After wrapping up Deception, many MK fans were eagerly awaiting the newest Mortal Kombat title to continue the Onaga storyline. However, fans were equally excited to hear that the new MK title would feature every Mortal Kombat character to grace the series – much like Trilogy did. As more and more information about the upcoming title became available, fans slowly became skeptic about the quality that the new game would bring to the table. They were right to be skeptic. Gamespot gave it a harsh seven out of ten for the Xbox, and Playstation Magazine gave the PS2 version a three out of ten. How this could truly become the series' Armageddon?

Deadly Alliance brought a new fighting system to the series with its 2002 release that left MK fans stunned. The dial-a-combos were cool, but the ability to switch fighting stances and actually link the stances together for huge combos was something that fans couldn't get enough of. There was a fair yet steep learning curve with the fighting stances, and linking them together for said devastating combos was a craft that demanded practice in order to perfect. These stances separated every character in a way that no character felt the same in any way. Characters even differed vastly in their weapon stances.

The stances took a swift shot in the nuts in Armageddon, cutting each character down to one fighting stance and one weapon stance. Little to no stances were new, and older stances were blatantly recycled and assigned to different characters in a weak attempt to change things up and provide a different atmosphere. Combos were also cut short to the point that there was an average of one combo that linked into the weapon stance when there used to be at least two per fighter. This filler method was used because of the addition of so many characters plus the addition of air kombat, but they didn't make the loss of stances and combos suck any less.

The announcement that Armageddon would feature a Kreate-a-Fighter mode stirred up quite a buzz across the Internet and especially in places such as MortalKombatOnline.com, but fans were truly disappointed when the final product arrived at the door. While GameSpy would call this feature a "robust" character creation tool, I would call it a complete bag of fail. The character creation tool was honestly rather poor and offered little customization that wasn't ridiculous or stupid. Players would be forced to play the same tiring Konquest mode or Arcade mode to save up enough Koins and purchase the moves and clothing items they wanted. Not to mention that system allowed players to create characters that had no problem with juggling the opposition to death without a sweat. This got so horrible and silly that most players gave up on playing created characters online and played using originals only. Lame.

Aside from stances and dial-a-combos taking it in the crotch, the initial gameplay was basically lifted straight from Deception with the addition of air kombat. A quick combo on the ground could pop an opponent into the air so the player could continue the assault with air combos. That's great, but the actual gameplay was still slow, on the gritty side and extremely predictable since the characters were reduced to three combos on average. It was almost as if this game was actually encouraging players to go back to the old button mashing style. The addition of the parry system made this lack of originality even worse. If players wished to perform their most devastating combos, they were obviously going for an attack on the ground. The opposition was aware of this and was prepared with a parry to leave the player vulnerable to attack. The only real way to get around this was to perform lots of special moves, perform jump attacks, or cheap the other side with a quick pop up or sweep attack and catch the opponent on the rebound. How boring. It was also still entirely too easy to perform stage fatalities on opponents – especially with some of the new stages. Six well-placed attacks would grant a cheap and easy victory on the resurrected Subway stage. Way to push for skill, MK Team.

Motor Kombat was interesting for the most part. It promised the type of goods that we would expect from such titles as Super Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing, and it delivered for the most part. There was a fair selection of characters with various speeds, weights, and special attacks. The number of tracks did lack, but this was a bonus feature afterall. The collision detection was pretty far off on this one. Players could barely touch one another and fly way too far off. Some of the special attacks were also somewhat pointless. While Sub-Zero's freeze was a great way to get a rival out of the way, Scorpion's spear simply placed the player slightly ahead of the rival just so they could get passed again. The overall racing in the game was boring. It suffered the same fate as the first Super Mario Kart as in the CPU never really tried to change positions in the race unless the change was against the player. The main reason why I play this mini-game over and over again to this day is because the on-track fatality feature was actually really fun and did throw a little more skill into the game rather than most heavy luck-based racers.

