Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Mortal Kombat has been an ever present entry in the fighting genre since gaming's earliest days. Famous for its gore, Raiden and the gang take on their toughest test... the heroes and villains of DC comics. Midway has decided to bring in a group of heroes and villains from the pages of DC's comic franchises in the hope of luring gamers to try out their latest Mortal Kombat offering. Have they succeeded in melding together these two disparate groups of fighters?

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe takes place as Superman defeats Darkseid's Apokoliptian invasion and Raiden defeats Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm. Upon their defeat they are both blasted by Raiden and Superman while attempting to teleport away and this leads to them melding together to form Dark Kahn. As fantastical as this sounds, it leads to unexpected results for both worlds as Earthrealm and the DC universe begin to merge together. This of course leads to some unexpected fights between the likes of Superman, Subzero, the Joker and the rest of the 22 strong cast of characters. Upon starting up MK vs DC you'll be presented with a few options. You can either start the story mode, a series of battles chronicling their merging of the two worlds, fight a series of arcade battles or take to Xbox Live and battle it out with all and sundry. Compared to previous games in the series there are no mini games whatsoever and very few modes in general.

The story mode is split into two separate universes, so you can choose to fight as either the MK or DC characters and play out a series of fights interspersed with cutscenes detailing how the characters try to find out how their worlds have come to meet. Surprisingly the cut scenes aren't as bad as one might imagine and are filled with nods to fanboys of both the MK games and the DC comics. Speaking of the cutscenes, the Unreal engine is used as the backbone for the graphics in Mortal Kombat this time around, and it shows with some beautiful arenas to fight in and some above average character models. While they might look good, they are still no where near the beautiful character models and environments that you'd see in the other big name fighters out there such as Soul Calibur 4. The characters all look as close as you could want to their comic / game brethren with characters such as Superman and Batman looking like you'd expect them to. Their animations are reasonably well done and are suitably 'meaty' to fit into the Mortal Kombat universe. To make sure that they could use the DC characters, Midway had to make some concessions to the more family orientated nature of the comic characters and so they have toned down the level of gore with Fatalities and Heroic Brutalities being nearly devoid of any blood at all - this in direct contrast to all the previous Mortal Kombat games. One nice touch though is that the characters will show signs of wear and tear during fights based on how badly they've fared with cuts, bruises and torn clothing all making an appearance. Its better than nothing I suppose.

I've had a chance to try out the online portion of Mortal Kombat and am pleasantly surprised to report that it is relatively lag free. While playing against another local South African gamer I experienced no input lag at all. This is far better than the online portion of Soul Calibur 4 which continuously made it tough to string together good combos and effectively time attacks. This brings me to Mortal Kombat's biggest advantage, as well as its biggest drawback - its easiness. Its extremely easy to learn and get used to the characters as the movesets are basic and easy to get to grips with. This is great if you're a new comer to fighting games as you pull off strings of spectacular combos and special moves. Your first few hours will be filled with spectacular moves that you manage to pull off with very little effort. After a while though you'll come to realise that there's not much depth to Mortal Kombat's fighting system. Once you've learnt the basics there's not much else to hold your attention for the remainder of the game. The AI scales to your level of skill so unfortunately you can use your best button mashing skills to exploit it into thinking you're a beginner as your AI opponents fall at your feet without you even having to break into a sweat. Add to this the fact that many of the DC characters are overpowered and you have one easy to play but shallow game. Most of the fun you'll get from this game will come from online multiplayer with your friends.

Soundwise there's not much to write home about with the usual array of Mortal Kombat tunes and some DC inspired tracks providing the backdrop to the sound of your fighters beating each other to a pulp. The voice acting hovers somewhere between average and good with some of the characters sounding how you'd imagine them to sound. Unfortunately they're hampered with some extremely cheesy lines from a script that would do Chuck Norris proud. At the end of the day Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is a game that you'd be best off waiting for as a bargain bin purchase. Its unfortunately come out at a time where there has been an influx of great titles and so it will probably get lost amongst its more illustrious brethren. If you're a DC or MK fan you might want to give it a look, otherwise you're best off getting the superior Virtua Fighter or Soul Calibur.

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