Who dislikes the Mortal Kombat series?

[Streetball 21]

I'm just curious to get different opinions from other gamers on this subject.. As you can tell by my avatar, I am a Mortal Kombat fan ever since the first game in the series. I love the characters, the storyline, everything about it. I know some people (especially certain video game magazines) who dislike everything about Mortal Kombat. So Im curious, what are the reasons you do not like the Mortal Kombat series?

[Cers]

It has no deep or serious gameplay.

[walrusmonger]

I liked it when I played the first one. I was also 7 years old.

1 was very interesting for its time 2 was more of the same, 3 was more of the same.. the 3D ones sucked until Deadly Alliance, which was an average game. The one after DA sucked.

So overall I'd give the series a C.

[mercarian]

Well this is what I gather. MK 1 and 2 were basic games of cunning. When the rest of the series started coming out, they made combo's more of an issue. Its funner to be on a more level playing field (MK 1 and 2), then having an experienced player come in and demolish everyone with good combo's and counters. Another thing many found annoying was the fact that they would copy characters. For instance, there were always sub zero and scorpion. They took there generally bodies added characters like Smoke, Noob Sabot, and Reptile. Physically the only change was the colors. So if you play a newer version, there might be 10 chars that all look the same. Other fighting games don't follow the same concept (Street Figher, SNK, etc) Now when the games started going 3d, thats when I believe they really went downhill. They started introducing multiply weird characters that never existed before. They added a weird weapons system. The games somewhat got cheezy if you ask me. Other fighting games stayed more true to there origins. When I think of MK, Street Figher, Snk, etc I think 2d fighter. Other fighting games are certainly more sucessful with the concept. I don't "hate' the MK series, I just wish they stayed more true to there roots. Any other thoughts people?

[xdaytime]

I like it. But I don't like that they keep adding new characters everygame.

[rkotm]

ive loved the series since i was 8, i loved MK2, and tried to really enjoy MK3, then i stopped going to the arcades for a few years. then in 1997 MK4 hit the um "streets" and i played that relentlessly and its home versions. then MK Deadly alliance..ugh. it was ok, beat it with all the training modes and unlocked Drahmin(i think his name was). MK Deception was more of the same,and MK Armageddon was shit. i even bought it the day it came out, and i never do that with MK games. it was S. The next MK is going to get rid of everyone but a very slim few and without Ed Boon, and it should be out this year. a "rebirth" of another dying series. I still play Mk2 from time to time and that the pinnacle of the series. Mk1 of course was great but Mk3 and onward..meh.

if they dont make the next MK game good then its lights out for Mortal Kombat.

[leicamaster]

its ok I only like MK2 arcade

[7th lutz]

My dad rented Mortal Kombat 1 for me in 1993. That was the first time I played the game and I was a high school student. I felt it was a good, but overrated game at the time. I felt like the game was not that deep.

Mortal Kombat 2 was the best of the orginal 5 Mortal Kombat games that I played including ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. I never touched the 3d MK games.

Mortal Kombat 3 was the start the decline of the series to me.

[norkusa]

I never liked the MK games (at least the 2-D ones...I thought Deception was o.k.). All my friends loved the series, so I really tried to get into them but they've always felt like the sloppiest fighting games ever to me. Maybe it's because of the choppy stop-motion character animation, sluggish controls, and over the top violence. It just felt like more of a gimmick than a fighting game to me.

I was a HUGE Street Fighter II fan before MK came out, so that might have something to do with my dislike for it.

[bangtango]

I thought the first game was great and I still feel that way today. Aside from that, I believe the original Mortal Kombat made an important contribution to the industry.

The only one I have ever played extensively is the original, even though I've tried some of the other 2D versions. It has good atmosphere, cool characters (the first game) and it is fun to play, regardless of whether or not it is "deep." I thought there was more substance in there than the blood because for whatever reason, I enjoy the Super NES port just as much as the Genesis one.

