July 15, 2008 - Note to Mortal Kombat fans: calm down. Ever since Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was announced at Midway's Las Vegas event, fanboys have been freaking out because the game's shooting for a Teen rating and the interwebs have associated that with meaning destroying spines and lighting people on fire are out of the question.
Don't worry; Fatalities are here.
If you haven't been following this game's progression, the short version is that Midway's getting its peanut butter all up in DC Comics' chocolate. The game will bring the two universes together just to rip them apart. This of course has brought about all sorts of questions such as how you'd kill Superman and how Batman could withstand a Scorpion spear to the chest. The answer, of course, is magic. If two completely different worlds collide, there are clearly some dark forces at work. Magic is one of Kal-El's weaknesses so that explains how he can be beaten, and magic is also the reason the playing field's been leveled for regular guys to go toe-to-toe with superheroes
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Today was my first chance to actually play this game, and I have to say it actually feels pretty good. Trailers and screens had made the gameplay look a little stiff in my opinion, but once I got the controller and started darting around the screen and pulling off combos with the D-pad, everything flowed nicely. The character select screen had 20 slots -- ten red, ten blue -- and had three characters available for each franchise. Representing Mortal Kombat was Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Sonya; while Superman, Batman, and Flash made up the DC side.
The thing about MK/DC is that the combos aren't going to be as long or as rigid -- or at least the combinations of button presses to pull off a move wont' be as long. Most of the moves I was pulling off were two directions followed by a face button. If the move I pulled off got my opponent in the air, I could get underneath him or her and keep the hit combo climbing.
Now, being my first time brawling in this title, I sucked hard at it. However, I had the pleasure of playing with the developers, and they were more than happy to wail on me in an attempt to showcase some of the game's finer points. Now, every move you have has a variation of itself called a Pro-Move. What happens is you'll pull off Sonya's handstand where she grabs a dude with her legs and slams him to the ground. If you pull this move off and hit a specific button at a specific time, Sonya will slam the opponent to the ground and his body'll pop back up so that she can link together some more shots. It might not sound like much, but these moves -- which in typical MK fashion will need to be spread by word of mouth -- give you that extra second to dish out more pain, and that's what makes pros, right?
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Beyond these Pro-Moves, each character has five to seven special moves that define who they are. I saw Superman blast Batman with heat vision, Batman throw batarangs at Scorpion, Sub-Zero freeze himself so that when his opponent punches the frozen shell Sub-Zero's opponent would become frozen, the Flash shoot across the screen several times while delivering punishing punches, and many more. But if you've read this far, you probably really want to know about Fatalities. The gist is this: DC superheroes -- generally -- don't kill. Superman, Batman, and Flash aren't about breaking necks. So, in this game, everyone from the Mortal Kombat universe and every DC villain will pull off Fatalities. Every DC superhero will pull off Brutalities.
I got to see the difference between the moves today. After dropping all of his matches to Scorpion, Flash was left in a wobbly haze. Scorpion removed his mask, lit his skull on fire and spewed the flames onto the Flash, who screamed, burnt to a charred husk, and collapsed. On the flipside, Superman beat the tar out of Batman, and when it was time to finish him off, Superman's eyes began to glow, he raised his fists, and the Last Son of Krypton proceeded to pound Batman's body into the ground like a railroad spike. In real life it would've killed Batman, but I guess there's an outside chance that he'd just have every bone is his body broken.
As far as other cool, brutal moves, this game seems to have a lot. According to the team, one of Midway's focuses with this title is making it so the scene that would typically be inactive for you are now active. You've probably seen videos or screens of two kombatants falling toward the Earth while slugging it out. When this happens in the game, face buttons pop up in the bottom corners of the screen. If the guy on top taps the face buttons as they light up, he'll inflict damage on the opponent as they fall and fill a Super-Hit meter. If the opponent nails all the buttons and the offensive dude fails, the defensive character will rotate to the top and steal however much momentum had built up in the Super-Hit meter. What is the Super-Hit meter? Well, if you get to a point in the fall where you've built it up, you can tap a shoulder button to set up a crushing blow. I saw the Flash grab someone by the feet as they fell, spin the dude in midair at super-speed, and then slam him to the ground -- which cracks from the impact. Similarly, Superman pulled off a sick looking overhead punch on a dude.
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All of these violent moves play into Midway's damage system. There's the traditional green and red health meters at the top of the screen, but there's also real-time damage. As the kombatants brawl, costumes get bloody gashes, masks get torn, and faces get bruised. On one hand it's weird to see Superman with a shiner, but on the other it's pretty to see Scorpion's spine exposed while he fights and it's hardcore to see Batman bruised and bloodied but fighting these super-powered jerks.
You'll get to see this damage up close a few times. To begin with, you can pull off moves that enter into close combat. Basically, you'll hit a combo, the camera will pull in tight on the fighters, and the face buttons will reappear. You'll need to tap the buttons to come out on top. Whoever wins the fight also gets treated to the camera coming in for a close up to show off any nifty battle scars.
As a DC fan, I could go on and on about how good this game looks -- the costumes have realistic seams and look solid, the move where you grab someone and run them through one side of a Metropolis building and out the other is awesome, and the list goes on -- but I'll end it here. For a first taste, today's session fit the bill. The matches were fun, the blood was cool, and the moves seemed fierce. Although the face button stuff while you fall made me feel involved, I still think the guys look a bit stiff.
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Fighter fans should keep an eye out for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe when it ships this November with online multiplayer, a single-player campaign, and Catwoman in an extremely low-cut jumpsuit.
MEOW!
Linear Mode
