Mortal Kombat: 8.4/10

Mortal Kombat came back in 2011 by going backward. NetherRealm Studios built the ninth main entry as a soft reboot, and the result is the cleanest the series has fought in years. It shipped for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April 2011, with a PlayStation Vita port following in May 2012.

Raiden Rewinds to the First Tournament

The story begins at the end of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Shao Kahn has defeated Blaze and gained godlike power. Raiden, about to die, sends a message through his shattered amulet to his past self: “He must win.”

Director Ed Boon described the structure as an altered re-telling. The past Raiden receives the message and a premonition, then the game spans the first three tournaments with an enlightened Raiden changing events. Liu Kang still beats Goro and Shang Tsung, but the amulet keeps cracking.

The Super Meter and the X-Ray Move

Combat runs on a single two-dimensional plane at 60 frames per second, though characters are rendered in three dimensions. Four buttons map to four limbs. The new super meter charges through special moves, blocked attacks and hits taken, and it holds three levels.

One level enhances a special attack. Two interrupt a combo. Three unleash an X-ray move, which shows bones and organs breaking inside the defender. It is gross, and it is the best idea in the game.

Scorpion Kills Sub-Zero Again

Raiden begs Scorpion to spare Bi-Han, the first Sub-Zero, offering to ask the Elder Gods to resurrect the Shirai Ryu. Scorpion agrees. Then Quan Chi plants false visions of Sub-Zero slaughtering the clan, including Scorpion’s wife and infant son.

Scorpion kills Sub-Zero anyway. The timeline bends but does not break, and that is the point.

300 Challenges in the Tower

The Challenge Tower is a single-player mode with 300 challenges of varying difficulty, paying out in-game currency. Players can spend that currency to skip a challenge and finish it later. Test Your Might returns.

Tag team fighting, a Fatality training mode, a story mode across multiple characters and online play round out the package. Twenty-eight characters were playable at launch, with four more sold as DLC. Cyber Sub-Zero and Quan Chi are secret characters in the original PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, unlocked in the Komplete Edition.

Where the Reboot Sits

The 1993 Super Nintendo version of Mortal Kombat was censored under Nintendo’s violence policies, stripping out what the arcade and the Genesis port were known for. Eighteen years later, NetherRealm put the bones and organs on screen and called it a feature. That reversal is the whole arc of this franchise in one move.

The 2.5D camera is the right call. It keeps the depth for projectiles without dragging the series back into the 3D era that had worn thin. The story mode’s time-loop premise gives the roster a reason to exist beyond a character select screen.

The Plot Spends Its Best Twist Early

The weak spots are real. The plot spends its best twist early, and the later acts lean on fights the player has already fought in older games. The Challenge Tower’s currency-skip option is a quiet admission that some of those 300 rooms are filler.

Mortal Kombat: 8.4/10

This is the reboot the series needed, and it earns the score on mechanics first. The super meter and the X-ray move give every exchange a second layer, and the story mode finally treats the roster as a cast rather than a list. Mortal Kombat is not perfect, but it is the version of this fight worth returning to.

Ed Boon · fighting games · game review · Mortal Kombat · NetherRealm Studios · X-Ray Move