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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you liked the first two, don't hesitate on the third., December 18, 2001
After failing to conquer the earth realm through tournament battle, Shao Kahn decides to get straight down to business and send "Outworld Extermination Squads" to North America. That's the short version of the main background story for MK3. Naturally a new crowd of fighters (along with some of the old line-up) gather to either put a stop to it or encourage it. There are fourteen fighters to choose from. Old favourites like Shang Tsung, Liu Kang, Kano, Sonya, Jax, Sub-Zero and Kung Lao return. The new fighters include Sindel (Shao Kahn's "queen" herself), Sheeva (the first player-controllable four-armed character), Kabal (a weird warrior with a mask), Cyrax & Sektor (two "automated" ninjas from Sub-Zero's clan), Stryker (a baton-weilding cop) and Nightwolf (your typical culture-preserving Red Indian). The gameplay itself has changed from MKII. Now there's a "run" button and new "auto combos." The fighting has been speeded up quite a bit and the fatality time is very reduced. MK3 reduces the strategic approach of the previous games and is more geared towards button mashing. The basis of auto combos is choosing the right button at the right time. Since MK3 takes place mainly in North America, there are no more shaolin temples. The character and background graphics are quite good in the SNES conversion. The graphic resolution has also improved a notch from previous MK games. In a couple of stages, performing an uppercut on your opponent sends him through the roof of that stage and the fight will be transferred to the stage directly above! That's a tad innovative as fighting game ideas go. Aside from fatalities, babalities and friendships, MK3 introduces the "animality" (which requires "showing mercy" towards your defeated opponent before it can be performed). As for the fatalities they are fun to watch, like Liu Kang's "MK1 drop" and Kabal's "ugly face" and gory at the same time (though not as much as MKII). For the first time in the series, the player had the choice of three paths to take, either novice, warrior or master. Music and sound-wise it's okay as far as MK games go. Fluid controls too, though they should've made some of the finishing moves a bit easier to perform. The computer AI (artificial intelligence) is quite aggressive even in the "easy" mode. If you have the previous MK games, don't hesitate on this one. Though not as original as MKII, if you got tired of its slow pace, and want more diversity in the finishing moves, Mortal Kombat 3 is for you. To get the most out of it however, you should play with the cheat codes on. MK3 also marks the period when Williams Entertainment, instead of Acclaim, started developing and distributing the MK games.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a gamer, November 13, 2002
this is truly the one of the greatest fighting games ever made. most of the character from MKII return such as jax, liu kang, sub-zero (unmasked) shang-tsung, kung lao etc. there are also new characters like sindel, sheeva, kabal, sector, cyrax, nightwolf, stryker, and smoke. the graphics are wonderful, the sound is great and the fatalities are really fatal. there is also friendship, babality, and animality. the combos are fairly easy to do and are fun to do over again. playing against computer is easy on very easy and very difficult on very hard. there are only 5 credits when u play, but there various cheats to help u in the game. kool stuff, kooler stuff, scott stuff an music test will realy help out in the game. cheats like 1 button fatality, enabling motaro and shao khan, extended fatality time really make the more fun than it already is. this is truly the best MK made and one of the greatest if not the greatest fighting game ever made for any system.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
For MK Fans, Not For Casual Gamers, May 19, 2009
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
Okay here's a video game series that I'm sure everyone is familiar with by now. In some way or another, Mortal Kombat has graced your life with its presence. You've either experienced the game for all it's brutality in the arcades, the saturated versions we got on home consoles, heard about it in some angry parents consortium pushing to have the game banned from stores, or heard about the game's two famous creators. Mortal Kombat 3 spares nothing in terms of making the series stronger and bringing to life the concept of the almighty Fatality.
The one thing that really confused me about MK3 was that there were two versions of this game. There was MK3 and then there was MK3 Ultimate. Now I've personally never played MK3 Ultimate having owned the original MK3 since it was released in stores but the only real discernible difference between the two, from what I've been able to gather, is the addition of some characters and some new moves for some of the original lineup from MK3. Why they couldn't have released MK3 just once baffles me because the thing that's really annoying is when you're trying to find things for MK3, like manuals or box art, no one's ever heard of anything other than MK3 Ultimate.
