Played on PC

Developed by Midway Games

Released 1st October 1997

Released as a prequel to 'Mortal Kombat 4', 'Mythologies' was supposed to set up a new spin-off trend for the 'Mortal Kombat' franchise where it would explore the backgrounds of each character, starting with 1/2 of the titular duo of the series: Sub-Zero. Despite the game's retrospective views labelling it as one of the worst 'Mortal Kombat' games, the sales told Midway the opposite. While the exact sale numbers aren't accessible, it has been said from reports that the game was their best-selling product of the fiscal year. This would lead to other spin-offs like 'Special Forces' and 'Shaolin Monks', but that's for another time.

Many people are not fond of this side-project, and the developmental background does explain why. In a time when games started to shift to a home environment and the first PlayStation led this charge, Midway became overly ambitious in propelling their best-selling franchise into the same direction, alongside all these other projects they tried to do for it like the sequel movie 'Mortal Kombat Annihilation' and the then cancelled live-action TV show. Balancing manpower, budgets and time between these 3 extensions of the series and a mainline continuation in the form of 'Mortal Kombat 4' led to them biting the bullet critically. Despite 'Mythologies: Sub-Zero' having a passionate team behind it with John Tobias (co-creator of 'Mortal Kombat') wanting to use his comic writer background to flesh out the lore of the series, the 14-month deadline for this game, the small team and limited budget sent them down a path of making several creative decisions that would ultimately ruin any possibility of enjoying this game.

Story

Even though it is not good by any metric, I still found some value in the story. Taking place before the first 'Mortal Kombat', it follows Sub-Zero as he obeys the orders from his Lin Kuei clan leader to assist the Netherealm sorcerer Quan-Chi in obtaining an amulet. This obviously backfires as the necromancer betrays you and you're forced to fix your mistakes. For what took me 6 hours to beat, I did find some enjoyable moments. Whether you play this as a lifelong fan of the series like me or want to watch some overly bad acting to entertain you, there is something here for you. Providing some extra context behind Sub-Zero's willingness to support his clan or his first encounter against Scorpion, was interesting to experience and did provide me with a slightly better understanding of the original trilogy of the arcade games. The pacing is rough and the sequence of events has little cohesion, but for the mini-moments where it works, it works well enough.

As for the acting, yikes. Some of the worst performances you'll see in a game as, even though most games were shifting to 3D CG animation for cutscenes around then, 'Mythologies: Sub-Zero' stuck to live acting in front of green screens to save them time and effort. The audio mixing for these scenes is terrible enough without the caveat of the dialogue delivery being so bad that it's funny to watch. If you enjoy playing shit games for the giggles they can accidentally provide, this narrative has enough of that energy to entertain you (though I'd recommend just watching a playthrough instead as the gameplay becomes insufferable). For the small value that the story has in expanding the other games' context or the acting being entertainingly bad, I still don't think it is worth experiencing first-hand.

Gameplay

The gameplay was atrocious. There is just so much wrong here. The basis of the gameplay for 'Mythologies: Sub-Zero' is that it's a sidescroller beat'em up in the same vain as the 'Mortal Kombat' arcade games where you have fighting-game-esque inputs for attacks. This was then translated into an action-adventure style where you progress through levels, earn XP to unlock new moves, do some platforming and participate in boss fight duels. I liked the idea of earning XP for new moves like Sub-Zero's classic Iceball or Slide, and I liked the ideas for this game and what they could've been. There is also a cheat code menu for you to gain access to all levels if you want to skip any or gain the maximum healing items but that's unironically where all the positive aspects of the game end.

