When Worlds Collide
Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe includes several modes of play. Single player options include Story Mode, Arcade, and a Combo Challenge option. Multiplayer modes include two player local play and the ability to play on XBL. I started with the Story Mode, and while there is one central story, you can choose to play through the story from the Mortal Kombat side, or the DC side. Both stories are set up similarly and both are quite a lot of fun to play.
Before getting specific on either story, let me elaborate on what you’ll get with the Story Mode. Both stories are split into seven chapters. Each chapter features a specific character of either the MK or DC universe that players must use to win four battles. In between each battle, a cutscene plays that seamlessly sets up the next battle. Story Mode does not include Fatalities or Heroic Brutalities, but otherwise the battles are the same as you’ll find in Arcade Mode. At the end of each story players must face Dark Kahn, basically a powerful hybrid of Shao Kahn and Darkseid, with either Raiden or Superman.
The premise of the story is that universes are colliding. This collision was brought about by the actions of Raiden or Superman, depending on which story you choose to play. For the Mortal Kombat story, Raiden is attempting to send Shao Kahn back to the Netherworld, a good intention, but things go wrong. For the DC story, Superman has Darkseid beat, but when Darkseid tries to escape through a Boom Tube, Superman inadvertently causes a problem and things get worse from there. A strange power known simply as The Rage overcomes characters in both realms and this causes most of the mistrust and fighting amongst the characters. Eventually, enemies in each realm decide they must put their differences aside to combat the other realm’s fighters, and ultimately the wisdom of Raiden and Superman prevail in revealing that it’s Dark Kahn behind the madness. They discover that they must not submit to The Rage, which is responsible for causing the merger of the two universes to happen at an accelerated rate and the result will be the destruction of both universes.
The story has a lot of conveniences and holes, but it’s more than sufficient enough to play through a couple of times (once for each side). Besides picking up several Achievements along the way, the best part about the Story Mode is being forced to use characters you might not have otherwise tried to use. In being able to play as nearly every character on both sides, I realized just how well balanced this game actually is; by the time you complete both stories, you will have a very good grasp of well over half of the twenty-character roster.
Characters And New Mechanics
Speaking of the roster, here is a complete list of characters:
-Mortal Kombat: Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Sonya, Jax, Shang Tsung, Liu Kang, Raiden, Kitana, Kano, Baraka, Shao Kahn
-DC Universe: Batman, Superman, Catwoman, Green Lantern, The Joker, Captain Marvel, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, Darkseid
Each character has a couple of dozen basic moves and combos and usually five or six Special Moves that are easily executed. You can view your character’s complete move list (except Fatalities/Heroic Brutalities) at any time in the Pause Menu. Most moves are done with one or two directional button presses and a face button; Scorpion’s spear is just back, back, X for example, while Captain Marvel can fly at his opponent with a ferocious punch by simply pressing back, forward, and Y. Most characters share at least one of these special move combinations so moving from character to character or just trying out a character for the first time is very accessible.
The controls actually do quite a bit to make the game accessible and very easy to pick up and play. The face buttons perform strong and weak attacks while the left bumper is for throwing your opponent. The right trigger blocks, while the d-pad is used for crouching, jumping, and forward and back movement. To move in 3D, you just need to reach up and use the left thumbstick. The Right bumper attempts to initiate a Klose Kombat sequence, one of the new mechanics not before seen in a Mortal Kombat game.
Klose Kombat, Free Fall Kombat, the new Test Your Might mode, and the Rage meter are four new mechanics in MK Vs DC Universe. Klose Kombat can be started by a player by pressing right bumper near their opponent; if they’re close enough and the attempt isn’t blocked, the camera zooms in close to the fighters and time slows down. As the aggressor, you simply press whichever face button you want to throw a strike at a certain body part. The one being attacked must quickly counter this by pressing the same button; you can do a maximum of four hits as the aggressor for a total of usually around 25-25% damage. I found Kountering these Klose Kombat situations when the CPU initiated them nearly impossible to do consistently, but I think it’s still a neat mechanic.
I liked the Free Fall Kombat even better. Certain stages have areas that you can send a player flying through by hitting them a certain way with one of several moves near the edge of the stage. When you do so, both players leap over the edge and the aggressor, the one who sent the other one crashing through the edge, can press any face button to start attacking. Once you have successfully hit three or four moves, you can press right bumper to finish the sequence with a powerful final attack that sends your opponent crashing to the ground below; I’ve seen as much as 30% damage taken from a completed sequence like this. However, if your button press is quickly matched by the opponent, the players will switch positions during freefall and he who was once the aggressor is now being attacked. It’s a neat mechanic that can really change the flow of a battle, and what I like about it is that even if you’re the one that was knocked over the edge, you still have a great chance to turn things around and actually do more damage to your opponent than he has done to you.
