Mortal Kombat 4

This game is pretty fun-- but like the rest of the Mortal Kombat games, it lacks in gameplay. But the gameplay is much better than the other Mortal Kombat games. This game is still good, but lose the bad gameplay. UGH!

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Mortal Kombat 4 is a game that changed how Mortal Kombat played. After the defeat of Shao Kahn, the fallen Elder God Shinnok escapes from his imprisonment in the Netherrealm with the aid of the sorcerror Quan Chi, and now aims to gain revenge against them, and even revenge against Raiden, the one who defeated him. Now, Earth's warriors must face Shinnok and his warriors in Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat 4 stops using the digitized actors of the last three games and switches to 3D graphics and character models. Despite this, the gameplay is still restricted to a 2D plane, however, the game adds the ability to sidestep, which is useful for dodging a projectile and, if you are quick, counterattack with a combo. Also new is the ability to use weapons, as each fighter has a weapon that he or she can pull out and use with a specific button combination. Weapons can do much damage, however, in this game, they can be knocked out the fighter's hands, which then can be picked up and used by the opposition.

For the roster, fifteen characters are there to choose from, from returning fighters like Scorpion, Raiden, and. Johnny Cage, as well as new fighters like Tanya, a Edenian who betrays her realm so Shinnok takes over, and Kai, a fellow Shaolin monk. While the roster is a good mix, sadly, some of the new characters are unoriginal (Jarek, who is said to be the last member of the Black Dragon, is unoriginal, as most of his moves are taken from Kano, even to the point where one of his Fatalities is having an eye laser, which is baffling as he has no cybernetics, and Reiko is basically made from a model planned for Noob Saibot due to issues and complaints about Mortal Kombat having too many ninjas, in which Noob was put into the game).

As for finishing moves, Mortal Kombat 4 takes the series back to its violent roots, as Babalities and Friendships were removed, and Animalities were removed due to how impossible it was to do transformations in 3D (although Liu Kang still has his Dragon Morph Fatality and Scorpion can become a giant scorpion as one of his Fatalities). So each character has four Fatalities: two unique Fatalities, and two Stage Fatalities (one for The Prison, and the other for Goro's Lair).

Okay, now that I explained this, I have to say this is good, but it still has some flaws. The fact that they made the final boss a playable character is sad (as he was the only boss in the arcade port, with home ports adding Goro in as a sub-boss), and along with the new characters being copycats of past characters, the gameplay is the same despite the addition of weapons, and the endings are infamous for being hilariously bad.

I was interested to see what Midway could do with the series with it's venture into complete 3D. I had immensely enjoyed the past 3 games. When I finally got to play Mortal Kombat 4. I felt indifferent about it at first. The full 3D aspect was different. The graphics weren't all they could be for a PS1 game in my opinion.

The new character additions were average to bad. Some old characters look alright for their first time in 3D. Some of the fatalities are redone for the full 3D world. Which is cool. There are also stage fatalities in this game. Which hasn't been seen since MK2 by this time. They are done nicely. Babalities, Animalities, Brutalities, and Frienships are all taken away in this game.

Mortal Kombat 4 also introduced weapons. I was never a big fan of weapons in Mortal Kombat 4. As they are a optional in the game. Which eventually leads to them being a throw away in my opinion. The best action is with the characters moves and hand to hand combat.

My biggest complaints about this game is the end boss Shinnok. First off he has one of the most annoying voices in the game. He's very easy to face and his fatalities are a bit plain maybe even comical. He's one of the worst bosses of the MK series.

Voice acting has never been MK's strong point, but the ending FMV's are marred by bad voice acting. Choppy and sometimes stiff looking movements. I can see why they did and eventually stuck with the still picture endings. All in all it's a decent MK game. Can't really call it bad, but it could've been a lot better.

I have been the biggest Mortal Kombat fan since the beginning and I was hoping that this would do for 3D fighters graphicswise what Mortal Kombat II did for 2D games back in the day meaning. This would look like real actors, in 3D making all others look cartooney. But that's not the case. Ever since Mortal Kombat 3 things had got progressively cartoony, both MK3 and T (which are essentially the same) had got cheesy-wwf-marvel comics like and while it was starting to get better here it underwhelmed me when I saw it at the arcade.

Gameplay wise it is not an improvement instead of trying to fix what they already had they stripped almost everything out. The weapons where kind of neat but they could easily be knocked out of your hands and they didn't significantly add to the gameplay. Then to compound all of this they took the decent looking 3,000 polygon models from the arcade and reduced them to about 600 polygons for the N64\PSX\PC versions and the didn't even have to lower it for the PC but they just wanted to do a quick port make once, run everywhere. They corrected this graphicswise with the dreamcast version later, MK Gold but it was too little, too late.

This game is definitely an improvement of MK Trilogies. The new fatalities are great. Except they should have kept animalities, those were cool. Thank god they got rid of brutalities though, those sucked, and so did the comedy in the last game. And it's too bad that some of the warriors are gone. Like a lot of the ninjas and female fighters, the were very much needed. But the new 3-d stages are great.