I Can't Believe This Didn't Suck: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Alright, so I am going to be trying a few new things with the blog in the next couple months. Mostly I want to start working on focused, regular features. The first that I want to try (and have been wanting to try for a while) is a semi-weekly ode to my favorite games that should have been utter garbage but turned out to be much better than we thought possible.

Everything said and done, let's give it a shot.


I Can't Believe This Didn't Suck: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Holy shit can I go on for ages on Mortal Kombat. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this series. It was great when I was a kid because of its simplicity and because over the top violence was all I needed to please me as a child (I swear, there are no bodies nor missing neighborhood pets buried in my backyard). I still love it today because, despite what a lot of people say, they actually have continued to evolve in play mechanics and depth while still staying simple enough to pick up and play with a few friends after a long night of excessive drinking.

I hated the series as a little kid because it wasn't Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Toy Story (after inputting Abracadabra for level select in Toy Story because a quarter of that game was fucking impossible). I still hate it today because, just as everyone says, it still isn't deep at all. Just when you get the more complex maneuvers and gaming physics nailed down, well...that is it. I always want it to go deeper. I will show my maturity by not making a sex joke so let's see here...ah! It is like ordering a thick crust pizza, you bite into it and you get into all the cheese and toppings (ha! I didn't even say 'sausage') and you are thinking, 'This is it! I am about to finish my bite and reach the crescendo and unlock all of the mystical secrets that this deep dish is hiding and....what the fuck? It's all sauce! The rest of my pizza is sauce!'


So yeah, I can get down on Mortal Kombat just as long as it knows and respects where it stands in my library of fighting games. And then they announced that a story driven, beat-em up would be released in September of 2005. I believe I may have sat my copy of Deadly Alliance down and had a very long, 'Look, its not you, it...it really isn't...come on! Don't be like that! Look I am sorry, but I just...I just don't think we can do this anymore. People might...well, they might find out,' chat with the thing. A story driven beat em' up based in the realm of Mortal Kombat?

Come on!

Why it really, really should have blown ass.


To understand my confusion as to why they would be releasing a story driven beat em' up set in the mythos of Mortal Kombat, you need to remember that this was coming out nearly six months after God of War reinvented the third person platformer/beat em' up by giving us tight controls, epic set pieces, the best boss fights fucking ever, and a really awesome story. You know, pretty much everything Shaolin Monks was promising in its advertisement campaign? So, it had already set itself up to be an also-ran.

Seriously, how are you gonna beat this?

Secondly, the Mortal Kombat story itself is a big what the fuck. Before we got our hands on Shaolin Monks we really had no damn idea what part of the story they would use. Where most fighters are content with giving enough background story to bring some fightin' dudes and dudettes together to do some fightin'. John Tobias and Ed Boon went ahead and created a whole working story arc for the first few MK games. However, it quickly reached critical mass in the alligator fucking stupid department. If the developers of Shaolin Monks were going to use the story of anything after MK III, it was going to be an absolute disaster.

Get the fuck back to the 90s.

Speaking of developers, let's talk about those guys. The game was developed by Midway Studios - Los Angeles, what is wrong with that? MS-LA used to be the forsaken by anyone with intelligence Paradox Studios. And what is so wrong with that? Well, the best game they ever made was Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style in which the developers lived up to the name Paradox Studios by making a competent fighting game based on the Wu-Tang Clan. Cool right? Well, they also made the two Backyard Wrestling games which, content aside, were ugly and utterly broken. Oh, they also brought us both of the X-Men: Mutant Academy games and the sequel X-Men: Next Dimension. All three played like Street Fighter overdosing on heroin. And oh fuck! They were the guys that tried to bring the fuck awful, pointlessly controversial (and never released) Thrill Kill. So, fuck me! Not a lot of faith in the guys working with an also-ran 3D action platformer based on a very shaky property plot. Oh and...

This was the shit that happened last time MK did a non-fighter. 

Why it really, really didn't blow ass.

So, it turned out that everyone was right about it being a poor man's God of War. However, this wasn't a bad thing at all. It controlled quite similarly and had the same multidirectional combo system (wherein you could start off by punching the dude in front of you and then hit the guy behind you without breaking your combo). It has great streamlined special attacks (press R1 and then press one of three buttons...how fucking sweet n' simple is that?), just enough platforming and (simplistic) puzzles to keep things from getting too stale, and boss fights that (though nowhere near the scale of the epic fights you faced in God of War) were nearly always different and challenging in their own right. 

Not only did it do everything God of War did to an acceptable level, Paradox Studios managed to add just enough Mortal Kombat flair to make it stand out. First off, those special attacks? All three are straight out of the arcade cabinet. Liu Kang bicycle kicks, fireballs, and super uppercuts the shit out of his enemies whilst Kung Lao flings his hat, teleports, and spins. Both characters have unlockable fatalities to pull off, a 'multality', and a brutality. Also, every level is pretty much straight out of the backgrounds of MK II. Neat shit!

So good job, developers...you took a simple clone and gave it more than enough fan service to stand out on its own and even carve out some of its own turf. 

Look! Look! I am not awful! WATTAAHHH!

Not only did Paradox manage to pull of the gameplay, they also went the smartest route when tackling the story. Instead of either spinning their own yarn or telling some of the fuck awful modern stories, they chose to stick with Mortal Kombat II. The game starts up right after the end of the first tournament and then follows the accepted canon of events up until the end of the second MK. This works great as the story here is concise and acceptable, but also gives the developers enough room to fill in some blanks with their own ideas and events. Its no genre bending, heart-wrenching tale of love and loss...but the story here will at least get you from point A to point B without making you cringe/vomit. 

Ugh.

Lastly, you really got your money's worth here. The main story will probably run you about five to eight hours, but then there is the second character and two other's to play as. Surprisingly, the four play just different enough that it is worth a revisit and at least some dicking around on a rainy day. Alright, so we get maybe twelve-ish hours if we play as both characters? How is that getting my money's worth, exactly? Well, theoretical skeptical ass clown, there is also multiplayer! 

Two players can team up with any combination of the four characters to take on special 'two player only' puzzles and paths. I honestly can't say how much this adds to the game because every time I have asked someone to play this with me, they look at me like I just asked if they will kindly go stick their dick in a beehive. But I am guessing it adds something. There is also a versus mode where you can unlock a handful of characters and fight each other using the engine of the game...again, never actually got to play this. 

The developers even packed the entire Mortal Kombat II arcade port on the disc. This isn't anything earth shaking but it is worth a neat revisit. 

You actually get to fight in this exact area and those floating purple dudes are regular enemies in Shaolin Monks! How fucking cool is that?

Lastly, Shaolin Monks continues the (then new) tradition of packing fuck tons of extra content into the game. In Deadly Alliance and every MK after, this is done through 'The Krypt,' you win coinage for fights and spend them to unlock neat little things. Here in Monks, its just hidden all over the world and requires exploration and some platforming to track them down (To this day I have only found about 89% of them and one out five hidden Smoke missions!) 

So in conclusion, Paradox Studios lived up to their name by not only making a hilariously playable Wu-Tang fighting game but also managed to remove Mortal Kombat from the fighting genre without it becoming a train wreck. It is too bad that God of War crushed this thing so completely and utterly because it would have been neat to see a bigger and badder sequel to this (the story in MK didn't get ungainly retarded until the fourth game). 

Oh, and you can still get the Toasty! SFX if you pull a decent enough combo in Shaolin Monks. MEGA RAD!