what this game is:Well if you don't know I think you should Put down the 'Troller and just stop playing games...It's a Freaking MK! but lets pretend you actually don't know(pulls out gun..), Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe is a Standard Beat 'em up, 2 Players, Blood, fists, feet, and lots of bizarre monster-people with strange powers. MK Vs DCU is the 8th MK in the series(17 if you count the un-numbered ones and action games), bringing back classics we love like Sub Zero, Scorpion, Raiden and adding the best of the best from the DC universe-Batman, The Joker, Lex Luthor, Superman, Cat woman and more.
First impressions:I picked this game up expecting another pathetic attempt at a MK game, lets face it the games have been going down hill since MKIII, the ones on the Play Stations were....somewhat breaking away fro what made MK great beat em ups, Ok they kept Fatalities and all our fave characters were there but with the multiple stances and the weapons (swords that sort of thing) it just wasn't the same great Button bashing Beat 'em up we loved. The Gore and Blood was toned down thanks to Mums complaining about there being to many red Pixels when a mixture of dots representing a guys hand hits a series of Dots that's supposed to be a guys face. so with all that in mind i put the disc into my Xbox, First thing i did was start story mode and being a comic fan i decided to fight the Justice side!(GO TEAM DCU!), from picking up the 'Troller it was like playing any classic beat em up game, the Controls just came to you, starting as The Flash i beat the living hell out of Deathstroke and each Character has a Chapter For them, there are 2 sides to the story DCU's and MK' side.
The Game It's SelfWell I was quite surprised to see a classic MK style game with the basics just being punches, kicks, special moves and Fatalities/Brutalities. This was defiantly the right way to go about this, with such Epic characters from DC breathing down your Drawing board, this was a game that had to be done right, and you would only get one shot at it. with that said, they've added a few new things in the mixture, Like "Test your might" in replacement of the classic Uppercut to fall to the lower level of the stage you now hit someone HARD at the edge of a level and you pick them up and ram them through multiple brick walls while button bashing, with a percentage bar at the top both players bash the buttons to get it to the other end, with damage ranging from 0%-30%. on some other stages there is the "Free fall Kombat", where the attacker presses one button(A,B,X,Y) and the other player tries to match to "Kounter" or they get a punch in the face, if a player does counter then rolls are switched and the attacker becomes the defender until you reach the floor or 25%, at 25% you can choose to do a Special Move(RB) which is a fancy FMV of something signature to that character IE Batman Throwing a Batarang at them for the rest of the Free fall.
The story:There is a story mode that explains why the MK guys are Fighting the DCU guys, both Worlds are merging together and there is a Condition called "rage" that makes people see what they hate and get very aggressive, if your really curious about how it's done and unfolds then grab a copy, I'm not a spoiler :P
you do choose to do either the DCU's Side of the story or MK's side, both tell the same thing but you play the respective teams characters, Out come is the same story wise and achievements for Both sides complete.
Multi-playerWhat is it with the Multi-Player in the latest releases? it seems they could have done so much but for some reason don't. MK Vs DCU doesn't break that trend, with the bare minimum being given to you in Multi-player, start a multi-player Game and invite 1 friend or make a room and invite a few, you all come up in a list on the left with there Connection status represented in a call of Duty style bar ranging from Green to red, then simply scroll down the players and Challenge them, the other player gets to accept or decline that simple, same goes for Xbox Live Random matches, people create Rooms, you join. Now this game has been in development for quite some time for the "We just didn't have time" Excuse, so what is it this time? what ever the answer the game could have been more multi-player wise, a DoA style Room for example, It's EXACTLY the same thing as the MK vs DCU but you get to design a little avatar of yourself(Which we've already done, thank you NXE!) and wander around an actual room talking and challenging people. there's no View mode so no watching a match in progress like you can on DoA4 which in Xbox360 terms is Quite an old game.
Final Thoughts The single player was awesome, The story was short but it is a Beat em up and the Fights do get harder, with the game challenging me enough to defeat me but enough so you know you can win if you just keep going at it. graphics are a nice mixture of cartoonish proportions and what we've come to expect the Xbox360 can do, It's nicely balanced. Multi-Player there's a lot to be desired(AGAIN!!). but Considering it's an MK game It's defensively Filled all the fan Boxes and yet managed to push it a little further and manage to bring in some new content quite nicely to bring it up to speed with the modern day games of the same genre. Very Few characters are to be found here, with there being even numbered Teams and both teams adding up to about the same amount as the older MK games, so some people Favorites will be missing(Kung Loa!), same can be said for the DCU side, there are some characters you'll want that aren't there, Robin(or nightwing), Batwoman, The Riddler, Clay-face, Mr Irons, Beast Boy, Lobo or Booster Gold. with an early Hint at Doomsday becoming DLC for Xbox360 we can only hope that some other classics become available along with it...
I'm going to give Mk Vs DC 2 scores, one based on just an X-box360 game, for those that are general gamers and demand who's standards are based on this being an Xbox game and only that, The other score is rating the Game as a Mortal Kombat game....that ones self explanatory...
well as a general Xbox game i give it 6 CoGs, why you ask having given it such a good review above? well simple there are flaws, nothing with game play itself...but little things that are seen a lot, it's in
desperate need of a Physix Engine, the combat is awesome but the moves list is generic for every character, so if you master one, the same button combo is gonna do something on another character, this means the games gonna lack a big chunk of the skill play that went with the others, so there goes some game time mastering them. there are A lot of bugs that get annoying, nothing that causes the game to break but things getting annoying like both hitting each other and knocking each other flying when you only grabbed each other...
as a Mortal Kombat, it's pretty good, it went back to the basic fighting system that MK and the early Beat 'em Up's were all about. the characters are true to there originals which is good to see since most games mess about with them(
I'm talking to you Prince of Persia!) so on that front it's a 9 star, that's 9 CoGs of awesomeness!
