Absolute Pinball

Am I the only one who saw that title, and remembered an ad for Absolut Vodka, tied in with The Who's Tommy? Nevermind.

One of the things I miss about modern arcades, is that it doesn't seem to be real often that you find honest-to-goodness pinball tables in them, anymore. I know that they're still out there, and still being made, but for some reason they're rather hard to find in any arcades in my area. While my video gaming skills are spotty at best, I'm reasonably good with the silver ball, and I've been known to be a genuine pinball wizard, more than once (I'll never forget winning a free game, on a Star Trek TNG table, at the Walden Galleria, when I was about 12). So not surprisingly, my dad had managed to track down a couple of pinball computer games, around the same time, and I used to play those plenty as well (specifically, Tristan [?} and Pinball Fantasies). And naturally, when I was browsing Abandonia for a game to try from scratch, this one popped out of the list (even if Windows 8 likes to regularly interrupt my playtime, with dialogue boxes about sticky keys...).

As you might expect, Absolute Pinball is a compilation of four virtual pinball tables. You are chauferred to them, by a cartoon robot. That's pretty much the extent of the conceptual depth, but hey, what do you want? The tables themselves have a decent variety to them: one has a baseball theme, another is about diving, another about highway driving, and finally about making movies. Each one has its share of mini-games, a plethora of targets, and lots of ways to keep yourself occupied and challenged.

In a lot of ways, reviewing a pinball game is a bit cheap, because all they really have to do is look good, sound good, and play well enough to be challenging without being impossible to do anything. AP mostly accomplishes that... though unfortunately this is another one where the abandonware neglects to include any music from the CD-ROM that I'm guessing this was released on. So not only is there no music to go with my fun, but it makes it very apparent that they were a bit skimpy on the sound design -- not only do the impact/table sounds rarely resemble the real thing, but often times there's nothing there.

Lots of gamers complain about the unrealistic physics in virtual pinball games. Now, since I'm a dental assisting student, former crossing guard, and sometimes filmmaker, I don't really know the details of what they're talking about. However, one thing I have noticed about the physics, is that the balls don't seem to have much weight or resistance to them. When they roll down the screen (representing rolling down the table slope), they feel more like they're in free fall. When you hit them -- with the somewhat shallow-looking flippers -- they seem to careen to the other end of the table without much difficulty. Maybe it's just me, but it feels more like a weird variation on ping-pong, than pinball.

My biggest beef, though, is with the graphics. Okay, they're in bright colours, they flash like the lights on real pinball tables, etc. and that's great. However, there are some rather big problems. First of all, the ramps and other protruding areas of the tables, aren't outlined in any way. So it can be very hard, to tell exactly where -- or what -- various parts of the tables are. I would hope that these days, this would be countered to a certain extent, by simply changing the angle of the view (to something more realistic than a bird's eye view of the whole table), but even if they were stuck with this at the time, there are ways to paint the table to simulate depth.

The second graphics issue, is all about the camera. Like some other pinball simulators I've played (like the aforementioned Pinball Fantasies), your view point is not only directly over the table, but constantly following the ball itself. And apparently you're doing this from about a foot over the table window, because your peripheral vision of everything else is almost non-existent. Now, lots of times this is no big deal -- but how are you supposed to "shoot the submarine" when you can't see it from where the camera's pointing? How are you supposed to take skill shots with lateral bumpers, when the camera zooms past them too quickly for you to notice them half the time?

I cringe to think of what these games much have cost in stores, when they first came out. At least today, they're free to download, and to be honest that's about what they're worth a lot of the time. Personally I prefer Pinball Fantasies overall -- especially since I know for a fact that you CAN hear music in that game, without a CD in the drive -- but this is alright for a quick diversion.

SPECIAL: Mortal Kombat AFTER The PC Era

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the gaming world, knows that the Mortal Kombat games didn't end in 1996, when MK Trilogy was released. The problem, for my purposes, is that none of them were released for DOS computers. However, I can give my two cents in a more casual sense.

Mortal Kombat 4/Mortal Kombat Gold (upgrade for the Sega Dreamcast)
This is a landmark game in the series, for multiple reasons. It was the last game in the MK series to be released to arcades, as well as have a port to home computers (WIndows 9x only). It was also the first MK game to have totally computer-rendered characters, as opposed to the video-digitized performers seen in the prior games. By today's standards, the models are rather off-putting and goofy, to put it mildly (they are only a bit more contoured than the chiseled-puppet appearances of the original Quake engine's creations). At the time, however, this was a big deal (which the game itself drew attention to, by claiming to be in 3D and often breaking the fourth wall to sell that). To be fair though, the promotional renders of the characters are still very nice-looking, and I can only imagine how the game might have been received, if the hardware had permitted the use of them outside of magazines and FMV scenes. Mind you, I do wish that the mobile camera wouldn't move into the walls or otherwise obstruct what's going on, every so often.

