The latest game in the Mortal Kombat series is a return to form for the franchise. This is 2D fighting at its best – fast, furious and fun. It’s obvious from the outset that Mortal Kombat was created with a level of expertise, dedication and care that few games these days possess. It’s telling that Ed Boon – the director and co-creator of the original Mortal Kombat game released in 1992 – remained at the helm for this project. 19 years later the series has finally come of age, and a true classic is in our midst.

So what makes this game so great? First and foremost, it’s that the developers were not prepared to cut any corners in making a game which would reignite the franchise and leave an indelible mark on the fighting genre. Almost every element you encounter in Mortal Kombat is masterfully executed; from the graphics to the animation to the presentation.

Secondly, it’s that the game stays true to the series roots yet updates a variety of elements to take advantage of modern hardware. The gameplay feels fairly similar to Mortal Kombat II but the graphics and sound effects are some of the best we’ve been treated to this generation. If you played any of the Mortal Kombat games from the 1990s you’ll likely get a chill of excitement when you first pick up a controller and experience the game in motion. Also, the series’ trademark gore and excessive violence have not been scaled back one iota – in fact the latest Mortal Kombat is bloodier than ever.

Thirdly, Mortal Kombat is uncommonly content-rich for a fighting game. I haven’t seen a studio go to such lengths to flesh out a fighter with worthwhile content since Namco brought the arcade hit Soul Edge to the original PlayStation in 1997. There’s easily 20 hours of entertainment stored on the Mortal Kombat disc, and that’s before you even engage in the excellent multiplayer portion of the package.

Now that I’ve outlined some of Mortal Kombat’s best features, let’s explore what you can expect from the game itself. There are a ton of modes to enjoy in MK, but the one you’ll probably want to dig into straight away is Story Mode.

Story Mode comprises 16 chapters, and in each chapter you’ll fight as a different character. The story is basically about the forces of good versus evil, with the thunder god Raiden as the central protagonist. Each character you play as is one of Raiden’s allies, so unfortunately you never get to experience the story from the evil end of the equation.

Each chapter consists of around 4 or 5 fights, and an in-game cut-scene plays between each bout. While these cutscenes lack innovative camera work or effects, they are often humorous and entertaining, and do a great job of shifting the action between the game’s many stages and providing a motive for beating your opponent into a pulp.

Story Mode lasts a good 5 hours or so, and +/-64 fights/cutscenes later you’ll be faced with this mode’s dramatic conclusion. Very few fighting games have anything comparable to MK’s excellent narrative efforts, so the developers must be commended for all the time and resources they committed to this portion of the game.

You can change the difficulty at any time during Story Mode if you come up against a seemingly unassailable opponent, but unfortunately there are a couple of other options missing from this mode which would have been welcome. There’s no way to skip cutscenes, even during your second playthrough, and you can’t pick a specific chapter or scene to play once you’ve completed the mode. You also can’t save your progress in Story Mode to different slots – there’s just one slot assigned to each gamer profile.

Other modes in MK include Ladder and Tag Ladder. The former allows you to pick from any one of the 27 characters on offer and fight your way through 10 increasingly difficult opponents, with the intimidating Shao Kahn as your final adversary. Defeating him unlocks a very brief 2D cutscene detailing what happened to your chosen character after the tournament. Tag Ladder is essentially the same experience, but now you can choose a second character (controlled by either you or a friend) to participate in the tournament, and each fight except the final one will be a 2-versus-2 affair.

Tag battles are new to the Mortal Kombat series, and offer an extra layer of strategy to proceedings. Of course, it’s also a blast to see all the special tag attacks your character duo can pull off, and taking on the overpowered Shao Kahn with a friend helps even the odds somewhat.

MK’s meatiest mode is undoubtedly Challenge Tower. 300 varied challenges await you in this mode, and getting to the top will take time, patience and skill. You’ll switch characters every 10 floors or so, and a team-mate will occasionally join you for a tag-battle challenge. NetherRealm Studios really did an amazing job coming up with 300 unique challenges, and some of their ingenious ideas completely eclipse the various mini-games we’ve seen in other fighting games up till now.

In one challenge you’ll be mowing down the undead with Stryker’s gun shot attack, and the next you’ll be throwing your limbs at an opponent to defeat them. If you find a particular challenge frustrating or just plain tiresome, you can spend the coins you earned in any one of MK’s singleplayer modes to advance to the next floor.

These coins can also be spent at the Krypt – a morbid in-game store of sorts where you can purchase a second costume or fatality for any of the characters, as well as music from the game’s soundtrack or conceptual art. The Krypt has a similar atmosphere to some of the levels in Demon’s Souls – dark, dingy and filled with rotting corpses. You explore it from a first-person view, and highlighting and then selecting one of the distressed cadavers will cause a brief animation to play before your reward appears on the screen.

For example, in one area of the Krypt are corpses with swollen bellies lying in a marsh. Selecting one of them causes a crow to swoop down and peck at its belly, at which point it explodes and a green “spirit” flies towards the screen and morphs into a description of your reward. Thankfully these scenes can be skipped, but there’s still no way of knowing what you’re going to get when you make your purchase, and there’s also no way to “buy in bulk.” It’s an unnecessarily time-consuming process to walk around the Krypt unlocking extras, but then again you have to give the developers credit for going the extra mile to make this process so memorable.

