Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (PS3)
Even though the superheroes of DC Comics have found themselves in some truly brutal and violent situations, it’s still hard not to see a crossover between them and the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise as an odd fit. It’s one thing to simply see Superman killed in a work of fiction and another to allow a player to decapitate him or make him burst into an explosion of blood, so having the famously indulgent lethal kills of Mortal Kombat carry over into Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe likely seemed like a step too far. While this fighting game doesn’t completely abandon the Mortal Kombat penchant for reveling in over the top violence, it does feel like it has to be on its best behavior around its superhero guests, the game even earning a T rating as it toned things down so that young DC fans are more likely to play it.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe features 20 normal characters in its roster plus 2 unlockables, the cast split down the middle to give us 11 characters from the Mortal Kombat games and 11 from DC Comics. You get iconic faces from both sides of this crossover competing, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman going up against characters like Scorpion and Raiden, and while there is a noticeable absence or two like Johnny Cage and others like Catwoman feel like weak inclusions, generally this 3D fighter assembles a pretty satisfying roster and one with a pretty good mix of powers and personalities. From Mortal Kombat you have magic users like Shang Tsung launching fiery skulls and draining life from people as well as characters like the cyborg Jax who utilizes modern firearms on top of his mechanical strength. DC provides the super speed of a hero like the Flash and the creative flexibility of Green Lantern’s ring constructs, so while most members of the cast can whip out some sort of uppercut or leg sweep, there are a range of special moves unique to each character both in purpose and concept. What’s more, most special moves only require two direction inputs and a button press, meaning it’s incredibly easy to utilize projectile attacks, teleports, and other flashy and effective skills. Your effectiveness comes from identifying when to use them and how to chain them together, and since most of the cast has some sort of move effective at either attacking from range or closing the gap safely, trying to pelt someone with fireballs from afar isn’t a totally safe tactic.
Some characters are exceptionally well-executed in their range of techniques or their presentation as well. Sub-Zero the ice ninja makes incredible use of his powers, not only able to freeze players to give him an in for a combo setup but having an interesting ice clone counter and a stylish fall back into ice as his form of teleportation. Over in the DC camp, Joker really feels like he embodies the idea of a psychotic clown well despite having to fit the combat mold. All characters have four basic attack buttons meaning Joker is punching and kicking like others, but he almost sarcastically mimics an old-fashioned boxer with his stance and standard strikes while having a range of gadgets like huge novelty bombs and a big punch glove for his specials. Some of these characters are in top form, but others are let down immensely. Wonder Woman has her lasso of truth at least, but many of her moves are awkward maneuvers such as an unusual twirl through the air. There is a general stiffness to many characters in both visuals and how it feels to chain attacks together, and while the Pro Move system rewards you for incredibly precise timing with stronger techniques in a combo, sometimes a standard attack string feels rough because of a weak sense of flow between moves. Some special moves are outright annoying rather than neat tricks to whip out, a move like Superman’s ground slam an unblockable power that hits anyone on the ground. While jumping can protect you, it also very disruptive and disadvantageous and simply landing the move once can lead to a tedious loop if the Superman player’s timing is right. Characters like the Flash also have a power that can slow things down too much, the speedster able to leave characters spinning in place repeatedly in a variation on Sub-Zero’s freeze that can be too easily chained together.
The cast’s fighting prowess can certainly lead to some highs and lows as you try to wrangle one of the less satisfying or creative ones in the face of someone with a trick that’s too easy to abuse, but there are other systems at play rather than your standard attacks and a block button. During a match you can build up to two bars of your Rage meter. Spending one bar of it will allow you to break free from a combo which helps to defend against some but not all of the looping combos, but it is generally a good addition as it provides a defensive tool but with a decently high cost. Have two full bars though and you can activate a Rage mode where moves no longer make you flinch and if you keep up pressure on an opponent’s block, you’ll break through. With a power boost on top as well, Rage mode is a temporary boost to effectiveness but with some characters, having increased strength and a way to push past defense can lead to a drastic turnaround the opponent has no real counter for. You can try to just hop around and run about in the arena to wear out the opponent’s Rage, meaning it’s rarely enjoyable for either side when it’s active. Movement is normally restricted as if the game was a 2D fighter, but you can hold a button to sidestep as a possible dodging method albeit a somewhat sloppy one.
