Day one of our live coverage from the show floor of the
Electronic Entertainment
Expo has come to a close. Today was spent gathering as much media as
possible from Midway's booth of the upcoming action adventure title,
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin
Monks. However, we are excited to start off with our first impressions.
When you first start up MK: Shaolin Monks, you get the fantastic intro video everyone's seen already (since we first posted this video back in February for
Midway Winter Gamer's Day). Once that's done you can get to the main menu. The main menu is actually further along on the PS2 version than the X-Box version, as some options that are locked out on the PS2 version don't show up at all on the X-Box version (such as Kontent and Options). The main menu options that are selectable include: 1-Player (Liu Kang), 1-Player (Kung Lao), 2-Player (Ko-Op Mode), and 2-Player (Versus Mode).
If you pick Liu Kang or Kung Lao, the other character always shows up during the cut-scenes. This way, if you pick 2-Player Ko-Op Mode, the cut-scenes in between the fights are exactly the same. Now, regardless of which selection you choose – 1- or 2-Player Ko-Op – once you make your selection, the game begins. In the PS2 version, you can select your difficulty (Normal or Hard) as well. Once the game begins, you start out in Goro's Lair. It starts by showing you the yellow eyes in the background, and then revealing that those eyes belong to Oni-Demons. In MK: Shaolin Monks, there is a secret in every room, and in the first room that secret involves the skeleton hanging up. By throwing the Oni against the skeleton on the wall, you can actually shatter it and make the bones fly everywhere.
Even though this game takes place in between MK1/MK2, it seems as though there is a reference to every MK game ever made. Two obvious references to MK4 are the skulls littered around Goro's Lair that you can actually pick up and throw at the Oni, in addition to weapons that can be used and thrown as well. One seems to be just like Liu Kang's sword from MK4, the other weapon available in the demo are Kamas. There should be many more available in the full game.
There are some really cool details that will be noticeable already, such as the fact that the Oni will sometimes start to fight each other. There are also some torches around the lair that can burn you if you're not careful, but if you are good enough, you can use them to your advantage by knocking the Oni into them. If you can burn an Oni this way, he will run around and can even light the other Oni on fire as well.
Once you get through that stage, the next level is The Pit. Johnny Cage is seen knocking off some Oni into the spikes below. If you're not careful in this level, the spikes will hurt you as well. Once you navigate your way up The Pit, you meet three Oni, who seem to be in cahoots with Reptile. He turns invisible, though, and so you never directly fight him (or CAN you?)
Along the way, there are opportunities to learn new techniques (such as blocking, combos, multi-directional attacks, and Fatalities). Before doing Fatalities, you have to do a certain number of combos to build up your meter, and then – once you press a button to stun them – you use the D-pad to enter in the button combination for the Fatality. Some of the Fatalities include:
- The Shaolin Soccer - Liu Kang does his Windmill Kick to launch your head in the air, and then Jet-Li Style, kicks it back at you
- Vertical Hat Slice - Kung Lao's Fatality from MKII, speaks for itself
- Bunny Bash - a parody of Kung Lao's MKII Friendship, he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, and the opponent begins to clap. However, Kung Lao proceeds to relentlessly beat his opponent to death using the bunny as his weapon.
- Arm Slice - Quite simply, Kung Lao slices the arms off of his opponent.
Once you beat The Pit, your next fight is with Baraka. And if you don't win, some of the bosses will do Fatalities to you to, such as Baraka doing his famous Impale fatality with his blades.
Baraka starts out by brutally killing a random Shaolin Monk. Liu Kang begins to compassionately kneel over the monk's fallen bodyou, as you see his soul fly from his body and into a mystical sword. Now Liu Kang and Kung Lao are enraged, and the battle begins. Once you get Baraka's life down to a certain level, he releases another Shaolin Monk who is being imprisoned. He doesn't actually release him so much as set him on fire, and this makes the battle a lot harder. The monk is running around on fire, and if he touches you, you're on fire. This means that Liu Kang and Kung Lao have to put their friend out of his misery and kill him. You do this by using a projectile attack against the monk – either Kung Lao's hat, or Liu Kang's fireball (think of it as fighting fire with fire).
Once you get Baraka down some more, you get a really cool cut-scene of Baraka falling down against this wall, but using his blades to climb his way back up. Now, Baraka is on the other side of this gap, and attacks you with continuous Blade Sparks. You have to be careful to dodge these attacks while at the same time using your projectile against him. Once you do this, Baraka jumps towards you (blades extended), and crashes into a box containing the mysterious Soul Sword – and this is where the demo ends.
Now to talk about Versus Mode. It's not like a standard fighting game, it features full dynamic 3-D motion as in a standard 3-D platformer. If there's any game to even compare this mode to, it would be PowerStone on Sega Dreamcast. Three stages were available in the Demo: The Pit, The Portal, and The Ice Falls. These stages are pretty much identical to their action-adventure counterparts; the only real difference is the limitation on the camera to keep things simpler for this mode. The Portal actually attempts to suck both players into it, and it's also causing wooden chunks to float around in the air that you have to watch out for. There are boxes in this mode that contain items, such as skulls/weapons (just like the action/adventure mode), power-ups that give you extra energy or cause you to do extra damage to your opponent, and more traps that can hurt you.
In this mode, only Kung Lao and Liu Kang were selectable, although in the PS2 version, we could see silhouettes for at least 6 more Kombatants. We can only speculate at this point who will be selectable, eg. Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, etc. But seriously, who knows for sure?
We've been told that the PS2 version is farther along because they code for that system first, before porting it over. However, on the X-Box version, it's a lot easier to make the weapon trails. A demo of this game will be available to the public soon, available on the demo disc included with
OPM and
OXM magazines.
Stay tuned, even more E3 updates on the way!