The most lackluster thing of all about the title was how the roster was treated. Even after players complained that Khameleon wasn't included in the Xbox and PS2 release of the title, they still left a character out that several fans at MKO.com were happy to point out: Tremor. With Tremor and Khameleon absent from the game, lame ass characters like Mokap got a chance to return and annoy us all. Several new costumes that sucked were introduced like Stryker's jumpsuit and Motaro's lack of hind legs. Many of the characters played like awful clones(Chameleon, Khameleon, Mokap) to characters that just suck(Goro, Shao Kahn, Meat, Kintaro, Motaro, Shujinko, Bo Rai Cho, list goes on for a while). Some of these characters suck because their styles and combos were taken away while some move and play horribly. It was also quite frustrating to hear a weird, new pronunciation for Reiko(original Ree-ko now Rai-ko), and it annoyed me to no end that my favorite character still can't be called Noob Saibot and left alone. Oh no, it's got to be Noob even if he's alone. Let's drag the Internet joke out longer. It'd be funny to give him a weapon that represents an Internet fad too. Oh, I nearly forgot that Noob Saibot uses the TROLL HAMMER as a weapon. Get it?! Noob?! Troll?! I'm not laughing either, damnit.

I have to talk about a very touchy subject at some point. Everyone reading this article knows what I'm talking about. Some consider its announcement the day Mortal Kombat died. I'm talking about the inclusion of the Kreate-a-Fatality feature. The feature replaced traditional fatalities at the end of matches and was used by entering various movements and either XYAB/Square, Triangle, X, or Circle. An example would be forward, forward, X, down, down, X, and forward, forward, B. That would be a three-skull fatality(the actual title of each one escapes me). The fatality scale went up depending upon the number of steps used from one to eleven. There was a timer that shortened with each move added to the customized fatality. It was also possible for the ninja characters to produce a sword and slice a few limbs off of their opponent. While this new system did demand more skill than the tradition fatalities, it was simply dull to know that Raiden couldn't fry someone to a crisp and Reptile wasn't going to snack on any heads. This move also killed off the short lived Hara-Kiri feature that was introduced in MK: Deception.

For the most part, the major bugs and glitches that ran rampant in MK: Deception were gone. It wasn't possible for Smoke to knee-to-face someone to death anymore, and many of the air kombat bugs that were shown in the Krypt videos had been taken care of. It was still too easy to juggle someone not only with kreated fighters but also with regular fighters such as Noob Saibot or Reiko. Either way, it wasn't as bad as previous titles, so I believe I can give them a break on this subject.

Konquest Mode was a complaint all its own. This mode of play was a little buggy at times, redundant, and overall boring. But, unfortunately, it was something that had to be done in order to get the full experience of the game. It featured a poorly fleshed out story concerning God brothers Taven and Daegon. This mode was nothing more than a pain in the ass task. I can't be any more honest. There was very little I enjoyed about this feature from it's buggy puzzles to plenty of tedious fights that I was praying would just end already. Possibly the dumbest and most boring fight was against Scorpion. He wanted vengeance yet again, and he attacked with floating skulls. Yawn. People always trash the Konquest Mode from Deception, but I am promising you that Deception's Konquest is far better than this.

The number one complaint about this title – and I agree completely – is the lack of bios for the characters. The game made absolutely no sense without them. It was simply a garbled mess that left players scratching their heads. The story writers were upset because they were basically told to flesh out the awful story that was behind the Armageddon game and not to worry about character details. After a nearly violent influx of fan complaints, Midway announced that character bios would be released on separate times on the game's official website. The writers got a chance to mend the broken storyline, but it wasn't long before the bios were suddenly discontinued. The full story of this game was never told and probably never will be now.

I honestly feel that this game was nothing more than a disaster. However, I still bought the game like the Mortal Kombat maniac that I am. I still play the game to this day because, bad or not, I love the series too much to hate the games. I'd probably even play Special Forces or Mythologies again if I got my hands on a copy of either one. I'd even be willing to write about my opinions on them for a Mortal Monday – hint hint.

I've stated many times before that I believe this game signaled that we've witnessed possibly the lowest point in the history of this series. Armageddon is a title only for hardcore Xbox/PS2/Wii collectors or hardcore Mortal Kombat fans. Everyone else will definitely be turned off by this. The only way this series could become even lower in the eyes of the gaming public is if it produced a crossover game with superheroes and supervillains. Oh, wait.