Mortal Kombat 4

I expected myself to be the apologist for MK4 for I had it in childhood, but replaying it again I can see that it was pretty meh. Well, aside from singleplayer due to improved AI compared to the first three MK games but it's still not even as fun as Street Fighter 2 there. GOG version really is excellent. FMVs are there, redbook music is working and loops properly, worked out of box. Tho you will need to use software to map gamepad input to keyboard otherwise you will have to use analog stick for movement and that's just gross. PC version is the best version that isn't Gold. Obviously better than PS1 and N64. Compared to Arcade, home ports had Goro which is more of a flaw cus screw old cheap fighting games bosses, plus one new arena and uhh extra menu fluff and FMV. Aside from graphics, they were awfully nerfed. Floor polygons often disappear from view and one arena has lost alpha channels for windows, showing you opaque purple color instead of sky. Gold on Dreamcast is still superior however, with 6 new chars and 3 more arenas and supreme graphix. As for how it plays, it's like MK3, run fast in and quickly mash dial-combos in. But this time around they went and and made everyone have same combos. And back to only have fatalities without other finishers. I don't know, MK4 for some reason felt empty. Many new chars were one-dimensional reskins of oldies, even with cool visual desings. Gets to the point where Jarek has laser-eye fatality from Kano despite not having his vision augmented. Lore and plot in MK4 makes no sense and is based on plot-holes. They added weapons to combat system. It works like super-short powerup, you lose them in a single hit. Can pick up but takes time. What most people don't know is that you will pull out weapon instantly and do an auto-hit if you input weapon call during dial-combo. Doing same weapon call move makes you throw it, too. MK4 is fast and punchy yet feels empty and cold. Best gibberish voicelines in fighting games.

MK4 overall is a good MK game in my opinion. I'd have to say my favorite version is the N64 version, since the Dreamcast version MK Gold was a rushed mess, which is very disappointing. As for this PC iteration I have to say I am disappointed as well. There is no D-pad support for my Xbox controller which even MK Trilogy has. There is no resolution option in graphics settings either and is overall lacking any graphical customization. I realize this is just a fixed "as-is" version from 1997, but for these reasons I think it doesn't do as well as the N64 version. Not to mention N64 featured more content such as Goro. As of now my rating is low, unless they do some needed upgrading.

Was bord so reviewing. If you have a strong nostalgia for this game, when it released on to PS1, then you might like this. Quirky and Novelty. I thought it was not faithful to the original 2D style of MK at that time. But that change made it interesting in its own right. Playing scorpian for the first time in 3D, was strange and thats what made it interesting. I give it 3 stars for the new people who might take issue with the controls, or how things look. But I would recommend this because you might find it noval and entertaining for $1.45.

It doesn't recognize my controller that tons of other games and emulators will recongnize right away and the keyboard controls are unusable. WASD to move?? No no, mortal kombat decided to be different and decided to use WASZ... why???? And the attack buttons are weirdly spread out over the keyboard, like U and T are two attack buttons, with Y seemingly doing nothing,, who thought that was okay?? I get this game is old but like what the fuck games from 1997 werent required to have stupid keybinds. I also can't find an options menu where I can change the keybinds, I think I'm stuck with these shitty controls.

This was always a fun game now if we could get deadly alliance deception and Armageddon my collection would be complete