Mortal Kombat

[BlueCali]

Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment just revealed that the famous fighting franchise will return to PlayStation 3 in 2011 in a new MK that will be played in 2D.

The company says that the game will include extensive online play, a "tag-team" game option that supports up to four players in two-person teams and "the deepest story mode of any fighting game." The game will also support classic 1 vs. 1 combat. The graphics engine is said to be brand-new.

MK creator Ed Boon is overseeing the project, which is in development at the new MK-centric NetherRealm Studios in Chicago. "This game really is a response to what players have been demanding," Boon said in a press release, "mature presentation, reinvented 2D fighting mechanic and the best, most gruesome fatalities ever!"

Mortal Kombat was last seen in video game form in 2008's Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, a T-rated game that toned down the series' classic violence so that Superman could tangle with Sub-Zero and friends. Mortal Kombat has been in the news this week thanks to the Mortal Kombat Rebirth movie pitch trailer that we showcased here on Kotaku.

Order

Standard: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003O6E1JS/?tag=hidefnin-20
Collectors: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GD1Q4G/?tag=hidefnin-20
Tournament: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GD1Q2I/?tag=hidefnin-20

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat's free-variable system trumps slow, unwieldy patches

NetherRealm's upcoming reboot of Mortal Kombat forgoes the traditional method of modifying a game post-release — a downloadable patch, approved by the console manufacturer — in favor of a "free-variable" system.

Though major changes will still require a patch, smaller adjustments to individual moves — an infinite combo exploit, for example, or an overpowered attack — can be implemented via the free-variable system, which resides on NetherRealm's servers.

"The majority of our moves and special moves work off of different kinds of variables, as far as speed, the frame it’s going to hit on, different kind of frames like recovery or start-up in the moves," explained NetherRealm Lead Designer Paulo Garcia during a recent conference call with PlayStation Universe. "On our online servers we actually have a database for those numbers and we’ll be able to change those on the fly. So if I see that a move is either too fast or whatever is causing an issue, for a lot of them we’ll be able to go in there and change the speed or otherwise rebalance the moves, to either get rid of them or rebalance the game based on any kind of future problems that would come up."

To adjust one of the system's variables, all NetherRealm needs to do is change a number on its servers and hit the 'send' button. As long as you are logged into your PlayStation Network account, those changes will apply to both the single-player and multiplayer portions of the game.

"Definitely the main thing is like the free-variable system allows us to tweak all the variables of all of the moves after the fact — it’ll be a big help," added John Edwards, another Mortal Kombat lead designer. "Once the game is released out into the wild, and everyone has a chance to beat on it for a while, obviously imbalances will crop up, but we will be able to plug those holes really easily."

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat accessible but deep with the help of a tutorial mode

Not everyone is a hardcore fighting game fan, and Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm knows it.

"One of the things that we did to bridge the gap between the casual players and the hardcore players is the implementation of a tutorial mode — that’s something that fighting games haven’t really done before," said NetherRealm producer Hector Sanchez during a recent conference call with PlayStation Universe. "We don’t want to be one of those fighting games that just go out there and assume that people know how to play the game without walking them through it."

The studio crafted a deep tutorial mode that will teach casual players the basics of the Mortal Kombat — moving, blocking, attacking and so on — but will still offer hardcore players valuable lessons in the likes of juggle combos, the combo breaker system, resource management, the super meter system and more. To encourage players to play the tutorial, NetherRealm attached PlayStation Network trophies to the mode.

 

[jefXfree]

NetherRealm delves into MK lore, creates over two hours of cinematics

The Mortal Kombat franchise is better known for its copious carnage than its riveting narratives, but Chicago-based NetherRealm Studios put story in the spotlight for its upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot.

"With the reboot of the franchise, we’re actually able to expand upon the stories where we weren’t able to before," said Hector Sanchez, NetherRealm producer, during a recent conference call with PlayStation Universe. "We have a lot of members on the team that have been around [since the early days], and know the lore of the characters, so they were able to develop and flesh out their characters a lot more know than they’ve ever been able to before."

