Hey, DTT Faithful. I’m happy to announce that I’m finally back, and, as a lot of you guessed, I’ve had a Mortal Monday planned for days. I want to deeply thank those who kept their faith in me and my work, and I am forever grateful to everyone who felt I should be the g1 of the Year. Maybe we can win this fight together next time. Let’s have some fun in the meantime.

My quest to review Mortal Kombat vs. DCU started out in the strangest and silliest way I could imagine. I’ve been just a little broke lately(yay, economy!), and I had to settle with renting the game for now.

The trip to Blockbuster Video was downright mind boggling. I can only assume that each store was shipped four copies of the game because I was forced to visit two stores that had the same copy count. I snagged the last copy at store number two and talked to the clerk about the lack of copies. She proceeded to tell me how anticipated the game was(really now, Blockbuster?) and asked for $9.44. Is this really what people expect to pay for a five day rental?! I nearly fainted at that price. Nevertheless, I needed the game and paid up.

First off the graphics for the stages and characters are amazing in this installment. Not only are they superior to previous MK games due to newer technology, but they look more serious and less cartoonish. A big problem I had with the games of the previous generation was the fake and dull facial features of the characters, and I’m glad that the problem is gone.

The overall fighting looks amazing The movements are very fluid, and the special moves look more devastating than ever. I was especially impressed with The Flash and how the excellent frame rate allows the character to come to life. The stages compliment the less gummed-up fighting animations nicely with detailed damage after a character free falls or someone like Superman punches into the ground.

Costume damage was something that impressed me. Again I was expecting the ridiculous textures from the Deadly Alliance era, but I was pleasantly surprised. Cuts, bruises, and tears begin to form at the actual point of damage, and they are detailed in a believable way. The amount pf blood, however, was a turn-off. Ed Boon had assured us that this would still be a bloody, gory game, but he lied tremendously. Small spats of blood soar into the air with each attack and quickly vanish. That’s it; there’s your gore. The only ways I could remember that I was playing a Mortal Kombat game were the characters and the Fatalities - more to come on that sore subject later .

The gameplay is a little odd at first. The dial-a-combo system still exists but has received a huge overhaul. Stances are a thing of the past(except for some weapon stances and Baraka’s blades), and the combos that link together with special moves are amazing. Even bits of old school showed up with down on the D-pad being duck and up being jump. Even the uppercuts, sweeps, and roundhouses are back. But don’t worry, younger MK fans; strafing still exists as well.

I was very happy to see that more or less every character played in a unique way. The lack of clone characters and a fresh update to the combat system was a treat compared to the failed experiment that Armageddon brought to the table. Even the fighting stances are new except for the blade stance that Deathstroke uses.

The speed of the gameplay has gone from fairly exciting to downright furious. It’s quite possible to play in such a skilled manner that the opponents can get only a few attempts in before they’re beaten down.

Mini-games do exist in MK vs. DCU but in a way that the series has never presented. Klose Kombat does its jobs in spicing up gameplay but can also be a cheap way to play catch up if one is losing. The system takes time to learn, and a skilled player can predict a button press fairly easy to make the escape. However, the still could create chaos between competitive friends and players online.

Free Fall Mode is fun at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s one big gotcha game. One can dominate the entire time, but the tide can change in an instant, and all that work will instantly be null. The player on the defense at the end takes all damage no matter how many hits they got in before the switch. Sound fair? I don’t think so.

The new Test Your Might feature is pretty damned cool. The MK Team finally did this classic mode the justice it deserves. And who doesn’t love slamming someone through multiple walls?

The mini-games can be fun, but one other addition seems out of place and downright stupid at times. I’d like to confess that I believe the Rage meter is a load of crap. It is a meter that fills every time a character gets hit and can be used for combo breakers(meaning more than three breakers per fight now). But filling this meter all the way and activating Rage mode makes the character damned near invincible and do twice the normal amount of damage. Great! Another tool to play catch up with!

Now it’s time to talk about the part in gameplay that gets everyone’s attention: the Fatalities and Heroic Brutalities. They are certainly better than the Fatality system in Armageddon, but they’re also weaker than I expected. Some of the classic Fatalities(like Jax’s Head Clap from MK II) almost seem like a bitter mockery while others(like Scorpion’s classic Toasty) finally seem to be done correctly. Overall I feel let down by them. The Heroic Brutalities are pretty boring, and the Fatalities are far less than epic. If they were perhaps bloodier and less silly in some areas, then I’d be thrilled with them. But I’m not.

