Mortal Kombat 3: Why?

[The Shawn]

I still play Street Fighter II. I haven't touched a Mortal Kombat in 10 years.

Ripping out a spine is meaningless when the game that you play to get to that point is below sub-par.

The Spine Rip is from the First MK game. Hardly "below sub-par" as far as standards in VG's when the arcade cab came out at the time in 1992.

[Az]

and the atmosphere was dark and bloody. The atmosphere of the third game just didn't feel the same.

Exactly. Many refer to the first MK game being like an "old kung-fu movie", which I would agree, To me, it's got tons of atmosphere, and the second one took it and added added a bit of horror to it.

The 3rd resembles a Sci-Fi channel movie. Gameplay mechanics aside; the characters and backgrounds are lame, all violence is treated as a joke, and the music is just too upbeat and corny.

[Zapf]

edit: oh this was already covered, my bad

[ubersaurus]

MK3 was a disaster, but Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is far and away the best game in the MK series. This isn't even opinion; anyone who has put any time into the games will agree. MK1 and 2 both play pretty stiffly, and they're both broke as shit once players start getting the hang of the game, but UMK3 - by sheer accident - rises above simply being gory to being actually a solid, balanced, and unique fighting game.

I suppose to get to that high point though, they had to go through the pains of MK3.

[kupomogli]

Sub Zero Mythologies wasn't bad either on the 64 at the time

At the time I still liked the MK series a lot and Castlevania was one of my favorite series(it's my favorite series actually.)

Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Castlevania Symphony of the Night came out at the exact same time. I really wanted both and a story based game involving my favorite MK character almost got me to choose that over SotN. I chose SotN.

Later on played MK Mythologies and am really glad of my initial choice. SotN may not be my favorite CV title, nor even my favorite exploration CV title, but it's a great game and the first time playing it is probably one of my best gaming experiences. It was such a unique experience and take on the CV series.

[Kitsune Sniper]

MK1 was fine, and beatable.

After MK2 came out the difficulty spiked, hard, after two or three fights. The AI cheats a lot.

Basically only MK1 exists for me.

[megasdkirby]

After MK2 came out the difficulty spiked, hard, after two or three fights. The AI cheats a lot.

Basically only MK1 exists for me.

I agree. Why did the game designers decide that after the first fight, the others will be ridiculously hard? And it gets worse with the last two bosses, mainly the one before the main boss. I found Kitaro to be harder than Shao Kahn, Motaro to be harder than Shao Kahn...and the list goes on.

The first one has a charm that no other in the series can beat.

[Baloo]

I used to be a big, big Mortal Kombat fan, but I always preferred 1 and 2 to 3. Ultimate 3 was decent, but 3 was pretty bad. Mortal Kombat 4 wasn't too good either, but I did very much enjoy Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Shaolin Monks. I thought they were all pretty solid games.

After Deception came out though and I pretty much played the hell out of it and got just about all the unlockables in the conquest mode, I found Street Fighter and now play that. Mortal Kombat was great back then, but now it's just kind of eh to me.

Now, just give me Street Fighter III 3rd Strike or Street Fighter Alpha 3 and I'm happy. But I think I'll still play Mortal Kombat 2 over Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter 2 to me is just too sluggish.

Mortal Kombat 2 is still a decent game though, no doubt about it.

[thom_m]

I fail to see how the MK series was that worse than SFII back in the day; I actually was glad that, after all the SF ripoffs, somebody decided to implement a different look and control system on a fighter, for a change. The game got me hooked since time the first time I played MKI on the arcade, both for the visuals and for the game itslef (even though I sucked and it).

On the MK3 issue itself: while I agree with Orion when he says that MKIII actually changed the atmosphere of the game, I didn't feel that the dial-a-combo thing (which I also suck at) and the running button ruined the fun. I do admit, however, that didn't make the game more fun than the others, either; they always felt more like a tweaking than a revolution on the game mechanics to me. That, and UMK3 fixed the real bad issues about MK3 (including the Scorpion' absence - what were they thinking?!).