A further mixed bag emerges in the form of mid-battle minigames. Hit your opponent to the edge of the arena, and depending on where you are, you can trigger one of two possible quick minigames where you can rack up damage on the opponent. Test Your Might is the more inoffensive of the two, both players urged to mash their four attack buttons, the player who initiated something like smashing the opponent through the wall trying to mash faster to increase the damage amount while the victim mashes to decrease it. Quick and not that involved, it isn’t as disruptive as its vertical counterpart, Free-Fall Kombat. If you’re knocked off the arena instead of through something, you participate in a minigame which basically boils down to a guessing game. Using the four attack buttons, the person who initiated the fall attacks the victim, and victim able to turn it around and become the attacker only if they guess the button of the incoming attack properly. There is a brief moment you can see the opponent’s choice on screen to try and counter it, but it’s often more guesswork since you can’t guess their attack rhythm necessarily and it ends up often suboptimal to get into Free-Fall Kombat since it doesn’t matter who initiates it, the person on the bottom when the fall ends takes all the damage from attacks during the descent. With it reaching up to 30% of a life bar, it’s a rather unintuitive and sometimes frustrating way to shift a round’s fortune that can feel almost luck-based, and there’s even another equivalent found in standard ground combat. While there are plenty of grabs in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, there is also Klose Kombat, a grab that turns things into a slow version of the Free-Fall Kombat minigame save that it ends when the initiator has one move properly countered or they’ve dealt four blows. A real reduction in complexity of a match and prone to the same problems of the falling game, these battle options lose their luster once you go from early easy matches into battles of consequence, too much control over your fate placed on something distinctly different from learning and executing your chosen character’s abilities.
Another area of middling successes comes in what occurs after you’ve won a match of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Usually, once you’ve depleted your opponent’s health bar to nothing, the character will be left reeling as the announcer urges you to finish them off with a special end of match move. Here is where the toned down violence feels a bit like a disservice to the Mortal Kombat brand, no one having their spine ripped out in this Teen rated crossover game. However, that doesn’t mean the after match Fatalities lack punch or pizazz. While heroic characters have theirs rebranded to Heroic Brutalities since characters like Batman don’t kill, you actually find some some of the game’s more impressive violence with those characters. Superman smashing his hands on someone’s head repeatedly to hammer them down through the dirt or Green Lantern sealing someone in an energy bubble and constricting it to crush them would fit in as fatalities if you didn’t have the victim squirming to show they’re alright afterwards, but then characters like the Joker are allowed to have fatalities, his toy gun fakeout that leads to him pulling out a real one perfectly in character even if you don’t get to see the real bullet hit. At other times though, the Fatalities have been toned down so much their comically bad, Kano in particular getting a move where he just jumps on someone’s chest that looks more like a gymnastics routine than a kill. These are basically just flourishes to show off with after defeating an opponent so the less creative ones don’t meaningfully detract from the fighting game action, but this is pretty much where many will point if asked why these two franchises feel incompatible in a crossover. There are highs and lows even in standard Mortal Kombat game fatalities though, and when it comes to the true meat of the combat, the fighters from both universes don’t feel a poor fit even if sometimes the game’s own mechanics make them a bit rigid.
