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Hello, dear viewers, who, I believe, will be not many if any at all.
Today, with no apparent reason
I decided to make a short (if I can) review of a game called ìMortal Kombat Advanceî
that was released in year 2001 for Gameboy Advance.
Wikipedia says that this gameís a port of UMK3 for the arcade machines,
But I think that this game has a lot more in common with the Super Nintendo version of the game.
Thereíre several reasons for that:
the games almost look the same,
they have the similar amount Of available fighters to choose from (on a par with Megadrive/Genesis)
and the audio effects and music are more or less the same.
This is where the similarities end and the real horror begins.
The first and the most important thing that makes this game so horrible and unplayable are the controls.
Usually, itís kinda hard to describe with words why a gameís controls are bad or just suck.
Itís true, but I think I can give you a few examples that will clear this out.
The thing is, the UMK3 and some other fighting games of that era (Like Street Fighter)
was and is a game with 6 button controls, while the GBA had only 4 buttons to affect and control the gaming process.
Let me list ëem: B and A, L and R bumpers, service buttons SELECT and START, and D-PAD.
Because of that, the guys from Virtucraft (the developers of the game) had 2 choices:
The first was to use START and SELECT to perform RUN and BLOCK,
so they wouldnít do any harm or cut off anything from the original game.
The second choice was to completely *** up the controls of the original game,
set L and R bumpers to perform RUN and BLOCK respectively,
and let START and SELECT to do their initial service functions.
Therefore, in order to perform High Punch
Low Punch,
Low Kick
and High Kick
the player has only 2 buttons
instead of 4.
As you will soon see, decisions like that couldnít lead to any good result.
Another problem of this woebegone port is dramatically increased difficulty of the AI.
If in the original game for the SNES the AI difficulty wasnít all that easy at all,
that in this port the AI difficulty is something beyond good and evil.
And yet another thing about the game, that can be considered either as ìproî and as ìconî are sounds and music.
Itís nice that developers returned to the game character nameís announcements,
but from the other hand itís sad that some music and some sounds were just removed from the game,
and ones that left now sound dull and boring.
And the last, but not the least problem of the game is its mechanics and, well, gameplay.
And now, letís begin the review itself.
At first, Iíll set the game difficulty to the hardest level
just to show you how bad I am at this game and how cheap the AI is.
Here, you can see available modes of the game
They differ a bit from those in the SNES version of the game.
For instance, 8 player tournamentís gone.
As I already mentioned, MKA and UMK3 for SNES have the same amount of fighters to choose from,
but in addition, MKA select screen has some sort of creeping line below that shows a characterís name.
Iíll stick to Cyrax, because in the 90-es, he along with Noob Saibot was one of my most favorite characters.
Since I want to show you the maximum of AI abilities,
Iíll choose the hardest bar.
These awkward MK1-style jumps are the only decent working technique against the AI that I was able to find.
Sadly, doing it gets pretty boring after a while
and which is even sadder, as I already said, itís the only existing way to defeat the AI.
Although, maybe thereíre some other ways and tricks, but Iím too slow to pull them off and the AI is too unforgiving.
Also, Iíd like to point out, that the controls of the game are severely unresponsive and delayed.
So, if you want to make a special move or comboÖ well, just forget about it.
As you could see, I got powned hard by the AI in this round.
Now, just for a little comparison, Iím gonna show you a footage of me playing the SNES version of UMK3
Difficulty level is the same as in MKA.
Unfortunately, this time I got pwned almost as hard as before,
but at least, the reasons for that werenít unresponsive controls or cheap AI.
The reason was that I got an arrow to the knee.
After this abomination, I want to ask myself a question; maybe Iím not yet ready to fight on such a hard level,
maybe my warrior spirit is not prepared yet for such a complicated battle?
I tend to agree with that,
so now Iím going to choose the easiest difficulty all the way, and weíll see what happens.
Surprisingly, but I find it easier to play on the easiest level of difficulty.
Of course, if itís possible to use the word ìplayî for this game
(and again: if itís possible to call it a game).
The opponent, in this case, Scorpion, doesnít fly all over the screen anymore,
and now, I finally have a chance to show him what I made of.
Alas, but then the broken controls let me know about themselves again.
Iíve been trying to perform Cyrax Net special move for more than 20 seconds,
until Scorpion got bored and finished me off.
But, after a while, I got used to the controls
and I even was able to find an ultimate and radical method to defeat the Artificial Mind.
It looks like this:
ìHey, Scorpion, dude, how are you, howís life, howís your family? Oh yeah? Kthanxbyeî
Though, I need to say that thisîbugî or ìfeatureî (whatever you want to call it)
also presented in the original game for the SNES.
But it wasnít nearly as outrageous as in MKA.
As I dominated my path to the top, I found a way to improve my ìradicalî method.
And improve some more.
And as the result, my method turned into some kind of a doomsday machine.
That has a Russian touch.
So, I fought my way through to Motaro himself.
And then I realized that my method had stopped to work,
and that it was impossible to get him in the corner or even simply hit him, was also unreal.
So, I had to lose the fight.
In the continue screen, which looks just like its older brother from UMK3 that got run over by a road roller,
I accidentally pressed ìAî instead of START.
Who knew that this was the only time, when the developers decided to show some consistency
and if they wrote ìPRESS STARTî then indeed, I must press START.
Any other button just sends the player right to the title screen.
Unfortunately, I wasnít able to get to Motaro once again.
To tell you the truth, I wasnít even able to beat the first opponent, Scorpion.
I didnít change anything in the difficulty settings, but anyway, my method just stopped to work and I was literally murdered.
Just look at this:
Iíve said that itís easier to play the game on the easiest difficulty level.
But now Iím taking my words back.
Thereíre 2 variants: The game has only one, insane level difficulty
or it, like the matrix, has an intelligence thatís capable of self-development and analysis of an opponentís actions.
Who knows, maybe MKA is a pure evil,
the evil that is eager to take over the world.
And as everybody knows, superheroes are the ones who fight evil.
ìHey, Superman, bro, save the world!î
But wait!
As a bonus and a remedy (for myself, mainly)
Iíve decided to finish this review with highlights of some polish guyís walkthrough of this game.
Probably heís the best MKA player known to man.
I believe, not so many people actually played this game.
And, thankfully to our defender Superman, nobody will ever play it again
Thank you, brother!