So I don' t think the whole MK3 "series" sucks at all; in fact, my friends and I have really exciting MK Trilogy (the Ultimante UMK3! ) nigths at my place from time to time, and we all have a blast.

[BiggerBoo]

I've been asking "why" in regards to mortal combat since the first one.


I guess that is what happens when your first fighting game is SF2 for SNES.

I'm pretty much in the same boat, in that I never owned or had any desire to play them, even when they were relevant. I was totally not into the characters. Aside from Scorpion and Sub-Zero, they all looked to me like rejected Live Action TMNT baddies...oy. My best buddy as a kid loved MK2, and I can see why, but I always preferred SFII, or even Killer Instinct, and I'm pretty sure that deep down, he did too.

EDIT: Thanks for movin' the thread...felt pretty nubbish for that one. :P

[DevilRy]

lol yeah I'd say 100% of Mortal Kombat's appeal to me is the camp value. Every once in a while I'll throw it in, do a few fatalities for nostalgic amusement, then turn it off before I start to think about how many quarters I wasted at the arcade on that game as a teenager. Also, the franchise is beyond corny if you include the movies in your assessment of the series.

[Gavica]

The best mortal kombat game was Mortal Kombat 2 on sega 32X which was the best port of the game.

[megasdkirby]

The best mortal kombat game was Mortal Kombat 2 on sega 32X which was the best port of the game.

I really liked that port. It was even better than the Sega Saturn's port, which was way too easy.

[Arkhan]

The Spine Rip is from the First MK game. Hardly "below sub-par" as far as standards in VG's when the arcade cab came out at the time in 1992.

Street Fighter 2 came out before MK1. Explain to me why MK had jerky controls and gameplay in comparison to SF2 which was very smooth and responsive.


I think the game play is definitely subpar. The graphics and atmosphere were nice though. Had that not been the case the game would've been a giant pile of crap.

Like Pit Fighter.

[The Shawn]

Street Fighter 2 came out before MK1. Explain to me why MK had jerky controls and gameplay in comparison to SF2 which was very smooth and responsive.


I think the game play is definitely subpar. The graphics and atmosphere were nice though. Had that not been the case the game would've been a giant pile of crap.

Like Pit Fighter.

Because you suck at video games and should jump out of a very tall building to prove your ultimate worth?

I dunno, I got nothing.Other then Jesus hates you.

[retroman]

why so much hate for 3...it wasnt that bad....no baraka though....that sucked..

[Hari Seldon]

I've been asking "why" in regards to mortal combat since the first one.


I guess that is what happens when your first fighting game is SF2 for SNES.

It was all about the blood and fatalities. The game is alright I guess but without those it wouldn't had the success it had.

[Enigmus]

The best mortal kombat game was Mortal Kombat 2 on sega 32X which was the best port of the game.

I wonder if anyone here's played the supposed PSX release before.
Still, MK3 sucks for another reason- the repetitive overclocking of the CPU opponents.

I started with MK2 on a copy of Midway Arcade Treasures 2, and tried playing MK3 with Jax (my favorite character in MK2.) Guess who my opponent is? Jax. I start playing. and right off the bat was about what seemed like 137 body throws, 87 wave punches and a seni-truck full of Gotchas.

Needless to say, I never want to play it again when it's an uneven, rushed-feeling combofest. Yet I'm still able to play MK Trilogy. Hmm, weird.

Also, I sorta like Pit Fighter from time to time. Just putting that out there.

[onReload]

I generally refer to MK3 as encompassing MK3, UMK3, and MKT...on any console.

Complaining about difficulty in a game that is largely designed for versus-mode play doesn't make any sense to me...and sorry, not to do the whole "look how good I am," thing, but even without reading a snippet of a guide, the A.I. of the whole series is fairly easy to exploit after awhile. However, I don't like how sometimes it appeared that changing the difficulty setting DIDN'T WORK in certain versions. Sometimes, I do want an easy little run-through of a fighting game.