One of my only problems with the game is that a good player can plow through all of the fights in like half an hour. However, that isn't any different than a lot of other fighting games from that era. It makes it a good title to pick up and play, blowing off a little steam in the process. That and I found some of the special movies and fatalities difficult to do, which meant I usually stuck with guys like Scorpion who had easier move sets.

[Cloud121]

I love the characters, the storyline, and the games up until Deadly Alliance. Mortal Kombat 3 will always be my favorite, though Mortal Kombat 4 was the last really good one. Deadly Alliance was when the gameplay started to completely suck, but the storyline reached it's peak.

[Steven]

The series is what it is... and I only really care about MK2, which I thought was a pretty good fighting game in its own right. I stopped caring at all about MK after Trilogy.

To me it will always be known more for the "controversy" it caused than the actual gameplay, which cannot hold SF's jock strap, nor does it try to, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. It's a completely different game and I take it for what it is.

[jcalder8]

I never played it much growing up so I had a chance to pick it up recently for the SNES and I couldn't even get past the second guy, so yeah I'm not a fan.

[diskoboy]

Never liked the series.

I was already burnt out on fighting games by the time MK1 came out. The market was already flooded, and MK really didn't bring anything new to the genre. Graphics and tons of gore, maybe. But that's about it.

[Sudo]

I don't dislike it, but I felt that the series peaked with MK Trilogy. I'll probably give the eventual PS3 version a try, but I'm really not into fighting games as a whole anymore.

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Greg2600]

Played I and II a ton in arcades and on Genesis, with II being the better one of course. Played III a little, then gave up on them. I kind of gave up on all fighting games, been there, done that. The second movie was so horrible, it really put the series in a bad light. The television series was very good though, but lasted one season.

[Slate]

I never got in to the Mortal Kombat Games but also never hated them.

[ThoughtBomb]

I think I can say I've played nearly every MK released since it's inception in the 90's. Other than the fatalities and such, I was intrigued by it because it wasn't like Street Fighter or Fatal Fury, and that's what made it interesting. The fighters were actual people, and the storyline had a darker tone to it, and the moves were something never done before. I've yet to see anything in any fighter top the spear or the freeze. One started it all for me, I enjoyed 2 & 3 which introduced a kind of B-movie comedic side to the game, I never played 4 till years later on N64, and the 3d ones were indeed slower and layed things on too thick (2 fighting styles and a weapon?). That's not to say that I didn't like them cuz I did, but I'm glad their killing off a lot of the extra characters and hopefully the next one will RE4ize the series. I'm not going to back up everything they did though. After all, I consider Mortal Kombat: Annihilation to be the worst movie I've ever seen...

[CosmicMonkey]

Never could stand the series. Quite frankly, the motion capture looked crap compared to SNK or Capcom's sprites. And it never could come anywhere even close to the games from SNK or Capcom.

The only reason the games were even noticed was because of the completely unrealistic blood and the absolutely laughable Fatalities, Babalites etc. Playablility wise they sucked. Hard.

[Damaramu]

MKII is my favorite of the bunch.

My friends and I have found that MK Trilogy with all the cheats turned on (auto combos and one button fatalities) makes for a great time, especially when mixed with booze. I swear that game, or at least our copy, had so many random sound glitches that had us on the flloor rolling with laughter.

[Trevelyan]

I always thought it looked cool, but i always preferred to play SF. I could watch my mate who was a god play all day long...finish him!:popcorn:

[darkhades]

I love Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3. I don't care for any Mortal Kombat after the third.

[Pantechnicon]

I was never a fan of arcade fighters in the first place. And when I first saw an MK machine all I could think of was how the digitized imaging thing had already been done on Pit Fighter. Additionally, the costume designs of the characters looked ridiculously cheap.

