September 16, 2005 - Midway Games' Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is one those games that, four years ago, would have sucked. In fact, Mortal Kombat Trilogy did suck, but Shaolin Monks, despite a few rough edges, not only offers a good single-player game, but delivers an extraordinary co-op game.

Finally breaking free from the confines of the fighting genre, Midway's Shaolin Monks brings the fighting army of Kombatants into a different setting, yet retains the fighting moves, styles, personalities and Kombat lore that have made the franchise such a strange cultural phenomenon. Shaolin Monks is a pretty basic action-adventure title, but because the fighting move list is so deep and the action so fun, the result produces an arcade-style joy like few other games have. It's all about the co-op game.

Aesthetics
Ed Boon and his talented development team have done something that seems so natural and seemingly obvious that one wonders why it wasn't done before. That is to successfully shift a fighting game into another genre. Numerous other developers have tried and failed. Witness Namco's Death By Degrees. But Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks works on a number of levels, some of which are obvious, and some seem to be almost by mistake.

Let's start with the weirdness first. I've always been flummoxed by the random mish-mash of creatures and influences from which the series draws its influences. There doesn't seem to be a singular source, like say, Norse mythology. Instead, Mortal Kombat appears to have drawn in equal proportions from Asian martial arts, general European bestiaries, and early '70s cartoons. The mix is sometimes hard on the senses, but in Shaolin Monks the result is so comic and in its own way, absurd, that it's likeable despite itself.

The over-the-top fatalities, rip-roaring bloodletting and simplistic designs combine to form a landscape that's so cheesy and B-movie-like in execution that they're embarrassingly likeable. You wonder what sort of cheese will be thrown at you next, and each time it comes, you're strangely, happily satisfied. Looking at the game, listening to it, and watching the gore fly, it's all sort of like attending a wild cheese-whiz party where at first you don't want to go, but you're compelled to stay.

Modes of Play
Bizarre aesthetics aside, the gameplay follows through with a more direct purpose. Lifted from the relatively pure genre of one-on-one combat, Shaolin Monks is an action-adventure specializing in fighting. You can pick from two characters to start: Kung Lau (the martial arts master with the blade-rimmed hat) or Liu Kang (the fireball shooting, high-pitched screaming, martial arts expert). Each is endowed with his own special moves, animations, and style of fighting, and both are great in their own ways.

I started the cooperative game with Liu Kang because I preferred his intuitive fighting moves, but when I started the single-player game, I picked Kung Lau and grew to appreciate his style over Liu Kang's in the long run. I should explain that this one or two-player game offers a few modes of play. There is the single-player game, the Ko-op, and the Versus. Plus, just because Midway is so good to you, there is an unlockable demo of The Suffering: Ties That Bind, and an unlockable, full-featured version of Mortal Kombat II in there for the taking.