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MK vs. DC Universe
The Game We’ve Been Waiting For Since MK3!
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I need to be honest about something right from the get-go, here. I did not get this game for 360. I would have loved to, but the lack of a decent D-Pad on the controller required that I make this purchase on PS3, which has an amazingly good D-Pad. I love the 360 controller for everything else, but that D-Pad is probably the worst in the history of video games. So, this is one of the very rare times that you will see a PS3 review on Live Sprites, but I just had to review it because this game could quite possibly be my pick for best of 2008.
Something you need to know about MK vs. DC is that if you were not a fan of previous MK titles then you are not going to like this one. If you WERE a fan of previous MK titles, you have been waiting for this game since the mid 1990’s. The core gameplay is SO good, SO clean, and SO precise that you will instantly be taken back to the days of playing MK2 or MK3 for hours on end with your friends. If you love MK then you know that it is, without question, the greatest fighting series ever created. The only two that come even close are Smash Bros. and Street Fighter, and really when it comes to deciding between the 3 it’s a matter of preference. The plague of 3D fighters available nowadays are designed so that a child can button-mash and still be competitive, whereas these 3 series are designed such that an experienced player will absolutely decimate an inexperienced one.
The best way I can exemplify how perfect the gameplay in this title is would be to tell a little story of what happened last night. I saw a guy in the chatroom being very cocky, saying he could beat anyone that challenged him. He only had 2 out of 4 bars of connectivity, but the network routines are really solid so the game still played great. I soon found out his secret for winning, and thus what fed his arrogance, was that he always picked Shao Kahn or Darkseid, the two unlockable boss characters. I had never fought a human Shao Kahn player so I was taken off-guard at first and got beat really bad the first round, and still lost the 2nd round with a much improved defence. When the option for a rematch appeared I accepted, and the little n00b took Shao Kahn again. You see, he had learned a couple basic combos and was doing them over and over, probably assuming it was because he was so awesome. Well, in our 2nd match I used what I learned from the first match and got a double flawless victory against him. Watching his confidence drain and the fear rise as he backed away and started blocking as I confidently moved towards him was one of the more enjoyable video game experiences I’ve had in some time. That is why MK is such a beautiful series, and MK vs. DC is no exception, in that it took me 1.5 rounds to ascertain this n00b’s pattern and turn it against him. His frantic button-mashing style that would have assured him victory in any 3D fighter was effectively decimated by an experienced player.
There have been some very interesting changes to the way the fighting plays out, however. Do not expect the same old Mortal Kombat just with DC characters added, and make sure you are open-minded about changes to core aspects of the MK series that you’ve become very accustomed to. First of all, you don’t have low punch, high punch, low kick, and high kick anymore. You have action 1, 2, 3, and 4. Some characters have 3 kicks, some have 3 punches, but most have 2 punches and 2 kicks. There are even further anomalies, like Baraka, who has an entire action button dedicated to nothing but a toggle for extending or hiding his claws. It seems insane at first, but I think it’s a vast improvement after having played it extensively. They’ve also made another fantastic addition to every character, which is that the all-powerful uppercut can now be done from the air, kinda, in a strong downward punch that bounces your opponent off the ground for more juggling opportunities. Controls that have been the same for decades, like Raiden’s dive slam of B B F, have been changed. It’s hard to say if they are better or worse, as only time will tell. They definitely work and that’s all that matters if you have the ability to learn and adapt, which you should.
The two most common complaints I’ve read in the reviews so far are the graphics and the fatalities. The fatalities have supposedly been cleaned up for a T rating, but the only difference I can see so far is that people don’t explode into cheesy giblets. I have seen a lot of the fatalities now, and I think they are mostly awesome. No, there is no fountain of blood or excessive gore, but they are still horribly violent acts being committed and are genuinely entertaining. My favourite so far is when Lex Luthor grabs his opponent by the shoulders and spins them around so hard that their top half now faces backwards, breaking their spine. The gore just seems more realistic in this title. Scorpion lighting the person on fire, for example, results in a quite disturbingly and realistically charred corpse, not the stupid skeleton as we’ve seen in previous titles. There has only been one Fatality I’ve seen so far that looked stupid, and it was a Brutality. It was one of The Flash’s Brutalities where he ends up running on the enemy’s chest. It’s not that the idea is bad; it is just horribly animated and looks terrible.
The graphics, also, are supposedly bad but this complaint I do not understand. The player models are so good that one of the few extras available is a detailed model viewer where you can pick any character and zoom in really close to analyze their features. The complaints seem to be focused on the backgrounds, which I will admit are not stunningly beautiful, but they are still quite nice to look at. It’s a fighter, people, and after you’ve played a couple hundred matches do you really think it matters how detailed the backgrounds are?
Another complaint that I read more frequently in forums than in reviews is that the single player experience is too short and doesn’t contain enough extras. I do not understand this mentality at all. Why are you buying a fighter to play by yourself? A single-player campaign in a fighter has only one purpose: to give an entertaining context for learning a character. The story mode in MK vs. DC is intended to introduce all the characters to you, giving you an opportunity to try each of them a little bit within an entertaining storyline. The Kombo Challenge mode is so that you can really master a character, and the arcade mode is so you can practice that character before you go online. It does not matter to me at all that the game doesn’t contain an RPG element, or a puzzle game, as those are wastes of time that distracted from what MK is supposed to be about: the fighting. I am very glad that Midway went back to basics and focused on providing us with a solid competitive fighter, and frankly, the single-player story mode is a much better campaign than you get with any other fighter I’ve seen in recent history.
This is getting a bit long so I’ll wrap it up with a quick mention of how solid the network routines are. I have played hundreds of matches online already (I got the trophy for 100 online matches within 48 hours) and I can say with assurance, especially since the 1.01 patch, that network communications are as solid as can be in a fighter. If I play against a 4 out of 4 bar connection it is as if the person is sitting in the room next to me, and 2 out of 4 bar fights are still pretty damn seamless. This is a game that destroys the assumption you may have made, like I had, that fighters could just not be played over the Internet. |
Graphics
No, the graphics are not amazing, but the character models are so nice that they gave you a detailed viewer in the Extras menu. I found some of the burning and freezing effects to look very nice.
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8.0 |
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Sound
Annoying differences between cutscene and game volume plague the story mode, but in-game sounds are awesome. I especially love how they retained so many of the old samples like Raiden's giberish.
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9.0 |
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Gameplay
Perfect MK fighting in every sense. Many changes have been made but I consider them to all be positive. Solid fighting like I haven't played since MK3.
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10.0 |
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Originality
It took balls to make the kind of core changes that they made while still retaining an MK feel. It's so awesome, too, that rather than giving us a bunch of new characters we've never heard of we get 11 awesome DC comic characters that we've known for years.
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10.0 |
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Interface
On one hand the menu system is clunky, the online lobbies could be better, and the moves list could be more easily accesible. On the other hand practice AI options are awesome, and online play is very easy to get going and fighting despite being slightly cumbersome.
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7.5 |
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Fun
This game made me feel like a kid again. If you ever played Mortal Kombat to death in the arcade or at home you must buy this game.
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10.0 |
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Lasting Appeal
Well, given that I played my downloaded copy of MK2 on my PS3 at least once a week since I got it, I expect that I will play MK vs. DC for years to come.
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10.0 |
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Overall
MK vs. DC is easily in contention for my best-of-2008 pick. The combat is a perfect and solid return to what makes the MK series so great and online play is immaculate.
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9.2 |
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