The gameplay is a stranger story. The supposedly 3D aspect of it, was awkward by the standards of any timeframe; nearly all of the fighting, is along the same 2D plane as the earlier games, with only tiny and sluggish side-stepping being possible as a special move. Even the quaint Virtua Fighter had more fluid lateral movement, than that. Other issues stem from an overall sense of the final game being an unfinished product; the final boss is not only playable from the outset, with no special codes involved (a feat never done before or since, in the series, not counting MK Trilogy and Armageddon), but he is a rather bland and unimpressive Shang Tsung knock off who imitates the moves of the other characters (an issue confounded by the boss turning invisible any time he is frozen -- seriously, who tested this thing?). The sub-boss suffers from MK3's recycle syndrome -- it's Goro, who fights in pretty much the same way as in MK1. What's more, break-out villain Quan Chi, never appears as a character you can fight, in the single-player mode. This is the guy whose fearsome picture appears ALL OVER the arcade machine, and would have been a logical choice for the new sub-boss, but the only time you fight a CPU version of him, is in the practice mode.

On the plus side, the task of actually playing it, as a fighting game, is reasonably good. The controls are fluid, the special moves (mostly) accessible, the AI doesn't cheat at even the highest difficulty, and the gritty/no-nonsense approach of the earlier games has mostly returned. The only issue in that regard, is that some joker decided that you have to hold down four or five buttons AND do funky things with the direction controls, to perform certain specials and finishers. Suffice it to say, the cheat code allowing one button fatalities, is once again your best friend.

This was the first MK game to use melee weapons, and it was kind of a mixed bag overall. The weapons are devastating, to be sure, but they are also way too easy to drop. Honestly, the best thing you can do with any weapon -- yours, an opponent's, a rock that's lying around -- is to just throw the damn thing.

Overall, this was a reasonably fun game, to transition from the "classic" era, to the 3D era... I just wish it was a more complete one, which might have made it a truly awesome one.

The Adventure Games (Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, MK Special Forces, and MK: Shaolin Monks)
A side project, that the MK creators had experimented with, was branching into platform/beat-em-up adventure games. These were also intended to tell origin stories, for the primary characters (usually set before the original game, though Shaolin Monks is more-or-less a retelling of the events of MK2). These games were only released to the consoles (mostly the PS1 and Nintendo 64, though Shaolin Monks would be released for the PS2 and original Xbox), and thus the only personal experience I have with any of these, was one afternoon playing SM with my cousins.

Sub-Zero, from what I've seen and heard about it, was a bold start to this brand, with interesting levels and puzzles, and a decent variety of enemies. However, two rather large problems come to mind. One -- in the Playstation version -- is the ridiculous FMV cutscenes. As nice as it is to see Mortal Kombat in live-action (especially with the same people who performed the fighters in the classic games), it was painfully apparent from the word go, that none of these martial artists could act at all. John Turk is very stiff, as the title character, Rich Divizio hams it up like a beast, as Quan Chi, and often times the actors will adopt these hilariously awful stances for no reason whatsoever.

The other issue, is not only much more important, but common to all versions of the game -- the controls are terrible. I don't recall exactly what the issue was said to be, but every review, casual remark, or gameplay video I've come across points to some control issue making the game needlessly difficult to play (especially on the more delicate puzzles).

I have even less knowledge, of Special Forces, save for these two things: it was rushed to release, and that it is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever released for the PS1 and N64. It goes without saying, that the former probably directly contributed to the latter. Not only was a ton of promised/developed content, never released to the general public (eg. it was originally going to be a two-player game, focusing on Jax and Sonya, but the final game was carried by Jax alone), but my recall is that the controls and camera were once again out to lunch.

The creators seemed to have learned their lessons, by the time Shaolin Monks hit the market. While it took -- and deserves -- some flak for seriously monkeying with the continuity or the series (and writing Liu Kang and Kung Lao as overgrown ten year olds), it more than made up for it by delivering crisp and intuitive controls, fun combat, and a cool game to look at in every way. It also offered a "Versus" mode, that was its own spin on standard MK fighting, and a good port of MK2 as a hidden bonus. It also makes the best use of weapons, that maybe the whole series has done to date -- they stick to the owner like glue, they aren't sluggish, they're knarly to be on the business end of, and they're easy to use. As you're about to see, that's not something that this series always keeps in mind.

 

The 3D Era -- MK: Deadly Alliance, MK: Deception, MK: Armageddon

The brand in general fizzled, in the late nineties. Not only were MK4 and Sub-Zero not very well received, but several film and television projects were generally groaned away (and for good reason -- they were all fecal matter). So about five years passed, before Mortal Kombat finally returned to the fans. Once again, major risks were taken; for the first time, an MK fighting game was not released to the arcade in any form; the CG character models and 3D gameplay were vastly redesigned; the narrative took a sharply darker tone (shown from the get go, by killing off Liu Kang and Shao Kahn); and it would also debut the Konquest mode...

The Konquest mode, was very different, in each game that featured it. However, it was an interesting game changer, so to speak. In Deadly Alliance, it was basically just a training mode that featured some backstory. In Deception, it was a clunky sandbox adventure game, that was considered too much trouble for a mediocre reward (namely, an awkward mashup character that no one particularly liked). In Armageddon, it was a spiritual succesor to Shaolin Monks that truly showed the best that the series had to offer. The games from this era onward, had all tinkered with various extra modes, but Konquest was the mainstay of these three games.

