Introducing Mortal Kombat?: Armageddon™ – The latest chapter in Midway’s award winning, best-selling video game fighting franchise. With the most complete roster ever, including more than 50 fighters from the entire Mortal Kombat? universe (past, present and future), a revolutionary Kreate-A-Fighter mode and Kreate-A-Fatality mode, plus a brand new Konquest mode, Mortal Kombat?: Armageddon™ promises to be the most complete, intensely lethal, fighting experience ever!

* Select from more than 50 characters from the Entire Mortal Kombat Fighting Universe: From Liu Kang to Shang Tsung to Shao Kahn, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon will feature more playable fighters than any other Mortal Kombat game to date.

* All-New Customized Kreate-A-Fighter Mode: For the first time ever in a Mortal Kombat game players will be able to use a Kreate-A-Fighter feature to create and define their fighter’s look, abilities and personality with a deep level of customization and take that unique fighter online.

* Unique Kreate-A-Fatality System: Fans now have the ability to create their own custom fatalities by stringing together a series of attacks via a series of button combos; those that prove worthy can take their very own death moves online to showcase to the world.

* Entirely Revamped & Improved Konquest Mode: What formally served as a training mission has evolved into a full-blown adventure.

* Expanded Online Features: Improved Responsiveness, Deeper Customizing, Expanded Lobby Options and much more.

Armageddon is not one of those games where you just press any buttons and make it makes cool combos like the Soul Calibur series. The player needs to have an understanding of the game and will require skills if you ever want to master the game. The fighters move slow and sometimes they won’t respond to your commands while making combos.

MK: Armageddon features over 50 players each one with their own unique combat style and defense as well as their own style of getting back up when the first match is lost and the way the die. You can also create your own character and give him/her own moves and a fatality. You can also unlock more customs for different characters and put them into your own character. There are many things to unlock in Armageddon from new characters to racing levels. That is right racing levels. A new mini game called Motor Kombat has been added and like the fighters of MK each character has their own style of racing and cars.

Motor Kombat is not much fun to play because there are almost no power ups and no tournament or championship mode. It does provide about 30 min of entertainment but after that it starts to get boring of playing the same levels over and over again. To unlock more levels the player needs to play through Konquest mode.

Konquest mode is an adventure game similar to Shoaling Monks. The fighting in Konquest Mode is very different from the fighting in MK. The player moves very quickly and is hard to keep up with what goes on around you. You will need to train your character as you continue your adventure as well as keeping an eye out for hidden treasure. Just like Kombat mode you will need to get used to Konquest mode if you’re to ever pass the game and unlock everything.

Fatalities, Animalities, Friendship, and others are no longer featured in Armageddon. They were replaced by a new Fatality system which lets you rip your opponents to pieces. It is a great way for your opponent to die but I still prefer the old school fatality system where your opponent blows up, get eaten, etc.

Armageddon features the same graphics as Deception. There were no improvements made to the graphics in the visual side. However the environment is a lot darker that other MK games in the past. Armageddon being the last game in the series I’m sure the developers wanted the theme of this game to be darker than usual and it actually works great for Armageddon.

The visuals of the environment and the fighting arenas are great for this generation graphics. However nothing really goes on in the background. There are no people no machines, no eyeballs to watch your every move nothing. In previous MK games you can see what is going on in the background like Cyrax being swallowed by sand in MK 3 or Lui Kang fighting Blaze in the background of MK2.

All the bone crunching, loud screaming, neck breaking, bone breaking and all other sound effects where the heart of MK is, is in Armageddon up to the FINISH HIM voice. The sound effects are what make MK and without it then I don’t know where we all would be. You can actually hear your opponent’s body crunching, blood gulching , bone breaking in high detail and if you have surround sound it would make things even better.

Every time I play MK I almost never pay attention to the music that is featured because I am so busy beating the hell of who ever my opponent is. In my opinion the music goes great with the Kombat but I don’t think the developers want the music to outperform the fighters. Yes there is such thing of the music out performing the game itself, it is when you would just play the game to hear the music and not care about playing the game at all.

The controls almost never changed from previous MK games. The only thing that changes is the handling of the characters. In this game the characters move slowly and sometimes they will not respond to your combo or fatality. You can’t go too fast otherwise the character will not respond to some commands and you cannot go to slow because the character will finish the combo even if you’re not finished. So timing in this game is everything.

It takes a while getting used to the controls in the game if you’re a new player but once you get the hang of it it’s still difficult to master combos. You can always change the control settings and set it up to your liking or just read the manual.

With Kombat, Konquest, Motor Kombat and online mode for Kombat and Motor Kombat this game will have a hard time leaving your PS2. There are many things to unlock and with create a fighter this just adds more to the bag. Not to mention that each and every character has their own fighting style as well as different endings that you may want to play through each and every one of them.

Mortal Kombat has always been a fan favorite since 1992 and it pains me to see that this is the end of the series. All of the fighters are back for one last fight to finish everything they started. I do hope that they meant this is the last Mortal Kombat game for this generation and that there will be more for the next generation. If you’re at your local game store and see this game pick it up, you won’t be sorry specially if you pick up the premium edition which comes with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and a bonus disc explaining the history of Fatalities and character information for deception and Armageddon with commentary from the creators explaining who the characters are and where they come from. At $49.99 it’s like getting 4 games in one, 2 great games and 2 somewhat OK games.

Total Score: 92% = A-