System: Playstation

Genre : Beat Em' Up

Price : $12.95 at GH

Eww. If this is where the MK series is headed, Ed Boon had better call it quits now before any more mediocre bombs like this get dropped.

It's pretty bad sign when before I even get to the game, the intro (A bad, BAD DDR inspired mess set to Austin Powers-ish spy music) leaves me to already wanting to turn off this fiasco. But unfortunately, to review this game, I actually have to play it, so I press on.

The story behind it all is a group of super criminals (which reminds me of a bad Challenge of the Super Friends episode) are busted out of a maximum security prison by Kano and are looking to do bad things with awful pointy objects or something. So it's up to Jax to ground these suckas...permanently.

A couple of things sprang to mind as I was playing this. Where is Sonya? Aren't she and Jax partners or something? And is it Midway law that there must be a Lin Kuei clone in EVERY MK game (Tremor or whatever he's called.) Also, why the hell does Jax NEVER have a shirt, even while he's driving? It's just freakin' creepy.

Anyways, back to the gameplay or lack there of. Instead of trying to go the route of MK:Mythologies - Sub Zero and making it like playing a MK side-scroller, someone got the brilliant idea of making it like an equally bad game, Fighting Force. It also tries to be like Metal Gear Solid a little by trying (and failing I might add....) to add espionage tactics to the game like sniping and sneaking up on people. The problem is since you don't have a radar (or in this case, gay-dar...) to view what might be around the corner, you're more than likely going to get shot a couple hundred times when you go to press the first person view button. It makes it frustrating and more or less stupid.

And since you're going to get shot up anyways, you might as well rush your opponents and just hit them, This being possibly MK:SF's only decent area, the combo system from MK3 rears its ugly head once more. By earning experience by hitting people, you learn new combo strings to mash out on the controller, it's just too bad there's such a delay on the controller that you don't know if you got it off or not immediately. Not that it matters, I defeated the first boss after just mashing exclusively on the X button, which killed any hope of strategy that I might have for the combo system, you don't even get more experience or really do that much more damage with it.

Graphically, just bland. An awful camera angle that prevents you from seeing enemies, and the levels themselves are just boring, as the textures used are dark and mostly colorless. Enemies all looks the same and the FMV's are excruciating bad with jerkiness and mediocrity ( I swear the guy in the opening cinema, the dead guy at the end has no clothes on. It looks horrendous.)

The sound, the voices in particular, are so unbelievably bad that you wonder if Midway was trying to outdo the legacy left by Capcom's awful voice acting teams. (Resident Evil and Mega Man 8 come to mind.) Jax has to be the worst black stereotype I have ever heard, and yes I have heard the voices in Crazy Taxi. The ever present evil laughter that accompanies these MK games is in too, but now it just seems way out of place and just should have been left out entirely. Other than that, the sound consists of wet thumps and muffled gunfire. Nothing worth mentioning.

If you ever feel the urge to play this game, don't. Follow these simple steps:

1. Bash head into wall.

2. Repeat until urge to play MK:SF goes away.

3. Go play something worthwhile.

Shame on you, Midway.

The Reverend Mofat Jones wants to cry now.

-Mofat

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