I understand why a lot of people don't like MK3; the story was tighter between MK1 and 2 (and shit really hits the fan in MK4 and afterward, eugh...) and MK3 brought in some really bad character design choices - Stryker is a fun character to play, but for a cop, his uniform is pretty awful. Matter of fact, his uniform is awful without any context whatsoever. Shang Tsung (played by John Turk, who was also Unmasked Sub-Zero) had a HORRIBLE wig, Shao Khan is awesome, but having him twice in a row is just...lazy. Sindel looks like an aging Elvira...I could go on. MK2 was also smartly set in parts of Outworld, with some creepy looking stages (Dead Pool, The Armory), with MK3 on Earth, it just felt silly. Some of the stages were cool (The Tower, for one, and the multi-leveled stages were fun for a while), but some were kind of lame, like The Street...Also, they later included The Pit II, but it has no stage fatality, as they would have to get every character (in proper costume, i.e. metal arms Jax does not equal regular MK2 Jax) to mocap that silly top-down falling animation...and I guess they were too lazy to do that.

While I do like a lot of the aesthetic changes (the way the human ninjas look, Kano with a real costume, the robots, the newer ninjas and moves, a combo counter, etc), some of it was pretty damn ugly. Animalities were lazily designed, with not much animation to many of them (and many of them look like glow-in-the-dark stickers, along with other moves that randomly cause glow (Nightwolf's reflector, Kabal's spike wheel summoning move, Kung Lao's dumb hat throw)...To be honest, my problem with the MK Team and why the series went to shit is their laziness...I feel this is epitomized in MK: Armageddon, but I won't write all about that here as it's too long a rant. The contradiction in the MK3 series is that they skimped on some things, but really put in a lot of work in making the characters play uniquely, adding in new finishers and moves, and tried to up the speed of gameplay - something the SF2 series got right, eventually.

The gameplay is admittedly different, but not worse, really; I think it's subject to opinion...I like the dial-a-combo system, and it's not crucial to winning a match, it's just an easy way to pick up the game and already have some damage options more creative than an uppercut - UMK3 is considered the most tournament-feasible of the whole series, and was recently played in two US Street Fighter IV-centric tournaments..in a nutshell, you have to mix up the preset combos with specials or uppercuts to really maximize damage. The Aggressor system in MKT is pretty lame. Trilogy also sports some really dumb infinites and glitches, but it's loveable for its huge amount of characters and moves; it's kind of like a love letter to fans of MK3...and not so much fans of the first two games, though they include Kano with an unused move, MK2-style Kung Lao/Jax/Raiden...

Comparing any fighting game to SF2 is always going to be problematic...In a way, SF2 was the mold for all fighting games to come, but at the same time, you can't expect everything to stay the same way. It is possible to appreciate both things. After growing up with MK, then learning SF more recently, I think I just really dug the atmosphere and story behind MK, (which is why, to me, Deception's simple RPG and Shaolin Monks are easily the best things they've done with the series in a decade or so) versus the innovative gameplay mechanics in SF (Third Strike is one of my favorite games of all time...it's very hard to get bored of playing it, for me.)

Let us also remember that UMK3 is considered the most tournament feasible MK game, and it is also one of the few times the MK people went back and redid an MK game. I don't see this a coincidence; it took many tries to get each Street Fighter subseries correct, though we all have our own opinions on "the best" version...some iterations are considered a step backwards in many fighting game series.

In short: Different is not worse.

[whoisKeel]

I thought MK2 was cool back in the day, and it was the first fighter i played that you could juggle, which I thought was freaking awesome at the time. I like MK2, but it's not sf2t or anything even close to that playability. Why does every character have the same normals?

MK1, sure I bought into it at the time, but play it now, it's a mess.

I was pretty turned off by MK3, so I never game UMK3 much thought...was I wrong?


...and...remember that sweeping, over and over, and over...and over!andover will beat the cpu...just sweep!!! Man the AI always sucked on MK