Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (PS3)

Superman meets Scorpion: Will it be friendship or fatalities?
11/17/2008 9:10 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

There's nothing like a good guilty pleasure. Cheesy reality shows, schlocky horror movies and bubblegum pop all scratch itches we'd like to pretend don't even exist. For fighting games, the Mortal Kombat series has always been that guilty pleasure. No MK game's ever had the depth of the fighting engines that power the Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive franchises -- but the combination of egregious gore, stilted kung-fu movie dialogue and ultraviolent finishing moves has won the series an audience that keeps showing up.

Stlll, when Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was announced more than a year ago, fans all over the world sniggered. Had the once-venerable series jumped the shark? Was DC selling out some of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world just to pad its coffers?

It can safely be said that all such concerns cease to matter once you start playing MK vs. DC. Don't bother trying to figure out whether it's Barry Allen or Wally West in the Flash suit; all you need to know is that it's a guy that runs really, really fast. Likewise, trying to fit the game's events into a larger MK continuity doesn't increase the level of enjoyment. You're here to beat people up.

However, it bears noting that comics writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray worked with the MK dev team on the story, which is split into two threads, one for each side. On the DC side, the game opens with Superman putting the coup de grâce on big, bad Darkseid after the cosmic despot's failed invasion of Earth. As Darkseid tries to make his escape through a dimension-bridging Boom Tube, the Man of Steel zaps him with a blast of heat vision that causes some sort of malfunction. Soon thereafter, DC characters start succumbing to violent fits of mind-clouding rage, fighting each other as well as the displaced warriors of Outworld. (When playing through the MK side, it's Raiden electrifying Shao Kahn's teleport rift that tips the interdimensional dominoes.) Each side's narrative is structured like a mosaic, where characters hand off the plot to each other like a baton -- so all the characters get a nice chunk of screen time. You don't get the whole picture unless you play through Story mode with both sets of characters.

The game's story simply sets up the action, but does make a point of trying to address the more glaring plot holes. As the two universes start to fuse, powers and personalities go haywire. So, Superman's nigh-omnipotence gets scaled back by all the magic floating around, Green Lantern says his ring's acting up, and normally heroic Kombatants like Liu Kang and Kitana suffer from homicidal flare-ups.

At its core, this game's all about fan service, so there will be moments where your inner fanboy rolls his eyes. Case in point: The orbiting satellite base looks just like the Legion of Doom headquarters from the "Super Friends" cartoon. Still, certain signature moves are just too entertaining to feel jaded about, like Joker's joy buzzer attack, Flash's around-the-world dash, or Deathstroke's gunshots. The same goes for certain match-ups, like perpetual sourpusses Scorpion and Batman working out their vengeance issues on each other or Captain Marvel and Raiden brutalizing each other in a lightning vs. thunder showdown. (Regarding DC's mythologically empowered champion -- the Big Red Cheese is one of the most powerfully imbalanced characters in the game. He's a favorite of MK co-creator Ed Boon, and it shows.) When playing in Arcade mode, you can choose to play opponents from only one side or a mix of characters from each.