About the only thing the game had going for it in my mind was the Fatalities, which were amusing to see...once. And while I spent several minutes shoulder-surfing all the hardcore MK players to see all these Fatalities for myself, I wasn't terribly interested in learning how to do them myself at 50 cents a credit, these being my starving college days and all. Consequently, I never developed an interest in the sequels either.

[XYXZYZ]

I was a loyal Street Fighter II whore when MK hit the scene, to me it was just some SF2 wannabe with digitized graphics and gore (which I considered rather tacky) as selling gimmicks. The play control was also really weird to me. It left a pretty cold impression on me, so I never bothered learning it.

[emceelokey]

I'm a huge MK mark and have a version of every iteration of the main series. The true glory of the game is in the first two. I think they got everything right in part 2 and everything after that it just never got better and in some cases just got horrible (Armageddon). 3d game wise I think Deception was the best. My main problem with MK is just the fact that it's produced by an American company with the American mentality of more, more, more. They just kept adding stuff that just complicated the game and in the end was basically not vital to the gamplay. No Mercys, Animalities, codes, combos, a run button, multiple versions of the same character (classic Sub-Zero / MK3 Sub-Zero, Smoke / Human Smoke). It was like paying $100 for a steak dish but when they serve you, you only get 3oz. of steak with tons of mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, biscuits, a baked potato, and fries. You want the steak and not all of the extra crap and not only that but you essentially have potatoes in 3 different variations.

[Fuyukaze]

i still remember the local arcade that got the first MK when it came out. it was a great game back then. when i saw the second one, i loved it. everything after that was either boring or annoying to me. too many secret charcters it felt like.

[strassy]

MK2 is a pretty good game in it's own right. I played the original as well as MK3, MK Trilogy, and whatever the ultimate edition of MK3 was. you can keep all of those.

even though i think MK2 is the best of the series, it can't hold a handle to any of the SF series (except maybe the original Street Fighter)

[mailman187666]

I've always been a fan of the series. I don't know if its due to nostalgia or if I'm really into it, but I've been buying the games since the first one. I wasn't really impressed with Armageddon though for some reason. I didn't like how they set up the fatalities. I'd say part 2 and 3 are the best and I really got into Deadly Alliance when that came out. I think if they are going to make more mortal Kombat games, they should stick to the roots of the series as far as gameplay, and maybe update the graphics like they are doing with SSF HD remix. Bring it back to 2D because obviously 2d fighters aren't dead.

[djbeatmongrel]

I can't stand the series anymore. Admittedly as a child I liked it dues to all the gore and silly kills. When I really got into fighters roughly 10 years later I quickly noticed how unpolished MK was as a series.

[Nirvana]

Mortal Kombat II was amazing. Street Fighter is always going to be my 2D fighter of choice, but Mortal Kombat II is a game I could still play for hours.

[blue lander]

I think I literally only played Mortal Kombat once, when it came out in the arcade. I thought the digitalized graphics looked like crap and the game handled poorly compared to Street Fighter II. Most of the big MK fans I knew at the time seemed to enjoy it purely for the blood and gore, so I simply dismissed the game (admittedly without giving it a fair chance) and never looked back.

I own a few MK games for various home consoles, but I don't think I've ever fired one up. To this day, I'm completely disinterested.

[ubersaurus]

I have a guilty pleasure love of MK1, 2, and Ultimate. The 3d ones are pure crap, but those early 2d games were pretty fun.

Detroit's Mortal Kombat scene was also a very strong one back in the day. I heard tales of an arcade having several MK2 machines, with them being played practically from open to close. In fact some years back I brought the SNES version to a game night some of those old players were attending, and sure enough, they ran that game for hours.

The first two were fairly shallow, and Ultimate is pretty weird compared to a lot of other fighters. But they're fun. And in the case of UMK3...not bad tourney games!

