Mortal Kombat: Armageddon – Recap & Review
by Sindra, filed in Games, Reviews on Jan.18, 2007
With the turn of the new year having come and gone, Midway games has alot to celebrate. Its newest title of one of the greatest fighting franchise in gaming history, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has achieved many award-winning goals like it’s predecessors before it. In reaching the mark 1 million copies sold just last week, and a port to the Wii system by April of this year to join its releases on the PS2 and Xbox systems, the Mortal Kombat name has certainly a lot to boast about.
What did we get?
Well, to quote a respected member of the MK Online community, “[John] Vogel has been on weed.”
We got an orgy of mish-mashed and unresolved endings, which as any MK fan will tell you are a dire part of the game. When so much has been built up upon with endings in the previous two games and stories that seem so inspired, to end things half-assed is not the way to end an era. The story is left in a tangled mess of questions unanswered and plot-holes unexplained. How did Shang and Quan live through the explosion that Raiden created to stop the Dragon King? What happened to the Kamidogou? Where is the “One Being” that was hinted upon in the last game to be a greater threat than Onaga? What happened to Sheeva, Stryker, Kintaro, and others whose stories were just left hanging after the first batch of MK games? And even after the Armageddon story takes place, where’s the great catastrophe that the entire game itself was leading up to? Taven and Daegon were meant to be the saviors of Armageddon, and their stories were just left wide and out in the open, with nothing explained as to what happens during the actual “Armageddon” of the game. And the endings produced by key characters, some of which are supposed to end up being “true” endings that lead into the next game, serve no closure whatsoever. The game itself was rushed, plain and simple. The Midway team sat down one day and said “Hmm, lets see if we can squeeze one more game out before the Next-Gen consoles take over everything and we gotta start with something fresh.”, *squeeze* being the operative word there. It was MK Trilogy part-deux, and was still lacking.
Now don’t get me wrong, my fellow MK fanatics. I have been a lover of the series from its conception. My opinions of this game are the opinions of a veteran of the series. I still love Ed Boon and the guys from Midway. I still love the series itself. I am still a fangirl. However, as of right now, there is no story. It is ruined, and will be until the next game comes out and some major revisions are made, most of which will probably be retconned plotlines that served no purpose whatsoever. The brilliance that has been the Mortal Kombat series ends this chapter with mostly nonsense, and the rest of us are left to our own devices. Think about it.
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