First off let me say that if you are either a Mortal Kombat fan or a superhero fan, this game is for you. That being said lets get to the nuts and bolts of what makes this game great and what keeps it from being perfect.

The Pros:

The graphics are beautiful and the models are excellently crafted. The background stages take you everywhere you’d expect to go from the Batcave, the Fortress of Solitude, Paradise Island and the Lantern universe headquarters planet of OA. The fighters have specularity maps that reflect real-time light sources that are just an awesome sight to behold.

The story mode takes you though both sides in animated cut scene narratives and breathes life to all of the characters. Everything is explained thoroughly by comic book authors that reconcile both universes coexisting though existing video game and comic book mythos.

In terms of gameplay, it’s the best one since MKII. Aside from the occasional sidestep the fights are held pretty much on a 2D axis. The essence of old 2D kombat is retained with current-gen 3D graphics. The mechanics have been simplified to combo/special move stringing of when and where to perform them.

The Cons:

After such a lavish production quality provided by the Story Mode, the single character Arcade endings only offer a single art rendering and brief voiceover ending. It’s still more than most current fighting games offer but after experiencing Story Mode, they are a bit of a let down.

As fun as the game is, there are still some poorly designed combo strings that snuck their way past testing. “Infinites”, as they’re called, are combos that that can be strung for an eternity by poor and lazy coding. The final boss AI is also very cheap but all of these are par for course for Mortal Kombat games. Something to consider though is that this is the first time an MK game can be patched though the Playstation Network and Xbox Live. As it seems it’s already received an update.

As everyone on the internet has already loudly vocalized, the teen rated diet fatalities simply leave you wanting more. They’re still worth doing since, again, they provide what most fighting games still lack: a “finisher” type of feature. Not a huge gripe but something to keep the game from being perfect.

Bottom Line:

A solid title for any fan of the comic book or fighting game genre.
A must-have for any fan of both.

9/10