The new Test Your Might mode is pretty cool; there are three stages in which players can be smashed through a wall, horizontally. When done, the aggressor runs up to this player and runs him through several more walls; during this period, a horizontal slider appears on screen and is at 15%, indicating the one getting slammed is going to take 15% damage when the Test Your Might sequence is done. To keep the percentage there or possibly eek out another few percent, you have to rapidly press all four face buttons. In the event that you don’t press them fast enough, the meter slides to 0% and no one gets hurt.
The Rage is a fourth key element to battle that I’ve found is a powerful and effective way to keep the matches balanced. Underneath your health meter is another smaller meter that is split into two parts. This meter fills through various means, such as when you attack and your opponent continuously blocks your moves. Once the meter reaches the halfway point, you can perform a Breaker, whereby if you block an incoming strike and press a direction, your fighter will not only block their move but counter it. When the meter is completely full, you either do two Breakers or press the left and right triggers at the same time to enter Rage mode. Rage mode lasts about seven or eight seconds, during which time your player is hard to stop. Opponents can still damage you, but the first two or three hits tend to deflect off of you and your hits register slightly more damage. Rage mode has often allowed me to win rounds that almost slipped away from me; at the same time, I’ve lost rounds to the CPU when they activated Rage mode, but I think this is actually a great balancing mechanic that also adds an additional layer of strategy to the battle. Deciding to use the Breakers or save your Rage mode for round three is an important decision in deciding who will win a battle.
Furthermore…
The Story mode took me about four hours per story, after which I felt more than primed to take on the Arcade mode. One last point about the Story mode I’d like to make before moving on is that it had an interesting level of difficulty. Most matches were challenging, but winnable the first time; however, there were probably six battles that I found myself having to continue on several times. What’s interesting is that for each of these harder battles, outside of Dark Kahn, it took no more than three Continues before I could tell a significant difference in the CPU’s aggression. I felt as though it were easing up on me after it saw I had to Continue three times. At first I thought this was kind of lame, but in actuality, I think it’s a good idea; it keeps the Story mode moving, which has its obvious benefits. Most gamers won’t play the story a second time as the real meat of the game is in Versus mode and the Arcade mode, so why not cut people a break on the Story mode? To be honest I don’t even know if this changing difficulty idea I have is real or not, but kudos to Midway if it is in fact part of the Story mode.
So anyway, after eight or so hours of play for the stories, I was ready to move into the Arcade mode. I 100%’ed Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance back in the day, unlocking the entire Krypt and beating the game with every character (using Kung Lao until the final boss and then switching), and that’s exactly what I was intent on doing with the Arcade mode, except there is no Kung Lao and no Krypt. Still, there are twenty intriguing characters (okay, fifteen at least) and having played the Story Modes I wasn’t really ‘afraid’ to try any of them. Arcade mode gives players the opportunity to fight only MK, only DC, or fight a mixed roster of both. Battles are just the same as they were with Story Mode, except this time you can do Fatalities and Heroic Brutalities. This game does have a Teen rating, so don’t expect Mortal Kombat II level violence, but the finishing moves are satisfying and interesting regardless.
The Arcade mode is great, but I would have loved to have seen three things: a rematch option, a replay option, and a Koins system would have been nice. A rematch option, featured in various fighting games over the years, would have cut back on some load times when all you want to do is replay the battle you just lost with the same character. As it stands, when you lose a battle, you Continue (of which you have an unlimited number by the way), but instead of being able to just say ‘rematch with the same character,’ you have to wait ten to fifteen seconds for the player select screen to load up. Then, you have another ten to fifteen second wait for the battle to load up again. It’d have been much more efficient to offer players a quick rematch option. Maybe a patch could add this?
A replay option is something no Mortal Kombat has done before, but it would be really sweet to be able to record your matches and save them for later viewing or for sharing. Lastly, a Koins system like Deadly Alliance and Deception had would be cool to give players more reason to continue playing Arcade mode.
The third and final single player mode (besides Practice), is a combo challenge mode. You choose your character and the one you will face off against (although they don’t attack), and via the pause menu you can select various predetermined combos to try to do. Besides practice, you can earn a few small Achievements by doing these.
Presentation And Conclusion
As far as graphics and sound go, MK vs DC Universe does a great job. The characters are smoothly rendered and look great. While I wasn’t very impressed with the design of most of the backgrounds, which include the Batcave, the Netherworld, the Fortress of Solitude, Sonya’s Special Forces base, the streets of Metropolis, and others, the visual appeal of these wasn’t bad. The backgrounds include plenty of color and often various animated and moving objects, but I didn’t think that most lived up to the better backgrounds previously achieved in earlier Mortal Kombats. For the sounds, the soundtrack is very low key, in fact I an only think of one main track for the game, but at least it’s really good. Effects are nice and include quite a few very memorable sounds like Raiden’s yell as he does his flying attack, Scorpion’s classic “Get Over Here!,” and Sonya’s yell when she does her bicycle kick.
And with that, let’s wrap up…