Set directly after the events of the first Mortal Kombat game, the story sees Shang Tsung rather pissed that he lost the tournament – and plans to attempt to take Earth regardless. You take control of either Liu Kang or Kung Lao and enter Outworld in an attempt to stop him. Or is it really him you’re stopping? Alas, the story features a few twists and turns to keep things interesting, but really, it’s nothing that will really surprise anybody who has played Mortal Kombat before. Although, the writers of According to Jim could take a few notes.
Fear the priest’s deadly snot attack
Shaolin Monks draws strong inspiration from the big side-scrolling games of the early 90’s – Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc – and throws in plenty of MK conventions to make the game feel like a Mortal Kombat game. For example, there is the traditional health bar, fatalities, brutalities, testing your might, familiar music and even an occasional ‘toasty’. Your objective, generally speaking, is to move into a room, kill everything in it, before moving to the next room and repeating. Every now and then a puzzle will crop up – but they usually involve pulling a switch or throwing an opponent into an environmental hazard to kill them, so they aren’t too complex.
The fighting engine is somewhat complex for the genre. One button gives you a quick attack, another sees a launch attack, yet another will deliver power attack and finally a throw attack. Holding down R1 will pressing one of these buttons will unleash a special move that the character made famous in the original fighting games. It’s fairly smooth, although we can’t help but notice a slight lag between a button press and its response happening on screen. Of course, these moves can be linked together for various combinations – get the combos big enough, and experience points start to pile up.
These experience points help the ‘RPG’ (we use that term loosely) element in the game. Basically all these points can be used to buy new and improved special moves, meaning your character gets more and more interesting to control as the game progresses. It’s not what you would call especially deep, but it’s certainly a worthwhile addition. Also, progressing through the game will see you unlock moves you can’t buy, such as new movement abilities (long jump, wall climb and so on), and new fatalities.
The uppercut is still your most trusty tool – but no more infinite leg sweeps
Level design is one of the game’s strongest downfalls. There simply isn’t a whole lot of a territory to cover – old territory must be revisited with new abilities, resulting in an awful lot of backtracking. For example, defeating a boss will result in having to backtrack all the way to one of the hub levels. Grrr. On top of this, the hub levels terrible to navigate, consisting of various portals, none of which have any sort of distinguishing features – it takes a bit of guesswork, or an exceptional memory, to get to where you should be going.
Blood – as you would expect, the game has plenty of it. As soon as you start playing the game you notice just how ridiculously gory it is. Enemies fly into spikes and shower the screen red, fatalities are, naturally, horrific and even the simplest jab can cause a rather ridiculous amount of gore. It’s because of this it’s basically impossible to take seriously, but still, it’s one best kept out of the reach of kiddies. Apart from that, the graphics are mostly fine, without being outstanding. Characters are not hugely detailed, but animated quite acceptably, making those physically impossible feats slightly believable. But, the camera is just poor. It seems that for the majority of the game you’re actually running into the camera, making it tough to see any dangers that may lurk ahead. Furthermore, it tries to be cinematic at the expense of practicality – for example, if you run towards a big temple, the camera will not zoom in on you, preferring to keep the awe-inspiring view of the temple, even if your character is reduced to the size of two pixels.
The audio is predictable. Familiar MK themes of the past resurface, as do sound effects, creating a real MK atmosphere. Liu Kang is instantly recognizable with his incessant screaming. The voice acting is solid – but undeniably cheesy, although this is somewhat intentional. It’s all acceptable stuff, but nothing terribly interesting.
While the campaign isn’t a long one, the fact there are just so many available unlockables makes it worth playing more than once – especially in the co-operative mode, where most of the goodies can be found. Mortal Kombat fans will especially get a big kick out of the hidden content. The versus mode also adds to the variety, pitting you against a friend in a one on one battle – it’s a shame the computer can’t be played in this mode. All these options more than make up for the rather short campaign.
The MK gang practice their choreography for the big dance number
Shaolin Monks a fine game – it’s a fairly straight forward side scrolling beat ‘em up that everyone should be able to get into, and Mortal Kombat fans will go nuts over. The ridiculous amount of unlockables and the co-operative mode help extend the life of the game quite well, while the game itself is just fun to play, in a brainless sort of way. Mortal Kombat fans should check it out.
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