Though the characters of Mortal Kombat I, II, and III were iconic, their backstories were limited to about a paragraph of text each. Now, this new Mortal Kombat features over two hours of cinematic content — and that doesn't even include the real-time scenes.

"We wanted to show a bit more of who [the characters] are beyond [their fighting style]," added MK Lead Graphics Engineer John Greenberg. "Obviously that’s a bit hard to do with more than 20 characters that you have to show and interact with, but that was a big goal: to give you a sense of who these people are that you’re playing with, not just a bunch of people beating each other up."

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat: Komposing Cinematic Audio and the Origins of Toasty!

I’ve worked on Mortal Kombat for most of its life, starting with the early arcade versions, and moving on through the first two console versions – Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Deception. I took a hiatus with Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, but am back with this latest and deadliest version and having a great time working in the audio department with a super-talented and experienced team.

As Audio Director, Rich Carle provided excellent leadership and guidance for the team in addition to writing music, creating sound effects and mixing movies. Senior Sound Designers Matt Grimm and Michael Caisley created a ton of sound effects for the characters and environments in the game as well as for the story mode movies and Senior Sound Designer Brian Chard wrote a lot of the story mode and recorded and edited pretty much every vocal sound in the game in addition to wrangling localization and arcade endings. Chase Ashbaker helped us out at the end with sound design and in-game audio scripting. I wrote a lot of music, created some sound effects for characters and environments and scripted most of the character audio in the game.

This time around, we’ve made an effort, spearheaded by Rich, to create a cinematic game audio experience. While we definitely wanted to keep and enhance the bone-crunching audio design of the past, we also wanted to create a dynamic experience, so that big events really stand out but we can also hear things like the rustling of the fighter’s clothes and details in the fighting arenas like branches creaking in the Living Forest, insects buzzing in the Courtyard, and people screaming in the distance in the Dead Pool. With nearly two hours of cinematic cut-scenes, we really wanted the player to have a cinema-quality audio experience throughout the story mode, yet still get the in-your-face game experience during the fights.

Regarding the music, our initial approach was to re-work the original music with better instruments and audio tools. This is apparent on backgrounds like Living Forest, Courtyard and the Subway. As we went along, it felt appropriate to allude to some of the melodies in the older tunes, but create a completely new arrangement, as in the Pit, the Temple and the Armory. In a few cases, Rich and I wrote completely new material as in the Street and the Desert, so there’s a broad spectrum of music from the familiar to the brand new in this game. We also went in an orchestral direction with some of the music which was a lot of fun. Matt Grimm mixed all the music in quad (four speakers), so fire up your surround sound system to hear how immersive the musical experience is.

A lot of people ask me about where “Toasty” came from. Before we worked on Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon developed the arcade football games High Impact and Super High Impact. We used to play these a lot and, as the offense and defense approached the line of scrimmage, I’d say something like “You’re toast!”, which turned into “I predict Toasty!”, delivered in high operatic falsetto. Another developer there, George Petro, suggested we put some of our silly taunts into our games as Easter Eggs. Ed decided to go ahead and try it in Mortal Kombat II, so we did, and the rest is history… or something…

You can listen to the audio here.

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat Shang Tsung Vignette Will Suck Your Soul

​

Good old Shang Tsung. Sucker of souls, severer of heads, old Fu-Manchu lookalike and servant to Shao Kahn, he's been overseeing the last nine Mortal Kombat tournaments, so he's an old hand at this whole thing now. In this latest trailer, we get to see Tsung back once again, doing his usual schtick, throwing green soul globules around and mimicking his opponent to temporarily steal their abilities.

 

[darczap]

My order is out for delivery. Can't wait to get this!

 

[the_ps_hero]

With Two Mk Futureshop Exclusive Steelbook's

I'm Baller,Yo.

 

[darczap]

the ps hero, that is awesome :rock
I would love to get my hands on a MK steelbook

 

[Groo The Perverted]

Can someone verify the trophy requirements? Meaning, is it like Madden where you have to play on All-Pro to unlock trophies?

If I don't have to play on Hard or something to get trophies, I may end up getting this on the 1st. As long as I can get trophies on any skill level, that'll be cool.