The gameplay of the arcade mode (ie. the classic versus-style combat), was always a mixed bag from these three games (for these purposes, I've played a ROM of the Deadly Alliance GameBoy Advance port, as well as Deception; I've never personally touched Armageddon). On the plus sides, the arenas are very layered, and the lateral movements are far more slick than in MK4. In all other ways... quite frankly, I want to ask the creators what they were thinking.

For one thing, the controls are spongy as hell. I'm told that this was done, to convey a more realistic fighting experience (yeah sure, in a game where you fight lava giants, four-armed behemoths, and at least four separate gods). Whatever the excuse, the result is a fighting engine that is so sluggish, that it feels like I'm trying to play a game while wearing boxing gloves. The other issue, is that someone decided that everyone would have at least two distinct fighting styles, each with about a dozen separate moves. On paper, this was to get around the fact that apart from special moves (in the good games), everyone fought in pretty much the same way (personally, this never bothered me -- that's why they're called basic moves). In practice, this just added yet another thing that you would have to spend forever to memorize, and needlessly complicated something that is supposed to be not only primal, but fun.

The Mortal Kombat series doesn't necessarily have to turn into a button mash, but when it was at its best, you had a lot of room to experiment and improvise. In order to do well in these games, though, you have to follow a very exact routine (especially since in at least some versions of Deadly Alliance, the game flat out cheats in the final boss match -- it's the only time EVER, when your health doesn't recover, between rounds). It doesn't help at all, that the button to switch fighting styles if basically the same one used for blocking -- so guess what's going to constantly happen by accident, when you're trying to guard against a hit? Maybe it's just me, but this kind of tomfoolery isn't my idea of a good time.

Losing the Plot: Mortal Kombat vs.DC Universe
No, you're not misreading that. I'm not sure why, but someone decided that it would be a good idea to crossover the Mortal Kombat games with -- of all things -- the DC Comics characters. Even now, several years after its release, I still don't understand why this was thought to be a good idea. For one thing, the two franchises have nothing in common -- not in tone, not in plot, not in genre, nothing. Secondly -- and to the long-standing chagrin of fans -- due to the kid-friendly nature of the DC characters, the trademark MK fatalities had to be seriously toned down... to the point of them looking more than a little cartoonish.

The sad part of this, is that by all accounts, the game itself was actually rather good. Every single review I've read or seen, praised gameplay that had gone back to the simplified and fast-paced system that made the classic games work (along with some killer innovations that haven't been repeated so far). The problem is that so many hardcore fans were so put off by the bizzare mashup, that they wouldn't have touched this game if would cure cancer.

Reboot! (Mortal Kombat [2009], aka MK9)
While it wasn't intended as an apology for MK vs. DC* (this was honestly in the works before then), the creators more than made up for the polarizing previous game, with this Abramstrek-esque sequel/reboot that not only retold the classic games, but made them rougher and more brutal than ever.

* (if you're wondering, this game completely ignores the events of MK vs. DC, which itself seemed to be set in its own timeline)

The epic story mode -- easily the best Mortal Kombat "movie" ever made -- opens on a startling note. Not only did practically ALL of the characters die, during Armageddon, but Shao Kahn won the power of the universe itself. In his final moments, Rayden sends an annoyingly cryptic message back in time, to his younger self -- his self, at the start of the original Mortal Kombat tournament. Something in the very near future, is key to preventing this disaster, and the younger Rayden has to make that happen, while other things completely fall apart around him and our heroes.

This game, I have played, and it is a HUGE improvement over many of the preceding ones in the series. The controls are still a bit wacky, but it the combat is back to good old-fashioned beating the shit out of people. The characters and arenas are as close as they've come so far, to actually being there -- they're that detailed and rich. Finally, this might be -- for better or worse, and absolutely hands down -- the most gruesome and brutal Mortal Kombat game, ever. Not only are several of the fatalities downright disturbing to watch, but one of the new special moves is something called an X-Ray move; a character tazes, shoots, stabs, or just plain breaks bones of his/her victim, in the kind of grisly detail that shows beyond a doubt that you should NEVER try to do this to your buddies in real life. How bad are they? Let me put it this way, many of the X-Ray moves could have been fatalities, in the classic games (and a couple of them were).

My main complaint, about MK9, is its additional content. For one thing, there's too damn much of it -- more alternate costumes than I can count, often with additional moves, and even a few new characters. While this was addressed, to a point, with the Complete Edition (that featured all of these add-ons), it does feel a bit like a cash grab. My other issue is that some of the extra characters not only come out of left field, but make absoultely no sense in this series. The Playstation 3 version, for instance, has God of War's Kratos as a "guest warrior". Even worse is the DLC of -- I kid you not -- Freddy Krueger. This probably isn't a surprise, but the first time I heard about that, I thought I was being punk'd (or trolled). I'm still not behind it, to be honest.

Either way, Mortal Kombat is back and not only as popular as ever, but arguably better than ever. It's going to be genuinely interesting, to see where this goes.