Growing Up Geek

Well in some ways the PlayStation Plus membership pays off from time to time and today it earned it’s keep.

I just turned off the demo for MK9 and what a bloody experience is was!

Let’s start off with the characters. Like a good demo there are only 4 available for play, although there are slots for 26 playable characters and 2 slots for DLC. I have seen some screen shots of this before. The roster doesn’t interest me as much as the DLC slots. Will we be buying characters that were in previous games? Brand new ones? Or will there be a character creator like in Armageddon? Either way, the roster should rock.

Now onto graphics. WOW is all I can say. This game actually has the feeling I had when I played MK2 for the first time. The game is dark and brutal, like a good MK should be. The last few had some bright stages. This was ok but not very MK. The characters look awesome. Ed Boon and friends over at NetherRealm know what they are doing. There’s not too much detail on the characters at the the start of the match, but it’s more about how they look after. Missing teeth, missing eyes, and bleeding. All good stuff. The two stages that are available are ‘The Pit’ and ‘The Living Forest’. ‘The Pit’ seems to be mix of the MK and MK2 pits. While having spikes at the bottom, it also has another fight going on above the same pit ala MK2 with Blaze in the background. ‘The Living Forest’ is a perfect 3D version of this classic arena. MK fans will feel at home on the stages.

Next the fighting. This new MK is significantly faster then previous games. Not fast like MVC3, but still fast. The characters respond beautifully to your commands. But where the the fight excels is the Super Bar. This is a new MK feature that adds a ‘Street Fighter’ style super move to your characters. It either grants you some more hits or overall more damage. MK fans will remember Johnny Cage’s red shadow kick that came up randomly in MK2. Yeah well thats a super move now. When you fill the Super Bar up, you are granted access to the X-ray moves. This is where it goes from crazy to insane. First like all good moves they aren’t guaranteed.  I missed the first 3 times with Johnny cage before realizing that you need to get hit to activate some of them. But when they make contact you get this awesome X-ray close up of how that damage affects the body internally. Scorpion’s gives a full force punch to the head that cracks the skull and then when the enemy falls over, he steps squarely on the rib cage cracking ribs and such. Overall it’s completely awesome; a great addition to this legendary franchise. I was hoping to see some of the free fall kombat from ‘MK vs DC’ but then again, this is just a demo.

Wouldn’t be MK if I didn’t touch on the available fatalities. They are beyond your brutal dreams. I would go into great detail about them but it wouldn’t do them any justice. Here is a YouTube list of them.

As it is a demo there is not much in the way of content, story, or bosses. In fact there are only the options and fight mode. It has all of the other modes listed but none are available. That’a ok since the full game is only a month away. After you beat the 4 available characters, you get a video of the other modes, fatalities, and mini games. Plus you get another peek at Kratos.

Overall the game looks great and if this demo is a prelude of things to come, we are getting the greatest and bloodiest MK to date. I just hope they don’t kill our wallets with a shit ton of DLC. Hopefully it’s not all locked on the disc either.

The demo is available for PlayStation Plus members starting March 8th, and for everyone else on March 15th. The game itself will drop April 19, which just happens to be 4 days after my birthday!

Thanks,

Jerry