Mortal Kombat provides you with plenty of multiplayer options. Local multiplayer consists of 1-vs-1, 2-vs-com (tag ladder), 2-vs-2 (tag battle), and 2-vs-1 (tag battle). MK is probably at its most fun when you have 3 friends over, and take each other on in a lag-free 2-vs-2 tag battle.

The online multiplayer portion of MK has plenty of potential, but unfortunately the experience is either made or broken by your and your opponent’s connection. I only managed to get into one match on Xbox Live and the lag was awful – completely unplayable. If you have better luck than me then there’s plenty of modes to enjoy here – ranked or private 1-vs-1 and 2-vs-2 (tag battle), as well as King of the Hill. There’s also a lobby system where anyone can create a room which can accommodate up to 10 people.

King of the Hill mode looks like great fun on Xbox Live – the winner stays on until every challenger has been beaten, at which point he or she is declared the winner. If you’re waiting for your turn, or have just been defeated, you can watch the action unfold on a virtual “big screen,” with your respective avatars cheering and performing other excited actions in front of it.

So how does MK play, look and sound? From a gameplay perspective it’s a fantastic 2D fighter, with wide arenas, responsive controls, and a huge collection of outrageous combos, special attacks and fatalities. The action is pleasingly fast-paced, and jumping around like a yo-yo, doing sweep kicks or uppercuts is just as satisfying as you remember it being in Mortal Kombat II. The latest game in the series introduces a super meter like the one in Street Fighter IV. It’s divided into 3 segments, and taking or dealing damage fills it up.

You can perform a souped-up special attack by holding the block button at the end of that move’s required button inputs, and this will use 1 segment of your special meter. A breaker (which is essentially a counterattack) uses 2 segments, while an X-Ray attack uses all 3. X-Ray attacks are another new addition to the franchise, and can drastically turn the tide of battle if they connect. These slow-mo moves are incredibly violent and show a character’s bones, muscles and internal organs being broken, splintered, torn or otherwise manhandled. Think of them as mid-battle fatalities which do an obscene amount of damage to you or your opponent’s body and life gauge.

The button presses to perform the awe-inspiring special attacks in MK are actually not that difficult. Usually they only involve a combination of two d-pad buttons and one face button. Combos are naturally a little more challenging, and take practice to perfect. Quite a few of the characters in MK have some form of teleport move, which can make battles frustrating when you’re trying to line up a special attack and your opponent suddenly disappears and punches you in the back of your head. Conversely, you can use these teleport moves to your advantage either offline or online.

Fighting game purists may argue that many of the moves in MK feel overpowered or cheap, and it’s certainly true that some characters have more powerful or easier to execute moves than others. For instance, one character can teleport by pressing “up, down”, while “up, down, B” triggers another’s teleport move. Ed Boon has said that they have a system in place for MK which allows them to tweak the online gameplay without us having to download a title update, so hopefully any issues relating to character balancing in the online modes are fixed as they arise.

MK looks incredible thanks to fluid animation, detailed backgrounds and lovingly designed characters. Of course, NetherRealm Studios had plenty of existing assets in their arsenal when developing the new Mortal Kombat, but that doesn’t at all detract from the awesome job they’ve done recreating these classic characters and stages using the power of Unreal Engine 3.

There’s enough detail in each background to divert your eyes from all the violent action soaking the stage in blood, and each character’s moves look incredibly stylish and sleek running at 60FPS. The various effects are equally impressive – from characters being turned into icicles to Smoke teleporting across the stage leaving a trail of grey vapour.

If you’re not a fan of the series’ trademark grisly fatalities, then why not opt for “babalities” instead. Almost every character in the game can be turned into a toddler version of themselves once you’ve got them reeling and the words “Finish Him/Her” appear on the screen. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as making a mockery of your friend’s boasts by turning him into a baby and watching his character brought to tears by some malfunction of its innate superpower.

The sound effects in MK are some of the best you’ve ever heard in a video game. Bones breaking and eyes being poked out sound completely authentic, as do the ambient effects in each stage such as a train hurtling past. Each special attack is accompanied by a unique, realistic sound effect (such as Sub-Zero’s ice attack) and when you’re playing as one of the robotic characters (such as Sektor) your uppercuts connect with a satisfying clunk.

The music isn’t as impressive as the rest of the sound design, but it still does a great job of creating that special Mortal Kombat atmosphere. You can even listen to the original music for the classic stages in the game by pressing start when you select a level in offline multiplayer.

Overall, Mortal Kombat is a dream come true for fans of the original games. It should seem as exciting to connoisseurs of the 2D fighting genre as a Final Fantasy VII remake would to RPG enthusiasts – it’s that monumental of an accomplishment. Often gamers have a tendency to always be looking ahead to the “next big thing.” But when a game like Mortal Kombat comes along it’s vital to take a step away from those titles not yet in our grasp, and enthuse about the modern classic we have right in front of us, nestling nonchalantly in our disc tray.

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