I was lucky enough to purchase the Mortal Kombat Kollection; which includes Deception, Armageddon, and Shaolin Monks; for only $14 at my local Target’s clearance section.  I am also lucky enough to have a girlfriend who enjoys playing Mortal Kombat.  So, over the weekend we took it upon itself to explore each game in all its glory.

Mortal Kombat Kollection

Of course, this game sat in my car for two weeks until I brought it over to the girlfriend’s house where my ps2 is currently stationed. (What a trooper he is lettin’ the girls play DDR.)  So we fired up the ps2 and I popped in Moral Kombat Armageddon.  Is this the proper time to tell everyone that I haven’t played MK since it was popular in arcades and was on the Dreamcast?  (Funny thing, it always froze on the Dreamcast!)

Anyways, Armageddon starts off with a giant cut scene/intro that is a complete fight scene.   An Aztec pyramid arises in the center that everyone races forward.  One man arrives at the top only to fight a dead-undead rival.  Then a large dragon like creature appears at the top causing me to vomit and skip the rest of the cutscene.  After all, I just wanted to get down to fighting.  Graphics were better than I expected from an older PS2 game.  Also the blood was incredible.  Alas, it is just a standard MK game with more violence and tons of characters to choose from.

This game’s redeeming gem is Motor Kombat. Where else can you take your favorite characters, stuff them into cars and race on five different tracks.   Each character gets a different power up to use to try and slow enimies down.  Needless to say, we spent more time on this than the actually fighting portion.

I think there is a cut scene for Deception as well, if there was I skipped it.  Again, MK game where you take one character and fight the other.  We were both sick of fighting already and imeaditely saw the gold in the game.  The gold being that there are two other modes to play.  Apparently there is a chess style mode for this one, but since my gf doesn’t know how to play chess we avoided that one.  The puzzle mode was fun as heck.  While similar in appearance to tetris, this game was everything but.  As blocks fall from the sky, two wide and can be multi-colored, you attempt to arrange them nicely upon the bottom of the screen.  Then every so often the MK symbol appears as one part of the block and allows you to destroy that color.  As you destroy colors on your side of the screen more block will apear in large chucks on the opponents screen.  Eventually after filling up a special bar you are allowed to use your characters special move which might do something nice for you or something bad to the other person.  Eventually when the other persons block reach the top they loose and hit you in the arm.  I still have a bruise because we played so many games of this.

Last but not lease is Shaolin Monks.  Frankly, this is the best Mortal Kombat game I have ever seen.  The best parts of the MK fighting aspect have broken out of the genre and are turned into a 3rd person fighting platform game.  Combos and Fatalities survive intact into this genre jump.  However, the game can be glitchy at time and save points are few and far between.  Graphics are as decent as any of the other two games and the blood quenches my thirst decently as well.  The storyline needs some work as one of the characters seems a little flat, but I haven’t decided if he being impersonated yet or not.  Who care, really?  After all you get to explore, solve platform puzzles and kick some serious ass.  I still say, best MK game ever.

All together this is one powerfull pack and if you are able to get it at a great price, like $14 when listed on Amazon for $28, then by all means grab it right up.  I highly doubt that you would be disapointed.  Well, maybe you if you don’t have an awesome girlfriend as player 2, but I doubt you can find one of those at Target.

Tags: armageddon, deception, kombat, mk, monks, mortal, PS2, review, shaolin