Flawless Victory. Fatality!

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! Yep, I know it’s already been 15 days but hey, it’s me! You know how I’m always late.

This year I’m planning to make my blog a little bit more personal. So I’ll include a little bit about what’s going on in my life in general before starting each post. Also, do let me know what kind of posts you’d like to see on my blog this year. Any kind of feedback would be most welcome.

This post is about my favourite game series of all time : Mortal Kombat. *the 90s theme playing in the background* Apart from the games, I really love the first Mortal Kombat movie too. The second one was awful though.

I was introduced to the series back when I was 6 or maybe 7 through Mortal Kombat 4 on the Playstation 1. I used to play that game a lot. Like really a lot. Whenever any of my friends came to my house, the first thing we’d do was play MK4. My favourite character was Reptile! I’d use his invisibility move when playing with my friends and it would always amaze them. They would keep begging me to tell them how it was done but I never let the secret out. Funnily enough, none of them ever checked the move list of Reptile!

When I was playing solo, doing the towers I was really afraid of Goro. Whenever the fight with Goro came, I would give my controller to my Uncle and he would beat him for me. Afterwards, Shinnok was pretty easy to beat.

There’s an option in the game to switch off the fatalities and they must have been off, since I was never able to execute one. But still, even without the fatalities, those were good times!

Goro in MK4

My next MK game was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. I played it at my cousin’s house on his PS3. I’m a huge fan of both DC and MK so both of them together in a fighting game was a dream come true. (Even though I never had that dream!) Granted, the fatalities were a bit disappointing yet I found the gameplay pretty solid. But I just played it for a few hours so I don’t really remember much about it.

Next up is the game which I played probably even more than MK4 : Mortal Kombat 9 (2011). When I got my Xbox 360, I started exploring new genres like FPS and RPGs etc, so I had lost touch with Mortal Kombat games. One fine day, I had a craving to play MK vs DCU again, so I went to my cousin’s place. Disappointment awaited me, as had sold the game. I told him that I would buy my own then. He gave the suggestion to buy MK9. I was like “What! There’s a MK9 ?” Immediately my next question was if it had Reptile. (MK vs DCU didn’t have Reptile who was my favorite in MK4) In reply, he took out his phone and showed me some gameplay of Reptile in MK9. I was sold. I had to buy this!

Mortal Kombat (2011)

But Dad didn’t allow me to buy the game because of two reasons : It was really violent and I wasn’t playing any outdoor sports. I mostly spent all my time indoors back then, either reading or gaming. So he set a condition : I had to join Tennis for atleast 6 months, only then I could buy the game. I hated tennis. I don’t mind playing any other sport like cricket or swimming but just not tennis.

But my love for Mortal Kombat was greater than my hate for tennis so eventually, there I was, hitting the ball back and forth just for the sake of MK9. Eventually I got the game and I even started enjoying tennis!

My favourites in MK9 were Raiden and Reptile. I totally loved the story of MK9. I got really good at the game after some time. None of my friends could ever beat me and I won most of the matches that I played online. Though I didn’t play online a lot.

The Thunder God – Raiden

But obviously one tends to get bored with a game after a period of time. And that’s just what happened. Fast-forward to 2014 when the first trailer for the next MK game : Mortal Kombat X was released and in all my life, I had never been so hyped for a game ever. From that day onward, I literally used to google about the game multiple times in a day, everyday just in case a new character was teased or any new information was released. This time too, Dad set me a condition if I wanted the game which was to get good marks in the unit tests. I got those marks and preordered the game for my Xbox 360. Yay!

Mortal Kombat X

The PS4, Xbox One and PC versions of the game were released in April 2015 but the last gen versions got delayed to June. I had to painfully wait for two more months. And guess what ? The game got delayed even further. And this time around, they didn’t even announce a release date. The studio working on the port just said that they would release the game as soon as it was ready. In August, WB released the following statement :

After months of development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has come to the regrettable conclusion that we cannot release Mortal Kombat X for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Please know our teams worked diligently to meet the quality standards set by the current-gen versions of the game. We were not able to get the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions to the quality expected of a Mortal Kombat game and are very sorry for not being able to deliver the products as originally planned.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I was more heartbroken. I had been waiting for Mortal Kombat X since such a long time and this statement just devastated me. I did get to play the game eventually at a game parlour and my cousin’s house. But I wanted to own the game and practice it as much as I had practiced MK9.

I asked my parents for a Xbox One but that didn’t happen. So I’ve been waiting since 2014 to play that game properly and after 4 years of waiting, I can happily tell you that I got a PS4 for Christmas!

You can obviously guess which the first game was that I bought. But I’ve got my board exams coming up in March which are really important if I want an admission in a good college. Its kinda bittersweet I mean. After all these years I finally have a new console with MKX yet I can’t play it too much because of the boards.

Though I did play a few matches and I didn’t really like Raiden in this game. Kenshi, Lui Kang, Johnny Cage and Reptile are really good. I haven’t played as all of the characters so I don’t really have a favourite right now. I had seen a walkthrough of the entire story mode on YouTube when the game had been cancelled for last gen. The story mode was okay, not better than MK9 in my opinion. 

I’m really looking forward to playing this game after March when my boards end. When I do play it properly, I’ll get a proper review out. If you’ve got any recommendations for Ps4 games do let me know. I’m planning to buy either Crash Bandicoot or Resident Evil 7 or Life is Strange after the exams. My friend’s giving me Cod WW2 and Uncharted 4. I really want to play The Last of Us too but I don’t know if I’ll have that much time before college starts.

I guess that’d be all. Thanks for reading!

– The Mechromancer

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