Mortal Kombat’s WORST Decision Ruined Its Most Important Game
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero is the MK franchise’s most important title, but a design flaw keeps it from reaching its potential.
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While the Mortal Kombat franchise is known for its tenure in the realm of fighting games, the series has taken a notable departure from its familiar roots in the past by branching out into action-adventure titles built around the world of Mortal Kombat. The results have been decidedly mixed, but there is no denying the impact that these games have had on the franchise for better or for worse. Among the three action titles, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero stands out as potentially the most important game in the series.
MK Mythologies places players in control of Bi-Han, the man who would be known as Sub-Zero in the first Mortal Kombat. Through his eyes, fans of the series would explore the world of MK prior to the tournament in the first game, taking a deeper dive into the lore and mythology of the franchise for the first time.
With the game acting as a bridge to Mortal Kombat 4, players would be introduced to characters such as Shinnok, Quan Chi, and Fujin, with the former two persisting in leaving their mark in the future of the series going forward and Fujin returning to the series in MK11: Aftermath. Despite the strides in filling out the lore of Mortal Kombat, gameplay design decisions leave Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero as an undesirable platformer as opposed to essential gaming.
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Where The Gameplay Went Wrong
While Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero leans heavily on its platforming/beat-’em-up roots, the gameplay design remained focused on the 2D plane of a fighting game. Rather than taking a page out of the books of games such as Streets of Rage or Final Fight, MK Mythologies limited Sub-Zero’s ability to travel along the screen to simply forward and back, with verticality being limited to Bi-Han’s ability to jump and crouch. The horizontal movement also suffers from the conventions of a fighting game, locking Sub-Zero in a forward-facing posture. To fix this, players had to press a button to turn Sub-Zero around.
The introduction of a button meant to turn Sub-Zero around created an added input from players during navigation of the map. This problem was made much more apparent in rooms where there were multiple enemies, as the player would have to consciously press another input in order to turn and block enemies from behind. Because Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero was built on being a traditional Mortal Kombat game, it also meant that players would be forced to juggle a block button while turning around should enemies find their way on both sides of Sub-Zero. The needless addition of a button to switch directions caused the game’s flow to suffer, with the controls being unintuitive and needlessly complicated for this type of game.
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero still stands as one of MK’s most expansive titles. Unlike MK: Shaolin Monks, the events of Mythologies still have an affect on the lore of the Mortal Kombat franchise today, and the characters introduced through the game would become the main antagonists for several games in the series. With the game’s ending following up on Sub-Zero’s entry into the Mortal Kombat tournament, Mythologies builds a solid backbone into the world of Mortal Kombat. To that end, one gameplay decision lets the experience down, bringing Mortal Kombat Mythologies to a level of near-forgettable mediocrity.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/mortal-kombat-worst-game-mythologies-controls-sub-zero/