Cause I suck at MK. It's fun for me to play, on the lower skill levels.

 

[jefXfree]

There's a trophy for beating it on hard without continuing... But you'd know that if you checked the trophy thread... lol. <3

 

[Groo The Perverted]

There's a trophy for beating it on hard without continuing... But you'd know that if you checked the trophy thread... lol. <3

yada yada yada.

I pre-ordered Motorstorm: Apocalypse, and then cancelled it. I just couldn't pull the trigger (and keep it pulled, anyway) due to my frustration at the demo. There's just TOO MUCH going on, and my hand/eye coordination was never the best, so that much arou flying around on the screen ready to wreck my car just is not what I'm looking for. lol

So I cancelled it and bought MK9. It'll be here on Saturday.

 

[jefXfree]

yada yada yada.

I pre-ordered Motorstorm: Apocalypse, and then cancelled it. I just couldn't pull the trigger (and keep it pulled, anyway) due to my frustration at the demo. There's just TOO MUCH going on, and my hand/eye coordination was never the best, so that much arou flying around on the screen ready to wreck my car just is not what I'm looking for. lol

So I cancelled it and bought MK9. It'll be here on Saturday.

Cool.. When PSN is up we'll have to do a bit of MK fighting... LMK. It'll help us both with the trophies that take a lot of time to get.

 

[Groo The Perverted]

I also bought EA's MMA (for my buddy) and the Blus of Fantastic Mr. Fox + Princess Bride.

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 PM ----------

aw, man you spoilered my signature???

 

[Groo The Perverted]

On Story Mode. Playing as Liu Kang and am just now fighting Shao Kahn. CAN. NOT. BEAT. HIM.

 

[Kill4Steel]

I also bought EA's MMA (for my buddy) and the Blus of Fantastic Mr. Fox + Princess Bride.

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 PM ----------

aw, man you spoilered my signature???

They typically spoiler sigs of big images. Which makes sense cause when reading a thread where a couple peopel with big images are chatting back and forth is really painful on the eyes.


So is MK hard to plat?

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat DLC Coming This Month

At today’s PDP-sponsored (the makers of the Mortal Kombat fight stick) official Mortal Kombat National Tournament in Las Vegas, NetherRealm Studios head and Mortal Kombat co-creator, Ed Boon, shed some light on plans for the upcoming Mortal Kombat DLC.

Skilled competitors gathered today in Las Vegas, Nevada where PDP held a Mortal Kombat Nation Tournament which awards over $21,000 in prizes to the best of the best. There, Ed Boon talked briefly about Skarlett, who will be available before the end of the month. Boon also spoke of “free stuff” which could be anything from additional alternate costumes to characters, stages, and more.

Last month, the first DLC characters were revealed to be Skarlett, a long-rumored character from Mortal Kombat II, and Kenshi, a katana-wielding ninja, who has been blinded by Shang Tsung. The MK team has said repeatedly that they’ll support the game with DLC characters as long as people are playing it.

Just under 900,000 copies of Mortal Kombat have been sold in the month of April alone, so plenty of people have made it their game of choice.

 

[jefXfree]

Play Mortal Kombat on the PlayStation for free (Until the Store is Back Up)

Due to the recent PSN outage, Mortal Kombat for PS3 will now be playable online without need for the Kombat Pass. This is a temporary solution that will only be available while Playstation Store is unavailable. Once PlayStation Store is back up, users will be able to enter the Kombat Pass code included with Mortal Kombat or purchase a Kombat Pass for $9.99.

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat Getting Classic Costumes coming soon

"Looking for Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile, Ermac, Jade, Kitana, and Mileena in their old school attire? Consider this two weeks notice," proclaims a tweet on the official Mortal Kombat Twitter feed, noting that seven new costumes are on the way soon.

Therefore you can expect the same ninja costume in yellow, blue, green and red for Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile and Ermac respectively, and green, blue and purple outfits for Jade, Kitana and Mileena. No price has yet to be confirmed for the costumes and it's entirely possible that they could be offered free. Look out for them in the week beginning June 6th.

All seven classic costumes and three classic fatalities, which were previously retail exclusives will be bundled into one single DLC pakage.

