Mortal Kombat Trilogy (PC) review "The CD-ROM format has not been kind to the Mortal Kombat franchise. Believe it or not, behind all that 'button-mashing' and 'one-dimensional gameplay', there is a game engine hard at work, constantly loading new material into the fight. Whether it's Shang Tsung and his power to morph into other fighters (with all of their moves, combos, AND fatalities), or the changing battlegrounds and background music, the MK engine, at most times, is too fast for the CD-ROM. "

The CD-ROM format has not been kind to the Mortal Kombat franchise. Believe it or not, behind all that 'button-mashing' and 'one-dimensional gameplay', there is a game engine hard at work, constantly loading new material into the fight. Whether it's Shang Tsung and his power to morph into other fighters (with all of their moves, combos, AND fatalities), or the changing battlegrounds and background music, the MK engine, at most times, is too fast for the CD-ROM.

So what do you get? Fights pause abruptly, freezing up the game while loading the next sound effect. Ten to twenty second loading times before rounds, and five second loading times just before a fatality. And may God have mercy on us all if you face a player that has their strategy revolving around Shang Tsung and his morphing powers. This is not the way Mortal Kombat is supposed to be played.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy for the PC is a Godsend.

Who knows what happened? Maybe CD-ROM technology for the modern-day PC has grown to keep up with what the Mortal Kombat engine needs? Not only does the game present crisp, loud CD-quality music and sound effects, but it MOVES as fluidly as it would from a cartridge?

Some one pinch me!

And what better MK game to start off this new impressive NO-LOADING technology than Mortal Kombat Trilogy? The game sports over 40 fighters from the first three Mortal Kombats-- even the bosses (Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, and Shao Kahn) are playable straight from the character select screen. Each fighter also has the classic '-ality' trademark-- seven times!: Two fatalities, one brutality, one friendship (finally! A fighting game where you can be ‘just friends’), one babality, and of course you have the mysterious animality.

The fighting itself, although gimmicky, is fun for an afternoon. Mortal Kombat Trilogy uses the same engine as MK3-- not anything revolutionary like MK1 or MK2, but it presents a more atmospheric tone with more dark characters and well-drawn battlegrounds (over thirty locations-- in the Outworld AND on Earth). While there are still plenty of 'juggle' combos to go around (a combination of moves devised by the player), the MKT engine's strategy revolves around a ''dial-in'' system, where the player would tap in a certain pre-programmed combination of attacks to string together vast amounts of combos.

While this system isn't exactly the most perfect way of playing the game. In fact, with enough practice, you can pull off 100% combos with some characters-- incredibly cheap, but the satisfaction after doing it cannot be matched. It takes years of practice and a very concentrated mind to pull one of the ****ers off.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy is by no means a perfect game. The amount of kontent, characters, and battlegrounds will certainly send any Mortal Kombat geek to the software store to pick this up. But for the 'casual' gamer that generally despises this franchise, it's nothing but that one game that has over eight palette-swapped versions of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. -Shin (9/23/03)

Community review by shinnokxz (October 22, 2003) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.