The combat was at best ok. The enemy variety wasn't anything special at first with mainly reskin humanoid fighters. Still, they became really wacky and out of tune with the tone that 'Mortal Kombat' is known for quickly, as cyborg-demon-mechs is too far of a stretch, at least visually, even for a series with ninjas and elder gods. Their attacks would exponentially increase in difficulty as well as at first the enemies were particularly easy to deal with as they essientally bumbled their way into your attacks, but just by the second level out of 8, they start doing cross-ups and mix-ups and flawlessly block and counter all of your attacks, making the game feel quite unfair in terms of scaling. These fights would remain monotonous as well with your best way of attacking being to spam the Iceball to freeze the enemies before uppercutting them for a lot of damage or spamming the same 4-hit combo, which even then only worked occasionally. I don't have any shame in saying this but by the halfway mark, I had to switch the difficulty down to Easy as these encounters became too overwhelmingly frustrating, not including the other unfair ways this game adds difficulty. Instant-kill traps with unthoughtful timing, poor control over jumping and climbing and worst of all, the platforming.

The platforming here sucks mega as the timing needed for some platforms is too inconsistent with what's occurring visually and sometimes you had to take a leap of faith when jumping onto the next platform as its placement would just about be off-screen. The best (or worst) instance of this was in level 2 which is notorious for highlighting how bad the platforming truly is in this game. The controls here are just revolting as all the attack options are bound to one of the four buttons on the controller, the attacks require the same precise inputs as they do in their fighting-game counterparts and some idiot thought it was a good idea to make turning to face the opposite direction an entire input rather than just simply moving in that direction. The number of times I had died to this bullshit of my character facing the wrong direction was so damn annoying. Words cannot express just how many poor design choices were made here, with janky controls and unfair challenges breeding together for the most tasteless cesspool in gaming.

Bossfights

I'm going to keep this section short because I've already expressed my distaste for the gameplay and the boss fight encounters don't do anything to fix them. While it was cool to go up against series-classic characters like Fujin or Scorpion, there really isn't anything of value for them here. Just like the poorly-difficulty-optimised AI from the arcade games, the same flaws strike the bosses here as their most memorable moments in the duels are the fact that you're fighting them in the first place. Their attacks are quite plain and when the fight does switch up like Fujin creating that massive tornado, or the Earth God being vulnerable to be hit by the dangling platform, they're not designed well enough to feel fun and come across more as a nuisance than anything else. The soundtracks are boring and their narrative connection feels inconsequential for the most part. Just a bunch of inoffensive fights that use offensively bad combat.

Characters

As for the characters, I already mentioned how poor the acting and dialogue are but it goes so much beyond that. Their portrayals are so one-dimensional compared to the performances I'm used to from the recent games, and while that could be a limitation of how this game's age and how the characters were still in the process of being defined, it doesn't help its case when the 'Mortal Kombat' movie released 2 years prior and plenty of other PS1 games managed to nail interesting, well-delivered caricatures and yet this doesn't. There is so much awfulness here that it flips itself onto its head and becomes laughable and funny at times, which speaks to its level of quality, or better yet, its lack of.

Atmosphere

The best this game has is the outdated visuals and lacklustre music. Artistically, this game was a mess with there being no solid thematic inspiration, unlike the arcade trilogy where either Eastern or Western culture affected the style the games had. Here, one moment you get Shaolin monks that look plain, the next you get cyborg demons that look like scrapped 'Doom' enemies, and then you get dinosaurs (because why not I guess). This lack of connection between enemies and just how uninteresting they look is the best way to describe so much of this game. The environments at best looked like unfinished arena models for 'Mortal Kombat 4', and this 3D rendering of the areas, but pixelated live-capture of the sprites created a greatly jarring effect that caused more discomfort than familiarity like the developers hoped for.

Audibly, it was pretty bad as well. The mixing for sound effects, especially during cutscenes, was questionable while the soundtrack for this whole game is so drab. It's soulless and somehow did this already bad game a disservice given how lifeless it makes it. I'm all for ambient soundtracks if done right, but for a fighting game of this creative calibre, the music did not sell any of the energy that the IP is known for.

Story - 2/10

Gameplay - 1/10

Bossfights - 1/10

Characters - 2.5/10

Atmosphere - 2.5/10