 

[Horhay]

im waiting for the price to go down to pick up the game

 

[jefXfree]

Mortal Kombat: How to Dominate With Kratos

<object classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="265" id="viddler"><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/e9c40491" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="flashvars" value="fake=1"/><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/e9c40491" width="437" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="fake=1" name="viddler" ></embed></object>​

If you watched our recent video Q&A with Ed Boon and Stig Asmussen, then you know that NetherRealm Studios and Sony Santa Monica Studios collaborated closely to ensure that God of War’s ultra-violent antihero was faithfully recreated for his highly anticipated (and PS3-exclusive) Mortal Kombat debut. Now that the shrink wrap is off the game, my hands-on play sessions have yielded some powerful tactics. First, a few observations:

Kratos is a tactician, not a brawler. Kratos’ style combos aren’t particularly fast or powerful, so wading into combat while mashing buttons won’t get you results worthy of the God of War. An effective Kratos player must demonstrate equal parts finesse and animal cunning.

The Helios Head gets results. Like Scorpion’s spear or Sub-Zero’s ice blast, the Helios Head is Kratos’ go-to special attack. You’ll learn to love it for several reasons: the blast boasts impressive range, stuns on impact, and shuts down jumping attackers. More importantly, it can chain a fast, weaker opening combo into a mortal monstrosity, especially when followed with the Olympic Ascension (below).

It helps to rise to the occasion. The key to unlocking Kratos’ highest damage potential is the Olympic Ascension (Back + hold Triangle), a powerful juggle that launches both fighters into the air. Follow up with the Olympic Toss (Circle) for a crushing finale and upwards of 30% damage.

Kratos: turtle killer. Torment a defensive foe by alternating between the Hades Pain (Back + Square, Back + Circle) and the Hades Edge (Back + Square, Triangle). The former ends with a low attack; the latter will defeat a crouching block. Mix them up to keep your opponent off balance in close-quarters brawls.

Don’t get overwhelmed. When confronted with a speedy, teleporting opponent such as Scorpion or Smoke, stay at a distance and blast away with Apollo’s Bow while fending off incoming attacks using the Golden Fleece (Down, Back, Square).

Kratos eats fireballs for breakfast. Just like in the games, the Golden Fleece will even reflect incoming fireballs back at your attacker. Take that, Shang Tsung!

Movelist

1. Head of Helios: Down, Back, Triangle
2. Apollo’s Bow: Down, Forward, Triangle
3. Zeus Rage: Down, Forward, X
4. Golden Fleece: Down, Back, Square
5. Hermes Dash: Back, Forward, Circle

Fatalities

1. Blade of Olympus: Down, Down, Back, Forward, Triangle (sweep distance)
2. Medusa’s Gaze: Down, Back, Down, Forward, Square (jump distance)

Killer Kratos Combos

Kratos’ most damaging strings tend to open with a basic style combo, transition to the Helios Head, and conclude with an ultra-damaging Olympic Ascension juggle. With a little experimentation and a lot of hands-on time, I crafted the heavy hitting combos below. But this is just the beginning. Be sure to share your favorite Kratos combos (include a sweet name!) in the comments below, and I’ll update the list with the best community picks.

1. “Hellraiser” - Forward + Triangle, Helios Head, Pandora’s Soul (Forward + Circle, Back + hold Triangle), Olympic Toss (Circle in mid-air)- 6 hits, 39% Damage
2. “Zeus Pounce” - Jump kick, Enhanced Zeus Wrath (Down, Forward, X + R2) - 5 hits, 23% Damage
3. “This is Sparta!” - Circle, Helios Head, Enhanced Hermes Dash (Back, Forward, Circle + R2) - 3 hits, 23% Damage
4. “Sun and Moon” - Jump punch, Athena’s Fury (Triangle, Square, Triangle), Apollo’s Bow - 6 hits, 20% Damage

Destroy Shao Kahn in the Ladder mode with Kratos and you’ll earn the Blades of Exile item. Cash it in at the Nekropolis to unlock Kratos’ alternate “Fear” costume — the same outfit you earn by completing God of War III.