Anyway, the guy in the antagonist's seat this time is Shao Khan, lord of the Outworld. Basically Shao Khan attempts to take control of the Earth Realm by having Queen Sindel born in the Earth Realm. This allowed Khan to step into Earth Realm and once that happened, naturally, he killed everyone on Earth except for those who were chosen to protect Earth the only way they know how to do it, Mortal Kombat style.
One thing you have to talk about with any Mortal Kombat game is the moves and the fatalities; the symbolic trait that brought the game to starlight status. MK3 introduced a combo system which could be performed by pressing the right combination of buttons while in close range to your opponent. Following behind that was the ability to run and the run gauge. This allowed you to close the distance between you and your opponent and keep the pressure on them. You have your classic fatalities that each character can perform when the famous "FINISH HIM!" appears after your second victory. In addition to the fatalities, we have our beginning dosage of animalities, babalities, and friendships. There are also stage-exclusive fatalities such as the Pit where you can uppercut your opponent off the bridge and down to their ultimate death.
All of the special moves you can perform with the characters are usually no more than four to five consecutive button presses. These usually consist firstly of a series of directional buttons followed by a series of lettered buttons. Unfortunately some of the characters have special moves, and even fatalities, that require you to press up on the directional pad. Ordinarily, pressing up makes your character jump. So when you're trying to do a fatality with a character that requires you to press up, nine times out of ten you won't be able to perform the fatality because you'll jump instead and this can become very irritating. Another irritating aspect about the controls is the block/run buttons. Any MK veteran, playing MK 1 and 2 on the SNES, knows that the L and R buttons are the block buttons. With the introduction of the run ability, R became the run button and L was designated as the block button. So naturally I'm trying to block an enemy attack by pressing R instinctively thinking that it's going to block when instead I'm trying to block an attack by running. That makes a whole lot of sense. The only other really irritating thing about the controls is the difficulty when it comes to trying to perform a melee combo. To this day I still can't figure out how to pull off a combo. I've read on it numerous times and practiced and practiced but still can't figure it out.
One thing that might drive a lot of people away from this game is the difficulty. MK games have been known to drive quite a few gamers to launch controllers at walls but this one will give you nightmares of shattered controllers. As a testament, I put the game on very easy, raised my handicap all the way to the max, and played on the master selection to fight as many opponents as possible. I couldn't get past the third opponent no matter how hard I tried. It's like the game picks up on everything you possibly do. Either that or some characters just naturally hate others. Sometimes you can't even lay a finger on your opponent because they just rip into you and there's nothing you can do about it. You can block everything you want to because then you'll get stuck in what I call a "throw-trap" where they just throw you around. You can't block throws so there's no way around it.
Graphically the game looks great. The motion-capture technology used to generate the sprites for each combatant and the environments and the interactivity are superb. Levels are sometimes comprised of one or more floors and if you start your battle on the lower floor, you can uppercut your opponent through the ceiling into the second floor and continue the fight up there. It brings a whole new level of depth to the battles making it appear as if the battles are extremely intense. The detail on the character sprites is great for the SNES. If you ever get a chance to, or use the "Enable Pause" cheat, get a really good look at Shao Khan. His sprite is nothing short of awesome.
The music becomes a little repetitive at times. I understand when it comes to fighting games that background music usually isn't the most important aspect but when you compare the music of this game to the music of, say, Street Fighter 2, I'd much rather listen to SF2 simply because of it's vast musical variety. The music in MK3 is just somewhere around a few tracks and they're recycled over and over and over again.
Overall MK3 is a great game to play if you have the patience for it or are a fan of fighting games. It acted as a benchmark for the series and displayed a whole new world of brutality for the genre. It also gave plenty of people something to talk about.
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