As for why the two universes have even been made to fight, the game features a story mode to explain it that allows you to pick between a Mortal Kombat focused story and a DC Universe focused tale. Both are essentially the same though, just a different perspective as both sides learn in their own ways that their dimension is being forcibly joined with the other. This leads to some interesting mixed arenas that are literally split down the middle to feature a location from both sides, but the plot isn’t very interested in much beyond setting up fights. There is a force at play called Rage that will drive characters to fight each other, this meaning a character can suddenly just be possessed by it and forced to fight another without the game needing to work out an excuse for conflict. Often times characters can just walk out of nowhere and challenge someone even when not under the effects of Rage though, and besides some moments like the Joker have an amusing reaction to realizing Rage makes him strong enough to go toe-to-toe physically with DC heroes, most of the time characters just talk about trying to figure out what’s going on and then trying to unfuse the universes. It’s not a deep story, but the cutscenes are short, help you learn a touch about the cast, and set up a string of battles so solo players have something to work towards besides the demanding and difficult Kombo Challenges. There is an Arcade mode for more quick and casual solo play where it is just regular battles one after the other working up to a final boss, each character having a unique ending as their reward for clearing Arcade. It’s a fairly simple ending, usually just an image and a hypothetical fate for that character based on how intersecting universes could have changed their lives, and it is fun to see a Mortal Kombat or DC character potentially embrace something appropriate from the other universe in these short endings. Fighting other players will be where the game does it’s best so long as you don’t find people too aware of the infinite combos, but there’s a decent amount to do on your own to train up or see how this strange crossover can manifest.
THE VERDICT: A lack of Mortal Kombat’s trademark extreme violence isn’t what makes Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe a muddled affair. The mid-battle minigames, stiff characters, and hollow story distract from a range of characters that do sometimes work well, combatants like Sub-Zero and Joker satisfying and flexible in a cast that is quite varied despite some flubs like Wonder Woman’s weird maneuvers. More often than not you can find fights where you utilize special abilities and make on-the-fly decisions for a battle with some substance, strategy, and skill expression, but you can’t fully escape the more roughly designed skills and mechanics either.
And so, I give Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe for PlayStation 3…
An OKAY rating. The mere existence of infinites doesn’t doom a fighting game nor does single-player modes that could do better with their story-telling. Ultimately you come for enjoyable fighting and under certain circumstances you can encounter something like an infinite or it’s pretty easy to see the plot as a way of arranging fights in a row. These would be better to leave out or adjust, but the bigger thing Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe needed to succeed was simply better fundamentals. The mid-battle minigames are probably well-intentioned ways to give novice players a way to turn things on their head without knowing attack chains or special inputs, but it’s not like experienced players can’t utilize them for bigger advantages and moreover it’s not particularly entertaining to swap into a guessing game for a spell when the game otherwise makes figuring out your opponent’s next action usually more involved and rewarding. Removing or simplifying the minigames heavily would be a good step in the right direction, as would toning down Rage since it also slows things down and is better abused by skilled players. There are already layered move sets available in the cast so extra gimmickry didn’t need to steal the spotlight, and while there are some misfires, more time refining the sometimes rigid or unusual attacks to be more thrilling and have better flow would have benefited novices as well as it helps them feel like their successes are more valuable, personal, and replicable.
Strip away the fluff, and most of the core of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is alright. There’s a solid fighting system that sometimes disappears behind the weaker ideas, but it is still where you’ll spend most of your time. The Mortal Kombat characters come bearing plenty of effective and satisfying special moves and the DC cast fit in surprisingly well as long as you aren’t expecting things to get gory. A strange crossover conceptually, but so was the X-Men fighting Street Fighter characters before Marvel vs. Capcom became a beloved franchise. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe could succeed as an idea in a more conducive battle system and the two franchises still have occasional crossovers like Scorpion appearing in the DC fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe has its moments, but it also has faults that hold it back, and rather wisely both Mortal Kombat and DC fighting games moved in new directions with their gameplay in subsequent entries to greater effect. This crossover could have been better, but it’s not like this odd mix made for something unpalatable, many fights having a little something to offer to make it a decent fighting game curiosity.