You know... I really like Mortal Kombat, as a franchise.
I never really got on with the original Trilogy of games, but they were such a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist growing up in the 90s. The first MK movie is a legitimately great 90s action movie, and the cabinet art for Ultimate MK3 is seared into my mind's …
You know... I really like Mortal Kombat, as a franchise.
I never really got on with the original Trilogy of games, but they were such a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist growing up in the 90s. The first MK movie is a legitimately great 90s action movie, and the cabinet art for Ultimate MK3 is seared into my mind's eye.
But the series lore is just... Really cool. I won't lie to you and say it's smart, but it all feels like mythology. The characters have extremely loud visual design and increasingly well defined characteristics and personalities as the series goes on. If you have a favourite character, they usually get an opportunity to shine in the main story - if only for a moment. Characters are swapped in and out of scenarios in interesting ways, and timelines are reset and rejigged to create new stages for the players to march onto. I see a lot of people complain, "But Mortal Kombat is full of boring one-off characters." And sure... They start that way. Ermac went from a misunderstood bit of diagnostic text to a red ninja palette swap to a well-defined amulgum of thousands of souls in a corporeal form. Even the ones that are lame and never get developed get reused or referenced - shout outs to Hsu-Hao's head impaled on a stake in MK X.
I'm not normally a fighting game guy... But I genuinely enjoy playing Mortal Kombat, too. On the easier settings, anyway. The inputs for combos and special moves have a generous window for inputs compared to something like Street Fighter, so it's much easier to pull off cool moves and learn techs. The main story campaigns of the games have been pretty great since Deception too, with some outstanding presentation and interesting scenario writing. Again, none of this stuff is Oscar-worthy... But if you want a whole bunch of poggers moments and "YO I KNOW THAT ONE!" hype, you really can't go wrong.
Plus the extended lore behind the worlds, the mechanics of the time warping, dimension-hopping shenanigans from the gods, the extensive character bios... There's just a lot to dig into here, and I enjoy it all to bits.
Oh, and the 2019 movie is great too.