[FrakAttack]

Fighting games bore the hell out of me. Too many button combos to remember and too little payoff for learning them. :smash:

[spoon]

Not much I can say that hasn't been said. I have always been a fan of Capcom fighting games. The MK series always seemed like a hey look at me I've got blood and guts American fighter. The graphics were bad even back then. Shit, SF tried it years later with Street Fighter: The Movie. Sawada FTW.

The games themselves were fun to goof around with friends in. Just too over the top, sloppy and unbalanced for my tastes.

My favorite is Ultimate MK3. I also like 1, 2, and the Game Gear versions.

[Thrillo]

I liked them. I mostly played MK3, because that was all I had for the longest time.

The best part about Mortal Kombat for me was that while other kids parents wouldn't let their children play MK games, my mother not only let me buy and play 'em, but would also play the game with me. Best mom ever.

[campbell828793]

I used to like the series and went out of my way to beat the games for each character for 1 and 2. 3 i never owned till midway classics collection 2 and never owned 4. DA was alright, but just monotonus...Deception I liked due to everything else they added on top of the fighting. Puzzle Kombat was nice, even though its a rip-off lol.

Armageddon though was quickly made, quickly released, and quickly forgotten...

[kedawa]

MK was a nice diversion. MKII was a solid follow up. Everything since has been trash.

[DJ Daishi]

MK was a nice diversion. MKII was a solid follow up. Everything since has been trash.

agreed. I loved mkII with a passion. but when I recently downloaded the demo of mkIII on xbox live I thought the game was horrible.

[Jorpho]

I hadn't thought of it before (probably because I haven't seen the movie all the way through), but do you think the style of the games owe much to Big Trouble in Little China? The Youtube vid in this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113315) brought it readily to mind.

[Famidrive-16]

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was my favorite. Does the GBA port stand up?

[Half Japanese]

I look at the Mortal Kombat series the same way I look at the filmography of someone like Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme: A little bit satisfying, but ultimately an empty exercise in (questionable) style over substance. I was in elementary school when the MK series debuted and like most of my red-blooded pre-teen American peers, I was enamored with it. I think it was a combination of the controversy, an innate fascination with fighting and violence, and the character designs (particularly those of Scorpion and Sub-Zero). In a way, they were pure, unadulterated fantasy worlds that a bored kid visiting the arcade with his daycare on a weekly basis could only hope to inhabit; In a way sort of like that feeling I get looking at a Frank Frazetta painting.

I fondly remember my dad letting me rent Mortal Kombat II for the Genesis and being scared enough that my mom would find it (she wasn't a fan of the series) that I hid the cartridge in my sock drawer. I remember buying a strategy guide for the game just so I could attempt to recreate the characters in pencil from it both during and after class. I was also a big fan of Street Fighter, though to be honest I was never very good at either game. I think as the years have passed and my childhood grows ever distant, the Mortal Kombat series has lost what made it appealing in the first place. The digitized graphics have aged about as gracefully as the graphics on early 3D efforts like Battle Arena Toshinden, which is to say that it takes a sense of nostalgia to be able to appreciate or even stomach them. Then there were the sequels. They started adding weapons, increasingly fantastical character designs, complicated controls and in doing so lost a lot of what made the first two games appealing. While the SF series was and remains no stranger to sequelitis, Capcom seems to have shown more restraint, fine-tuning rather than complicating and sparsely adding new characters. While DeeJay might be a cheesy character, he certainly beats 'fat bicycle courier with a weak mullet.'

At this point, there really isn't anything that could respark my interest in the waning MK franchise. Every time Midway releases a new title in the series I just groan and wish they would let it die. By constantly striving to be the most extreme fighting game out there, and mostly only competing with themselves, they initiated a one contestant race to the bottom that has left the series as little more than a joke in my eyes. I will readily admit to having liked the first two games once upon a time, and even held a grudge for years agaisnt the idiot kid at my daycare who decided to try out some moves on another kid, putting the MK arcade cabinet off-limits, but it's dead to me.

