Mortal Kombat Komplete PC Review

By – Armaan Khan

I know, deep down, I should dislike Mortal Kombat Komplete.  Its visual style—which looks like it was ripped directly from the pages of a teenaged emo’s sketchbook—and its almost excessive amount of violence and gore effects should turn me right off.  But I can’t bring myself to hate it.  On the contrary, I enjoyed it immensely.

I blame—or maybe that should say ‘praise’—the Story Mode for my reaction.  It’s incredibly well-built, and deserves to be at the top of the main menu, and not stuck in the lesser position it actually occupies.   The story traces through the events of Mortal Kombats 1, 2, and 3, following the tribulations of the defenders of Earthrealm as they try to prevent Shao Kahn from conquering our world.  It’s well-told tale, both structurally and in terms of content, filled as it is with friendships, betrayals, redemptions, and one surprisingly fallible god.

The story and gameplay are melded together phenomenally.  Each chapter has you controlling a different character, but there’s none of the usual disorientation that often happens when a piece of fiction moves from one person to the next.  Whoever the writer was, he or she obviously took great pains to keep things as easy to follow as possible, which is quite the accomplishment considering fighting game stories tend to be fairly convoluted. The movement from cinematic to gameplay and back is similarly smooth, without a load screen in sight, which helped keep me immersed in the proceedings.

Of course, the downside to this structure is that I often found myself stuck with using characters that I never really liked playing.  I would have much preferred to stick with Liu Kang the whole way through but, then again, being forced outside of my comfort zone did have its benefits.  I got to learn the different characters, and developed a newfound appreciation for many of them, like Jax, who I normally would avoid like the plague.

Another negative is the controls.  They’re pretty bad if you’re playing with a keyboard, and only slightly less bad with an Xbox 360 controller.  This isn’t the fault of the game itself, though, and is rather endemic to the genre as a whole, since the games rely on moving the joystick in specific directions while pressing buttons at the right time.  As such, all fighting games tend to suck on anything other than a proper fight-stick or, barring that, a controller with a good d-pad.  I have neither, but I managed to get by with my Razer Onza controller.  Playing with the keyboard also netted acceptable results on easier difficulty settings, but required heavy reconfiguring to find a comfortable layout—“comfortable” being used very loosely there.

Oh, and there’s the usual assortment of arcade, challenge, and multiplayer modes that one would expect from this sort of game.  They function as expected, but aren’t much to write home about otherwise.  Fight dudes, hopefully win, try again otherwise—you know the drill.  Still, it’s great to have them there, for those who want to spend extended periods with the different characters and become expert in the intricacies of the combat system.

Graphically, the game looks good and performance was rock solid on my system, even with all the settings on high.   Not that there’s a lot of settings.   Aside from brightness/contrast/gamma/resolution, you can only change texture and shadow quality, as well as anti-aliasing.  I don’t consider that a big deal, however, because it’s a fighting game, so there’s not a whole lot of complicated geometry to bog your graphics card down.  Considering it ran smoothly on my system, it’s safe to say that any serious gamer’s rig will be more than up to the task of running the game.

Conclusion—Is It Worth The Money?

At $30 bucks, yes, Mortal Kombat Komplete is worth the money.  There’s a lot of meat for even a casual fighting game fan to sink his or her teeth into, and the story mode alone provides enough joy to justify the price of admission.  You might want to stay away if you’re a beat-and-deleter, but if you have even a passing interest in the fighting genre, you can’t go wrong with this.