Konquest mode is a little different this go around. It cuts out all of the useless story snippet bullshit from Deadly Alliance and the “adventure mode” atmosphere and is used solely as a combo learning tool. Each character has ten different combo chains to master, and the majority of the chains focus on the game’s promoves - special move chains that require exact timing to perform them. It’s a tough mode to master, but it teaches destructive combos that definitely aren’t obvious. This is where players will learn to be pros, and it’s going to take some serious skill to be impressive in this installment.

The game’s sounds are pretty sweet. Aside from recycled material for Shang Tsung and Liu Kang not shouting his usual gibberish, everything sounded right. There are even a few scenes where the theme made famous by Batman: The Animated Series can be heard in the background.

But there’s always something to ruin the good stuff, and that thing would be the voice acting. It’s been a while since I’ve heard such a perfect marriage of poor writing and craptastic acting. The few exceptions would be Superman, the Joker, and Shao Kahn. Everyone else sucked in my opinion.

Mortal Monday readers know that I’m obsessed with the background story for Mortal Kombat, so it’s probably no surprise that the story for MK vs. DCU pisses me off. It drops hints that the story could take place after MK II or MK III but never confirms anything at all. It’s a giant, ridiculous guessing game. I don’t care if the story presented is cannon or not - stop being so damned stupid about it.

The story itself is also pretty silly. Apparently Shao Kahn and Darkseid were both going through corrupted portals at the same time and fused to become Dark Kahn. The existence of this thing causes an infectious energy known as The Rage - reports of it being spread by infected monkeys have proven to be bullsh… - to take over heroes and villains alike and the realms of MK and DC begin to merge. The heroes and villains of each side join forces against the other in belief that their respective worlds are being invaded. Both sides eventually learn of Dark Kahn’s existence and prepare to eradicate the threat - but not before Dark Kahn can successfully turn the two armies against one another in a final battle. Only Raiden and Superman survive the battle and face off against Dark Kahn to end the galactic threat.

And the inconsistencies of this story makes me want to tear my damned eyes out. I think that people did whatever the hell they felt like doing and had a few shots at the end of the day to forget about it. Quan Chi somehow has the rune tattoos that he acquired in Deadly Alliance, Scorpion is after Sub-Zero even though he learned of the younger brother’s innocence in MKII and held no grudge against him in MK III, Raiden has powers even though another realm is merging with Earthrealm, and Captain Marvel entered the Netherealm despite having a untainted soul. I’d also like to talk about Superman while I’m bitching. How are characters like Batman, The Flash, and the Joker able to hurt him? He’s susceptible to Kryptonite and magic, right? Those three have neither, and they can still hurt Superman in the game. I’m probably just nitpicking on that one, but I found it very annoying.

Having rented the Xbox 360 version of the game, I found myself unlocking achievements like mad early on in the game. I was unlocking achievements worth ten, fifteen, and sometimes even twenty-five points completely by accident. This title is very, very generous when it comes to passing out the big scoring achievements, but the small scoring ones are next to impossible to get. For example, there is a five point achievement for completing all of the Konquest Kombos for each character. Sounds easy, right? Give it a try and find out. I dare you.

I enjoyed my time with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, but I will admit that boredom definitely set in after I had played it non-stop for a good portion of the day. But I wanted to buy it even then. I think that fighter fans would be thrilled with MK vs. DCU at first, but boredom would set in over time for them as well. This is more of a title for the hardcore DC fans, the hardcore MK fans, and nut jobs who write columns titled Mortal Monday.

So where did I go wrong or right when I made predictions in a previous From the Shadows? First off, I predicted that Kabal and The Flash could possibly play like one another - and I was dead wrong. They both have the dashing move, but The Flash is a beast of a character to do combos with. Kabal used to be the character that I thought of when I thought of combos, but now it's The Flash.

I thought that the new modes meant that the MK Team was planning to kill off the stage actions, and I was actually correct - to my surprise. Stage fatalities and interactions were really beginning to grind on my nerves, and I won't miss them.

I also predicted that the game absolutely had to have the fighting stances in order to survive, and I'll admit that I was dead wrong in every way. The combat system is actually so much better now the the stances are history. It's almost like they were dead weight to begin with when I think of how smooth MK vs DCU plays.

I'm so glad to be back and writing for everyone who enjoys my work. Hopefully you're glad to have me back. It's late, so it's time for me to get some sleep and think about how Midway did something fairly right for once.