Less filling, tastes great.
1. Motor Kombat. This is a cute little mini-game...for about 10 minutes. It doesn't have a whole lot or replay value though, unless you have about 2 or 3 friends that really love to play racing games. Mortal Kombat: Deception had a couple of solid mini-games to choose from, in Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat. Motor Kombat is all you get with this game. 2. No character bios. One of the nice things about the previous two MK games was the intricate bios that you could unlock in the Krypt. In Armageddon, what you see is what you get, bio-wise. Which is nothing. It does make the game feel a little more like an old school MK game, but that is not necessarily a good thing. As gamers, we have come to expect more from the MK team, in this regard. A side note here, character bios are currently being uploaded at a snails pace on the official MK: Armageddon website. The bios there are great...but they should have been on the game itself. 3. The fighting itself. By and large, this game offers only one new thing to the kombat. Air Kombat, which is a mixed bag. It lets you jump into the air to land even more punishment on your opponent. It's a flashy addition, but feels gimmicky, and is not even necessary to win matches. Also, all of the characters who have an Air Kombat set, have very similar, if not exactly the same Air Kombat move set. Other than that, the fighting has not changed much. It's pretty fun and addictive, but can still feel fairly clunky. This ain't Street Fighter 3, folks.
4. The Create-A-Fatality option. This is highly disappointing. The goal is that you can create your own fatalities, but by doing so, a lot of the fatalities will end up looking very similar to each other, since every fighter has to choose from the same options. Which include, ripping out hearts, brains, tearing off arms, etc. In past games, each character was basically defined by her/his fatality/fatalities. By taking that away, some of the individuality of the characters is basically gone. Let's hope that they bring it back in future games.
5. The Krypt. Given that there is a LOT of stuff on this disc (thanks to Kreate-a-Fighter mainly), the Krypt just feels rather empty now.
6. Konquest. It feels like a very watered down version of Shaolin Monks. Unlike Deception's huge-scope Konquest, where you are exploring the realms, this game's Konquest is a straight-through beat-em-up arcade game, which feels pretty rough. And with the exception of getting more koins to unlock stuff, there isn't really any reason to play it through again, since some of the bosses are downright annoying to fight (Shao Kahn Statue anyone?).
7. The Special Moves and Weapons sections of Kreate-a-Fighter. The Special Moves portion gets downgraded because of the fact that you can't choose from some of the better special moves/projectiles in the game, such as Reiko's Assassin Stars, or Stryker's grenades or machine gun move. All of the projectiles you can choose from, are basically different colored "fireballs." You can't create a real MKII version of Reptile, because there is no Acid Spit available. Or Mileena's Sai Throw. There is a LOT left out here.
The Weapons portion gets a huge F, because you can choose between swords and axes. That's it. No nunchaku, no tonfa, no pulse blades, none of the fun stuff. This is a let down as well. 8. The endings are pretty underwhelming. They all have each fighter doing exactly the same Kata atop Blaze's pyramid after you beat him. Some of the endings are pretty cool (check out Jarek's), but they are very brief and since they don't have any original artwork to accompany them...just don't have the same impact as the previous character endings did.
9. Lastly...The Taven, Daegon and Blaze thing. I'm sorry....but Blaze as the ultimate boss of the MK series? That is just a little too hard to swallow, I don't care how big they made him. Taven, the "main" character of this game, is also far too bland. He is definitely not as interesting as Deception's Shujinko, who got massive points for his resemblance to Pai Mei. -------------------
So it seems like I am really ripping this game so far. But this game does have some redeeming virtues that elevate it. 1. Every MK character is in this game! That in itself is reason enough to buy it. Not only that, but much maligned characters like Reiko and Stryker are given some pretty cool new looks (check out Stryker's alternate costume). 2. Every character feels unique, which is very important. Also, the fact that they all only have one fighting style is a plus. Two fighting styles per character was always a little needless. The style-branching combos are pretty much gone, although every character has a combo that goes from their fighting stance to their weapon stance. The previous game's style branching combos were rather silly, because what kind of fighter in real life switches from Tae Kwon Do, to Kenpo, to Kali Sticks in mid-strikes to attack their opponent. I always had a hard time swallowing that. I'm glad its gone. Even though some characters do have the same weapons stance (and very similar looking fighting stances), there are small differences. And some do make sense...such as Mavado and Kabal both fighting with hookswords. Makes their rivalry a little hotter (even if Mavado is much more highly powered than Kabal in this game).
3. The graphics and sound. Still very good. In certain arenas, there is a lot going on in the background. 4. The stage deathtraps are back, and a few of them are really clever. This was a great addition to the series. 5. The opening FMV. If you haven't seen this yet, you definitely have to. By far the best opening video of the next-gen MK games. 6. The bonus disc on the collector's edition has the video cards for a lot of the MK characters. They offer nice insight from the development team into each character, plus some stuff that you may not have known before. 7. The Kreate a Fighter visual and fighting options are very nice. It's about as well rounded as you can possibly expect. It actually surpassed my expectations, regarding what you could make your fighter look like. Heck, you can even make Power Rangers, if you really wanted to. ------------------------------
All in all, this is an adequate culmination of all things Mortal Kombat, but its definitely not a great game. With the exception of the Kreate a Fighter option, the game feels rushed. Even the fighter select screen feels rather generic. The Beta-version feel of Konquest does not help matters. The fact that we are still getting bios on the characters, 6 months after the game has come out, should tell you something. If you are a hardcore MK fan, then you should certainly own this game. If only because it contains every MK fighter. If not...then you would be well advised to skip it.