Trailer, via kungloa34.

Two Universes, One Roster

The roster is the pitch. Ten champions from each universe, plus one boss character per side, for 22 fighters total. The fighting is closer to the 2D Mortal Kombat games than to the three that came before it — Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon — with some 3D elements folded in. It leans on special moves rather than the complex combos those earlier games built up. That is a real choice, and it mostly works, because the fun here is watching two vocabularies of violence collide rather than memorizing a juggle.

The story was written by comic writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and it does the job a crossover needs: it gives both sides a reason to hit each other. Raiden, Earthrealm’s god of thunder, halts Shao Kahn’s invasion and blasts him through a portal. At the same moment on Earth, Superman stops Darkseid’s Apokoliptian invasion by blasting him with heat vision as he enters a boom tube. Neither attack destroys its target. Instead the two villains merge into Dark Kahn, and the Mortal Kombat and DC universes begin to merge with them.

That merger is the engine. Characters from both sides fluctuate in power, becoming stronger or weaker, and violent “rage” outbreaks spread because Dark Kahn’s feelings are being infused into them from afar. The fluctuation is what lets the game put Superman in genuine danger — his vulnerability to magic becomes a live problem — and lets the Joker stand in against skilled martial artists like Batman and Deathstroke. Each world blames the other for the merger, so they fight until only one fighter from each side remains: Raiden and Superman.

The Fatality Problem, Solved Sideways

Fatalities are still in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, for the Kombatants and the villains, though slightly toned down. The reason is the license. DC’s heroes keep to a moral code, and Superman and Batman do not kill. So the DC side gets “Heroic Brutalities,” which put an opponent out of commission rather than in pieces.

Both realizing that neither is working with Dark Kahn, Raiden and Superman overcome their rage for each other and defeat their fused enemy, restoring the two worlds to their normal separation.

That is a clean solution to a real design bind, and it is more interesting than it sounds. The finishing move becomes a character statement. The DC heroes still get a spectacle, just one that stops short of a corpse, and the Mortal Kombat side still gets its gore. The line between the two is where the game’s personality actually lives.

Free-Fall Kombat and Klose Kombat

The in-fight features are where Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe takes its biggest swings. Throwing an opponent to a lower level of the arena automatically triggers “Free-Fall Kombat,” a quasi-mini-game where both players hit buttons to stay above the other during the fall and land on top when it ends. “Klose Kombat” locks the two characters together and pushes the camera into a close-up for an interval of close-quarters fighting.

A “Test Your Might” mini-game works its way in too. Smash an opponent through a series of walls and the damage meter at the top of the screen becomes a tug-of-war, with the attacker pressing to raise damage and the defender pressing to cut it. “Rage mode” is another in-fight addition.

There is also a “Kombo Challenge” mode, where players perform ten pre-created combos of increasing difficulty. The story mode is playable from two perspectives — one DC segment, one Mortal Kombat segment, each split into chapters. Depending on which side you pick, that side’s characters see the other universe as the invader. During development the player had the ability to play as all the characters in the story mode, but the mode ultimately lacked story arcs for a few characters.

A Story Mode With Holes in It

That last detail is the honest crack in the thing. A crossover lives or dies on giving every fighter a reason to be there, and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe does not quite finish the job. The chapters carry the plot, but a handful of characters get dropped into fights without an arc to explain them. For a game whose whole appeal is the roster, that is a missed opportunity.

The plot itself lands its ending well enough. In the final battle, Raiden and Superman fight while Dark Kahn feeds on their rage. Both realize the other is not working with Dark Kahn, they overcome their rage, and they defeat the fused enemy, separating the two worlds again. Everyone else returns to their original universe.

Darkseid and Shao Kahn do not. They are switched, both rendered powerless, and both face eternal imprisonment in the other’s world. Darkseid is restrained in the Netherrealm. Shao Kahn is trapped in the Phantom Zone. It is a genuinely funny punishment, and it is the most confident piece of writing in the game.

What Reviewers Agreed On

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe received mixed-to-positive reviews. Most reviewers agreed the game was entertaining and made good use of its DC Universe license. The game currently sits at a 7.7/10 critic aggregate across seven outlets.

Where the Crossover Actually Stands

Here is the part worth arguing about. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is not a great fighting game, and it is not trying to be. The seams show: the story mode’s missing arcs, the toned-down Fatalities, a combo system pulled back from the depth of Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon.

“Heroic Brutalities” are the most interesting idea in the package, because they force the game to define what a DC hero’s violence looks like when it has to sit next to a Fatality. Free-Fall Kombat and Klose Kombat are gimmicks, but they are gimmicks with a point — they break up the rhythm of a fight and give the camera something to do.

And the Dark Kahn premise does the one thing a crossover has to do: it makes the mismatch make sense. Superman being beatable because of magic, the Joker being able to trade hands with Batman and Deathstroke — those are not fan-fiction indulgences, they are the merger doing narrative work.

The thing that dates the game is not the mechanics. It is the knowledge that Midway made this and then went bankrupt the next year. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is the last Mortal Kombat from the studio that built the franchise, and you can feel a team reaching for a bigger idea than the one it had the time or the budget to finish.

The DC license is used well, the roster is generous, and the ending is sharp. The story mode lacked arcs for a few characters, and reviewers noted it.

Play it for the crossover, not for the fighting. It is a solid, entertaining experiment that found a workable answer to its hardest design question — how to let Superman and Batman share a screen with a Fatality — without ever pretending the fighting underneath was the point. 7.7/10.

DC Comics · fighting games · Midway Games · Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe · NetherRealm · PS3