Mortal Kombat has gone through many iterations through the years. The sequels, remakes, retcons and genre-breaking titles span quite a long duration of greatness and hardships. By the time Mortal Kombat got out of the 3D era with the Gamecube and Playstation 2, the lore and franchise had been used up quite a bit. So, in the vain of the comic books of old and many properties we know today, MK had a reboot. This is titled "Mortal Kombat" but it's MK9 that people commonly know it. This title, somehow, culminated many of the best elements of both classic and 3D Mortal Kombat.
While they were not as fondly looked upon as they are today, there is a lot to love with Deception and Armegeddon. Mortal Kombat 4 (or Gold for the Dreamcast crowd) is not quite so well remembered, but even that one had its own crude charm. As rough as the 3D period was, there was some good material to work with. In 2011, new life was breathed into the property and we were given a full restart to the entire story.
The variety of characters on display here is a good bit. If you get the Komplete edition you can get Kratos in the PS3 port. This title also brought about one of my personal favorite characters, Skarlet. One great thing about the Mortal Kombat brand is its use of recolored characters, strangely enough. Each of them look aesthetically pleasing to the brand and they all have their unique fighting styles and powers. SubZero, Scorpion and Reptile from the original game, while changed somewhat from the original design, still remain favorite characters. This still goes for Kitana, Mileena, Jade and Skarlet, even if some would gasp and call you shameful for loving their character designs here. How unsightly!
MK9 is a strong entry into the series, mostly because of its reiterations of the characters, creative thought processes for said characters and beautiful graphics that still hold up today. The fighting styles, controls and stage designs with new mechanics all add to very tight gameplay.
Spoiler Alert
The story is where this game gets complicated. Somehow, they thought it would be classy to bring all of their dead characters back to life in order to kill them again. They not only saw fit to kill them, but also make the majority of their deaths very embarrassingly easy. Somehow, Sindel kills 75% of the heroes in one battle. She kills Cyber Subzero by punching him, if you can figure that out. To say this was baffling is a great understatement. For some reason, they thought they would get by if they just killed their old characters and bring out new characters in Mortal Kombat X.
This didn't work, obviously, and it ended up making the lore convoluted and miserably dumb in the ways of death and resurrection. Mortal Kombat 9 somehow resurrected and killed its own storyline, which can be considered irony. If you were looking for a game that you could pick up for fighting game fun, this is among the greatest. It's both 2D in perspective while having beautifully rendered 3D. The deaths are just as gory and the new characters bring a lot to the table in both story and blood gushing moves. If you love Mortal Kombat, then consider this a very large recommendation. Virtua Splatter!
