Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition (also known as Mortal Kombat 9) is a street fighting video game developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The game is the ninth main installment in the Mortal Kombat series and is a reboot of the franchise. The game was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems in April 2011, and a PlayStation Vita port was released in May 2012. An expanded version of the game, titled Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition, was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in February 2012 and for Microsoft Windows in July 2013.
Although beginning during the events of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, the plot is a retcon to the earliest period in the Mortal Kombat series, the events of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 (as well as the latter title’s two updates). The storyline involves the divine protector of Earth, Raiden, attempting to change the aftermath of the events of Armageddon by contacting his past self as he faces defeat at the hands of the evil emperor of Outworld, Shao Kahn. While having characters and levels rendered in three-dimensions, the gameplay distances itself from the fully 3D graphics style seen in the last four games, bearing closer resemblance to that of the 2D era of the series, using a camera that is perpendicular to the two-dimensional playing field.
Upon release, Mortal Kombat received very positive reviews and won several awards for fighting game of the year. It was also a commercial success, selling more than two million copies in the first month alone. Due to its extremely violent content, the game was banned in Australia due to the lack of appropriate ratings category, and South Korea, and it has been reportedly indexed in Germany; the Australian ban was later lifted due to the introduction of an R18 classification and the game was released with many other R-rated games in May 2013. A sequel, Mortal Kombat X was released in 2015 with a direct follow-up, Mortal Kombat 11, released in 2019.
Principal gameplay involves one-on-one 2.5D-style fighting. Mortal Kombat uses a single two-dimensional fighting plane (at 60 frames per second),[5][6] although characters are rendered in three-dimensional fashion,[7] intended to give depth and range to portrayals of various projectiles.[8] Unlike previous Mortal Kombat games, four buttons on the game controller represent attacks and are each linked to a corresponding limb.
A new feature is the “super meter”, which can be charged by various actions during battle such as performing special moves, getting blocked by the opponent, or getting hit by them.[8] The super meter can be charged to three levels, each of them enabling a different action to be performed. At the first level, it can be used to deliver an enhanced version of one of the character’s special attacks; two levels can be used to interrupt a combo attack, and the full three levels allow for the delivery of a special attack called an “X-ray move”. The X-ray move unleashes a series of attacks during which the game provides an internal view of the character being attacked, which shows their bones and organs being broken or ruptured.[8][9]
Extra features include a story mode during which the player plays as multiple characters,[10] a Fatality training mode (allowing players to practice executing finishing moves),[11] the Challenge Tower, tag team fighting, and an online mode. The Challenge Tower mode is a single-player option that includes 300 specific challenges of various difficulties providing currency rewards upon completion; players have the option of using in-game currency to bypass other difficult challenges, completing them later.[8][11] Among the various challenges are “Test Your Might” (rapidly pressing buttons and using specific timing to destroy blocks of varying difficulty), “Test Your Sight” (following an object hidden under a cup or skull and revealing the object after a shuffle), “Test Your Strike” (destroying a specific block in a stack) and “Test Your Luck” (fighting under certain conditions, such as no jumping[11]). The four-player tag-team feature is an original feature, allowing two players to play together.[12] During tag gameplay, two new types of attacks become available. The first of them is the “tag assist” attack, in which the off-screen character temporarily jumps in and performs certain attacks during the active character’s combo. The other is the “tag kombo”, in which the active character performs a combo that is finished by the off-screen character as they enter the fight.[8]
The online mode includes a “King of the Hill” option, where up to eight players can act as spectators and play the winner of a fight. Spectators may also rate the fights and use the “forum” to determine how to perform various combos or moves observed during a fight.[10] A single-use online pass is also included with the game which is mandatory to access the online components. Online passes are also available from the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace.[13] There is also a PlayStation 3-exclusive 3D display mode, for which 3D glasses are not necessary.[
