ArmageddonWith 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.

The current generation of Mortal Kombat games coming to a close with the release of Armageddon, as told by series co-creator and current head man Ed Boon, the newest renditions of the game will be envisioned for the Next-Gen consoles alone. So let’s take a small look at how things have been wrapped up in this last game.

As many an MK fan can attest, a large part of what made the game series enjoyable was the fact that there was an interesting storyline attached to the game that made sense – a rarity in the fighting game genre. Twists and plots unraveled through each game’s conception, and some left people guessing as to whether or not a character’s fate would be exactly how it ended in that game, or would it evolve with the next? Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the first in this recent arc of the MK story that evolved to fully render 3D, may have not been every fan’s cup of tea, but still offered a rich plot that delved deep into the recesses of the game’s history, and shook the hell out of it to create a whole new energy to the new direction the game was going in. Liu Kang is dead. Shang Tsung and Quan Chi have teamed up. Johnny Cage is back from the dead…..again! The things get even more interesting with the coming of Mortal Kombat: Deception. Raiden sacrifices himself. Sub-Zero gets a massive redesign overhaul that would make Shredder jealous. Scorpion is the champion of the elder gods! Liu Kang zombie! With so much building up on these last two games story-wise, you can understand the tension and anticipation so many MK fans were hording for the next game to come out and explain just what the hell was going on!

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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