Mortal Kombat 3 Review (Sony PlayStation, 1995)

Mortal Kombat 3 is a very nostalgic release for me. Of the 16-bit releases I spent the most time with it. I have fond memories of going to a friend’s house to play it. Over and over again. There was some changes in tone and direction for the series I didn’t agree with, but it was decent at least. That was the Super Nintendo release. Up until a few years ago I never even knew there was a PS1 version of the game. I’m a huge fan of checking out different ports of games I know inside and out, and I just had to give it a spin. With more powerful hardware things can only be improved. Right? After having spent hours with the disc based release of Mortal Kombat 3 I’ve come to an opinion. There’s some good, and some bad. Let’s check it out.

The story here picks up where the last one left off. The story of Mortal Kombat takes place in an alternate version of Earth where the citizens are in constant threat of takeover from the evil forces of Outworld. This dark realm’s leader, Shao Kahn, has been thwarted not once but twice in his efforts to open a portal and become the emperorer of both dimensions. Mortal Kombat 3 starts off with his latest scheme which is unfortunately successful. Shao Kahn’s bride Sindell has perished, and through the work of dark magic she is revived on Earth. This allows the nefarious dark emperor to open a portal and travel to the real world and claim his queen. The two worlds become one, and most people immediately lose their souls. A select few are saved by the thunder god Raiden, and it is these people that must defeat Shao Kahn.

For the first time in the series the scenario is markedly different as is the setting and general art style. Mortal Kombat 3 takes on more of an urban grit scenario which is a departure from the dark arts/asian motif of the past installments. Personally I’ve never been a fan of this direction. It barely even feels like Mortal Kombat to me. Gone are the trademark ninja characters. Well, except Sub-Zero, but now he’s unmasked and it makes very little sense. These guys have been largely replaced with robot cyborgs. This is not a trade off I, or most other gamers, ever wanted. Many of the stage settings are based on ruined areas of cities as well. The whole thing is far less fantastical than the previous installments. It’s not a good thing in my opinion. Still, Mortal Kombat 3 is not without its own charms.

Like the Mortal Kombat games that preceded it part 3 is a one-on-one two dimensional fighting game. Your ultimate goal is to come out on top in a series of best of three matches against single enemies. You win when your opponents life bar is drained. At the end of your second victory you can perform a finishing move. These have little impact on the actual gameplay and instead are just there for a visual treat or to taunt enemies. Violence is the primary focus here. Mortal Kombat did after all popularize it in fighting games at the time. Each strike to an opponent sends splatters of blood on to the floor. The finishing moves primarily consist of fatalities with varying visual effects. The gratiutous violence was really something back in the day, but now it just seems kind of lame.

The character roster is by far one of this game’s biggest weaknesses. As I mentioned earlier they cut out many of the recognizable characters in the franchise from this release. Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Kano, Jax, Kung Lao, Sub-Zero and Shang Tsung all return here. For the most part they’re recognizable from their previous iterations. Except Sub-Zero, but that’s a travesty I’ve already mentioned. New to the mix are Cyrax and Sector (the cyborgs), Kabal, Nightwolf, Sindel, Sheeva as well as Stryker. Honestly these are all pretty boring. Of the new faces I only really liked Nightwolf, and that’s because it’s rare to see Native American representation in fighting games. The cyborg characters are okay but are hardly a suitable replacement for Reptile and Scorpion. It’s unfortunate, but Mortal Kombat 3 may have the weakest character roster in the series.

Worse yet are changes made to the combat system. Mortal Kombat II had the fighting engine nearly perfected. The additions here only muddy the experience. The run button, for example, makes very little sense. It allows you to charge at your opponent, but it’s also used for some special moves and finishers. It’s a pointless addition when they could have simply designated run to double tapping a direction. Furthermore the combo system is almost too easy to exploit here. Even when I was a child I had little problems just learning cheap ways to make it work. Many of the characters have strikes that are too similar to one another so there isn’t a lot of variety. Universal combos make sense, but not to this degree. At least in my opinion.

It might sound like I hate Mortal Kombat 3. That’s not the case. Outside of the changes I just went over the fighting engine is pretty solid. It feels like Mortal Kombat in motion, and that’s what matters. Each character has a series of special moves that differentiate them from one another. These are significant enough in terms of effect as well as recovery frames that they make tremendous differences between each fighter. The finishing moves still feel rewarding to pull off, and now each character has even more fatalities. Friendships and babalities also return to the mix as a bit of comic relief. New to Mortal Kombat 3 was the animalities. These involve summoning a characater’s spirit animal and are generally bigger and more flashy than the standard fatality. These are one of the more positive additions the developers made to the formula here.

Now it’s time to get to the differences between Mortal Kombat 3 on the PS1 and the prior console releases of the game. For one thing you have arcade perfect music. It better be considering the redbook audio format that compact discs allow for. Additionally the graphics are improved. The character models consist of more sprites, and they animate better. Backgrounds are also improved iwth more and better animation. Even the colors are better here. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks. For one thing the game suffers from loading times at start up as well as in the beginning of each match. These aren’t particularly intrusive but they are annoying. Unfortunately the worst loading times involve the character Shang Tsung and his transformations. Each time this ability is used mid-gameplay the game freezes to load the character. This actually is detrimental to gameplay. At least the issue is limited.

As I just mentioned the graphics in Mortal Kombat 3 on the PS1 are noticeably better than those in the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis versions. Unfortunately they aren’t as improved as I would have liked. Specifically it compares pretty closely to the SNES release. In motion you’ll notice more frames, but it’s not like the version for Nintendo’s console was a slouch or anything. The biggest change in terms of graphics is the menus. I just don’t think it’s worth the upgrade personally. Generally I don’t care much for full motion video but this release would have benefited from it. The PS1 port just needed something, anything more to set it apart from the previous releases. The soundtrack is a pretty big upgrade though. The audio is crystal clear. Even the announcer sounds great. As far as I can tell the music is arcade perfect.