by: John Olin

October 03, 2005

Shaolin Monks is actually the kind of game I wanted real badly when I was younger. I remember playing a title, starring Sub-Zero on PlayStation, completely pissed off, and in disbelief at how horrible the title was. It was actually around that time I became uninterested in the Mortal Kombat franchise all together. I will admit, that while I will play and enjoy the current-generation Mortal Kombat fighting titles, I’m not a huge fan. Shaolin Monks is not perfect, but I felt like a ten year-old kid again playing the 2D Mortal Kombat titles again at many times, actually intrigued about what was going to happen next. Speaking of which, I don’t think anyone could fully enjoy this title unless they remember the old-days of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II. In fact if you do some annoying missions within the game, you can actually unlock Mortal Kombat II.

When you start the game off, it is the time during the first MK. The opening scene gives you just a glimpse of familiar stuff. The video starts off with the “MORTAL KOMBAT!” heard in the movie, and when Kung Lao jumps into the action, you hear the announcers name say “Kung Lao”. Grabbing my attention, I traversed through Goro’s Lair, The Pit, The Pit II, The Outworld Portals, The Living Forest, the name of locales that you would remember from the older fighters goes on. The thing about this game is however, is that it is not a fighter, rather a action-brawler putting you in the shoes of Kung Lao or Liu Kang. The game takes place somewhere in between Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II. The story is a bit shaky, but basically the warriors of Earth must make sure that Shang Tsung and Shao Khan do not break the rules of ‘Kombat’ and do not try and cheat their way into domination of Earth. You can also choose to play the game cooperatively, but the biggest downfall is, you can’t do it after you started a game. So say you chose to go solo, but found puzzles or areas meant for two, there is no way a buddy can get in on the action. Instead, you can start a game in a separate Co-op mode. What hurts it even worse is the fact that there is no online play, which could be done easily. Simply have someone online take the place of the second controller.

When you do have someone with you in co-op you have an array of interesting attacks open to you, but the game still follows an almost ridiculously easy control scheme. Basically to attack, all you do is press X and Y a whole lot, and throw in the occasional throw. You do your character’s special attacks by holding down the right trigger, and pressing X, Y, or B to do a special move. Liu Kang has his fireballs, and kicks, while Kung Lao has his hat tosses, teleports, and tornado spins. Mastering these maneuvers efficiently means you will do some pretty crazy looking combos if there are enough baddies on the screen. I’ve managed to link up to over 100+ hit combos at once, but it can become very methodical. You can’t use special moves forever, as there is a blue special meter under your health meter, but it builds back up in little time. You also have an orb meter, in which after doing a certain amount of combos, you can perform fatalities, multalities (killing bunches of people at once), or brutalities. The fatalities are all pretty easy to do, and remember. The game gives you a good amount of time to put them in as well. The strange thing is, after a certain points none of these moves will work on the most basic enemies later in the game. Even after you see their bodies explode or get cut in half, they are still alive. There are some special event fatalities you do for bosses however, and those are actually pretty creative most of the time. Another interesting aspect of the game worth mentioning, is every time you hear ‘Toasty!’ if you press down Start you get 1000 exp.

With that said, you earn experience as you go through the game and you can level your moves up. The system is pretty simple, but it is interesting to see how much more powerful the attacks can be. The game follows a pattern though—and it is painfully obvious. You go around hitting buttons, jumping around, and whooping ass. You then come across some baddies that you have to uppercut into a catapult, spikes, or knock through a wall to progress. Then you will get some bosses that are no challenge at all. Then other times you will get bosses that rise the difficulty level way up from what you had been used to playing since you started. One such fight, against a certain trio of woman ninjas is actually pretty difficult. Did I mention the nostalgia? The game goes pretty far into making sure you are happy, all the way from hiding Smoke, to letting you knock numerous enemies into Living Forest trees mouths, or off the Pit. The floating purple hooded monks in Mortal Kombat II are now guys you have to fight—Kitana helps you in a very ‘Mortal Kombat the movie’ way. As you progress through the game you will come to areas you can’t directly access until you get certain abilities, so it is a bit of laziness on the developers part, but it also gives you something to shoot for, and makes you want to play the game more.

Visually the game does two things—it gives you good representations of familiar Mortal Kombat environements, and two it gives you just good enough visuals to keep you from not laughing. Don’t expect the visuals to be even half as good as the visuals found in the fighting portions of the newer Mortal Kombat games. Rather, expect them to be more on the level of the Story mode in the newest. Most of the enemies in the game have an interesting look about them, but they don’t look impressive at all. It goes for main character models, but they have the main points down pretty well. The blood splatters in the game however are great, and are just the right amount of over-the-top.

Like visuals, the audio in the game does two things—one it sucks on a technical level, but two it kicks ass on a nostalgic level. Like I mentioned before you will hear ‘Toasty!’ a lot in the game. You will hear plenty of sound effects from Kung Lao and Liu Kang that sound like they were taken right from the originals. You also get the announcer voice, and much of the music seems to be inspiring by the old games. With that said, there is nothing special about the hitting sound effects, or anything else for that matter. The voice-acting isn’t really appreciated either, especially from the guy trying to sound like Christopher Lambert when playing Raiden.

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Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks should be an appreciated break from the fighting formula for any MK fan. The game isn’t the game to end all games, but those Mortal Kombat fans out there should at least give it a rent. If you loved MK and MKII, you will probably appreciate this game even more. The nostalgia packed in the game is amazing, and better yet, you can unlock Mortal Kombat II. Still, you can’t help but feel the creators made this only as a ‘thank you’ for the hardcore rather than for everyone else to play.

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