[zektor]

I don't dislike it, but I do not think I ever had a chance to like it on my own. Let me explain:

It was the big thing amongst all of my friends back when it came out. Being the impressionable lemming I was back then, I rolled right along. My friends were definitely getting into it much more than I however, and I do not think I ever got into it really. I still couldn't pull off a fatality in ANY of the games if you asked me. But, the game is etched in my head and has memories of my past attached to it, so I cannot say I dislike it...no.

[rpepper9]

I do!

If it is a penny for my thoughts, and I give you my 2 cents, someone is making some money!

[emceelokey]

I hadn't thought of it before (probably because I haven't seen the movie all the way through), but do you think the style of the games owe much to Big Trouble in Little China? The Youtube vid in this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113315) brought it readily to mind.

Yes, I remember reading an article somewhere with Ed Boon I think and he was saying that there was a lot of influence in character design from that movie and I think Running Man.


Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was my favorite. Does the GBA port stand up?

The GBA games sucked. The DS Ultimate game is pretty much a straight forward emulation of the arcade game from what I hear.

[spoon]

Also wanted to add that while I did not enjoy the new games, Konquest mode is a fun time waster. Like a poor man's B-movie adventure mode from Soul Calibur.

I also enjoyed playing through Shaolin Monks. It would be cool to have a sequel with Co-op over XBL.

[Cryomancer]

I actually enjoy some of the newer ones. Konquest mode for sure, and Shaolin whatsit is a pretty decent game too. I'm still terrible at the fighting, but the alternate gameplay they've tried lately actually makes the world/characters fairly entertaining again. Hell they put in super-deformed kart racing and a puzzle mode even.

[bangtango]

I've never played a Mortal Kombat game since Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. From the sounds of things, the newer games aren't well liked. The bad thing about this is that it is leading to a little revisionist history where people who enjoyed the first two games are now conditioned to believe that they always sucked.

Meanwhile people wonder why companies like Sega are so reluctant to "resurrect" franchises like Streets of Rage or Eternal Champions for a console today.

[Streetball 21]

I can also see how the newer Mortal Kombat games aren't very well liked. MK Shaolin Monks had a pretty positive reception, but then again it is more of an adventure game. Out of the newer versions, I think Deception is probably my favorite, especially the Konquest mode.

[Famidrive-16]

The GBA games sucked. The DS Ultimate game is pretty much a straight forward emulation of the arcade game from what I hear.


Whoops, yeah, I meant the DS game, ugh. I saw it at a Gamestop and never knew they were making it. Will go check it out.

[emceelokey]

I've never played a Mortal Kombat game since Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. From the sounds of things, the newer games aren't well liked. The bad thing about this is that it is leading to a little revisionist history where people who enjoyed the first two games are now conditioned to believe that they always sucked.

Meanwhile people wonder why companies like Sega are so reluctant to "resurrect" franchises like Streets of Rage or Eternal Champions for a console today.

The problem with any game that's been resurrected is that they always try to add a bunch of extra things and change a bunch of stuff to make them "modern" and that typically fails. If a great game still holds up today then they shouldn't change too much about it much like Contra 4 for the DS.

I still think they can do a good Streets of Rage game if they stuck close to the original's core game play of punching stuff. Eternal Champions on the other hand just sucked. I remember not likeing it back in the day and I remember hating it in more recent memory.

[ubersaurus]

Genesis Eternal Champions may have been weak, but the Sega CD sequel was absolutely amazing. Easily one of the best console only fighters ever made. If Sega ever resurrected it, I'd be there in an instant...but I doubt it. Sega of Japan killed the Saturn project because they were worried it would be more popular than Virtua Fighter in the US(which it was, really).

Hate on EC is another good example of time making people hate things they liked.

[c0ldb33r]

Why don't I like mortal kombat? It's cheap. Cheap Cheap Cheap Cheap Cheap.

2 player is okay, but the button moves for the finishing moves are a pain in the ass.