by Can Tran

Created on: February 25, 2009

Around my freshman year of high school, Midway had released the fourth installment to its popular "Mortal Kombat" series called "Mortal Kombat 4." It was through Mortal Kombat 4 in which Midway took its premiere fighting game franchise towards another direction. Actually, it was not really a new direction. It was the same direction that Capcom took with its "Street Fighter EX" series in collaboration with Arika. So, far I have seen that the Street Fighter EX games were far more successful than Mortal Kombat 4 all with good reason.

Of all of the Mortal Kombat games, perhaps it is one of the biggest flops in the world of fighting games.
During the time of the release of Mortal Kombat 4, there was rising popularity in regards to 3D fighting games.
Tecmo had its "Dead or Alive" series.
Namco had its "Tekken" and "Soul Edge" series. Sega had its "Virtua Fighter" series. It seemed that other companies were looking to jump onto the bandwagon when it came to 3D fighting games. While Capcom did have some level of success with its Street Fighter EX games, Mortal Kombat 4 could be considered one of the biggest failures.

In the past, the Mortal Kombat series used digitized actors. Instead of animated game sprites, you had digitized actors. This was one of the things that made Mortal Kombat popular. The other thing that made Mortal Kombat popular would be the insane amount of violence and bloodshed. It capitalized on the sheer amount of violence in the form of "Fatalities."
These are similar to your super moves in Street Fighter. However, they can only be done at the end of each match when it says "Finish Him!" or "Finish Her!" You only have a small window of time to pull off a Fatality. Fatalities were the most popular features with the Mortal Kombat series.

So far, it seems like Mortal Kombat 4 was experimental. Most of the Mortal Kombat characters were taken out.

The original characters in the game are: Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Jax, Sonya Blade, Raiden, Kano, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Noob Saibot and Reptile.

New characters are: Kai, Fujin, Jerek, Tanya, Reiko, Quan Chi, and Shinnok. There is a secret character called Meat that is available as well.

Mortal Kombat 4 has no digitized actors as a result. Instead, the character sprites are rendered in 3D polygons. But, the polygons were unimpressive. It could not compare to the character sprites in Tekken, Virtua Fighter, or Dead or Alive.

The backgrounds and fatalities were done in 3D. However, the backgrounds were not that impressive. On top of that, characters had their own special weapons that they could take out. But, it could get knocked out of their hands and picked up. However, it did nothing to make Mortal Kombat 4 a good game. I myself did not care for the weapons.

Mortal Kombat tried to get back to the basics with Mortal Kombat 4. So far, it kept with the Fatalities. It removed the Animalities, the Babalities, the Brutalities, and the Friendships. In regards to the story, Mortal Kombat 4 is connected with "Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero." As for the storyline, Mortal Kombat 4 was very bland.

Overall, Mortal Kombat 4 is a game that fails to impress. I would consider this one of the worst fighting games I had come across.
As a fan of fighting games, I have much criticism towards Mortal Kombat 4. This is a game not really worth checking out.

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