#jankuary

Growing up, I was a big fan of Mortal Kombat. Not just because of the fun characters and violent spectacle, but because it did something most fighting games didn’t at the time; it had a story. It wasn’t substantial, but the lore helped flesh out the universe these games take place in, and helped players understand the motivation behind the characters involved, and how they fit into that universe. It gave you something to latch onto, and it put more meaning behind every fight.

As the series went on, that lore continued to evolve, and eventually, an idea was conceptualized to create a console-exclusive spin-off. This game would be focused on story, telling us not only about events that preceded the first Mortal Kombat game, but also set up characters and events that would be further explored in the upcoming Mortal Kombat 4. You play as Bi-Han – codename “Sub-Zero” – a member of a clan of Chinese mercenaries known as the Lin Kuei. Sub-Zero is hired by Quan Chi, a peculiar sorcerer who needs us to infiltrate the sacred Shaolin temples and retrieve an amulet. But in doing so, Sub-Zero unknowingly puts Earth in peril, and must regain the amulet before it is used to unleash a vengeful god from his imprisonment.

Unlike the mainline games, this would not be a fighting game. This would be a side-scrolling platformer with fighting game elements thrown in. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but this game was made by people whose expertise was in making fighting games, and as a result, we have something that feels kinda “off.”

Deciding that parity with the fighting games was important, you control Sub-Zero much in the same way you would in those games. However, this is decidedly not a fighting game, so we kinda have a square-peg-round-hole situation on our hands, where the gameplay is being forced to work for a game it’s not meant for, and solutions needed to be found for problems that never needed to exist. This led to one of the more notorious and criticized choices of the game; instead of changing Sub-Zero’s direction by pressing Left or Right on the directional pad, you have to press a separate button to turn him around.

It's awkward and unintuitive, and complicates the gameplay. There will be times where an enemy jumps over your head, or you jump over theirs. There will be times that an enemy rushes up behind you, or times where you’re caught between enemies. And worst of all, there are times where your character changes direction on their own when you weren’t expecting it. But even so, I found this mechanic to be one of the least frustrating parts of the game, compared to all the other stuff you’re going to have to deal with.

Just like the controls, the enemy AI is also pulled right from the fighting games. On easier difficulties, they’ll be much more passive, but become complete cheaters on harder difficulties. The game will actively read your inputs, meaning that the enemies will very often react to your intentions with the perfect counter. Their actions can also take priority over yours, interrupting you in ways that should not be possible in a fair fight.

So every opponent you face off with ends up being a daunting endeavor, capable of exhausting your resources or even costing you a life. Therefore, you might think that the best way to play this game is on an easier difficulty, but you can’t actually complete the game on any difficulty lower than Medium. Attempting to play on Easy or Very Easy will see you hit with an abrupt end after finishing five of the game’s eight levels.

You might also think that, instead of fighting every enemy you come across, you would be better off ignoring them. Unfortunately, you will find yourself in many situations where that’s even more dangerous for you, which I’ll get into more detail on soon. But another reason why enemies shouldn’t be avoided, is the game’s experience system.

Sub-Zero starts out without any special abilities (Apparently his codename isn’t derived from his ability to manipulate cold and ice, but from having zero skills). Experience is gained by defeating enemies, with bonus experience applied for doing multi-hit combos. Reaching certain milestones will unlock new powers for you to use. Most of these powers are actually quite useless – you will spend most of the game getting by with just the earliest of abilities – but the experience serves as another way you can get locked out of beating the game, as you’re required to obtain a certain amount of experience points in order to access the game’s final battles.

And even if you could play through the entire thing on the easiest difficulty, or not worry about experience, and ignore as many enemies as possible, this would not spare you from the real danger: The levels themselves.

The majority of the levels will require you to explore, and obtain three keys before reaching the end. While some levels are rather linear, there are others which are somewhat mazelike, filled with multiple paths, dead ends, and backtracking. Even though it’s not ideal gameplay, it wouldn’t be that big of an issue if the levels weren’t filled with treacherous jumps (some even completely blind) and an abundance of traps that can instantly kill you. One wrong move, and you’re dead in the blink of an eye, and you WILL make a lot of wrong moves.

As a first-time player, the experience is going to mostly be trial-and-error, as you die a lot to the combination of enemies, platforming, traps, and even a few little surprises along the way. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn something from your last death, and be able to make a little more progress before you die again. It’s very much a “Nintendo Hard” style of game, and that’s something many of us grew up with and suffered through, and might even have developed a fondness for nowadays. But the extreme frequency of deaths you will experience with this game is particularly egregious here, and is really at the core of what makes this game so frustrating. You really don’t get much time to actually play the game because you’re too busy dying to bullshit.

The normal parameters for your game options will let you give yourself a maximum of 6 lives, and 4 continues; in other words, you can start with up to 24 lives to get through the game, though you may find extra lives along the way. Every time you lose a life, you go back to the last checkpoint (usually marked by the last time you obtained, or used, a key). Lose all your lives, and you use a continue, which… starts you back at the last checkpoint, again. If you run out of lives and continues, it’s Game Over. It is extremely likely that you will be experiencing this for yourself before you can even finish the game’s second stage; a level well known for defeating many players who attempted this game, including myself. This is where I gave up when I rented the game as a kid, and almost where I gave up when replaying the game now.

But if you do manage to complete a level, you can either save or receive a password, depending on if you’re using a memory card or not. Saves will record how many remaining lives and continues you have, while passwords will reset the count back to whatever you set your maximum as in the game's option. However, saves also track your inventory and experience progress, whereas passwords will dump you into a level with very little of either. Passwords, therefore, are almost completely useless for beating the game, but saves leave something to be desired too. You may complete a level, but you lost a lot of lives and resources along the way, so the safest option is to reload and try the level again instead of progressing.

Speaking of resources, let me talk about this game’s inventory system. You have a total of 10 item slots for stuff you can pick up in the game. Usually, this will be healing items to recover your health, but there’s also some other items you’ll pick up like temporary buffs, healing enhancers, and those keys I’ve previously mentioned. Even after being used, those keys will continue to take up precious space until you finish the level. I suppose the good news is that healing items aren’t that important since you’re mostly going to die from cheap insta-deaths anyway, but it never felt good to waste them so I could clear a spot for some stupid key.

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero is a game that wears you down. Playing through this game now, I used a cheat code which gave me one thousand lives. But even with all those extra chances, the experience was so draining, that I wasn't sure I had it in me to see things through to the end. Running into a trap I didn’t know existed until it was too late. Dying to that same trap again as I tried to figure out how to get past it. Being hit into a trap by an enemy or by another trap. Getting knocked off ledges by enemies and falling to my death. Missing a tricky jump and falling to my death. Receiving a beatdown by the cheating AI that always knew my next move…

But I’ve only gotten more stubborn as I’ve gotten older. Even though I wanted to give up, I wouldn’t actually let myself, this time. I learned. I adapted. I persisted. And after a couple hundred deaths, I finally beat this fucking game.

…and then I beat it again... and again... and again... but we'll get to that another time.

Would I recommend you try beating this game for yourself? If you’re someone who enjoys old-school difficulty and is looking for a challenge, I think there are much worse games that you could play. But I also think there’s much better, too. You can eventually become quite comfortable with this game – I can beat it on default settings now – but getting to that point is going to be a tough journey.