Mortal Kombat 4 Review

For Nintendo 64 and PlayStation

Note: While this review is based on the Nintendo 64 version
of MK4, the PlayStation version is virtually identical, 
only with slightly lower-quality graphics and the obvious
addition of load time.

Rating: Average
   Well, what else is there to say about Mortal Kombat?  
You either love it or you hate it (or you used to love it 
and you slowly grew to hate it, which is the category I fall
into).  Midway dressed up Mortal Kombat 4 with fancy 
polygonal graphics, the new feature of fighting with weapons,
and some comical bone breaking moves.  Eurocom did a 
masterful job porting the arcade game to the home systems.  
So what's the problem?  The problem is that at its core, 
MK4 still consists of the same unbalanced, cheap-move-based 
crap that hasn't been fun since MK2.  Sure, the Fatalities 
are still cool, but many of them are too hard to 
pull off because the game requires you get the button 
presses, distance, and timing EXACTLY right (and why, really,
when one-button fatalities would provide just as much 
entertainment without the hassle?).  Sure, the addition of 
weapons adds some variety to the gameplay, but only for as 
long as it takes to you realize they are completely 
worthless (one hit and they go flying out of your hands).  
Sure, Goro's back, but his animation sucks and he can be 
beaten with the same repetitive tactics that everyone else 
falls to.  Yes, MK4 is a very flawed game, yet upon 
searching to see what other reviewers thought about the 
game, you'd be surprised how many reviewers say they like 
this game.  I guarantee you that at least half of those 
reviewers didn't even think about whether they really liked 
the game, they just didn't have the bal... err, guts to bash
a game that will undoubtedly have so many followers just 
because it has the words "Mortal Kombat" on the box.  
Speaking of which, why the heck does it say "Mortal 4 
Kombat" in the logo artwork instead of "Mortal Kombat 4"?  
Why do companies always do that?  Anyway, the complete 
boredom MK4 put me through made me wonder why I enjoyed MK1 
and MK2 when they first came out.  And really, who knows?  
Maybe Mortal Kombat was this flawed from the beginning and I
just never noticed in MK1 or MK2 due to the novelty of the 
gore factor.  If that's the case, the novelty ran out when 
MK3 arrived, and MK4 is just more of the same in a fancy 
polygonal package.  Sorry Midway, but Mortal Kombat 4 is 
too little, too late.
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