Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition - PlayStation 3

First, the game review. Mortal Kombat has always been popular ever since the first game launched in the arcades. I plunked many quarters into the arcades playing MK1 through UMK3. However, about the time the 4th game came out it felt like the series was in decline. I've tried a few of the home versions since MK 4 including MK vs DC and they just didn't feel very good or polished. This game MK (9) is a return to the series former glory. I've been playing it constantly since release. It is easy enough for beginners to pick up and scales to hard enough to give veterans an extreme challenge. Now to review the Tournament Edition. The TE comes in a very large and heavy box weighing in at about 15 pounds. Inside the box will be the MK game, a code for Ermac, USB cable and the Fighting stick. The stick itself uses the USB cable to plug into the PS3. I don't think the included USB cable is quite long enough, but you can always use an extension. The stick itself feels exactly like an MK3 arcade stick and the button layout is identical. The parts in the stick are made by Happ, which is the same company that made parts for MK games back when Midway was making the arcade versions. The latch to open the hidden compartment feels very sturdy and there is a decent amount of space in the compartment. The bottom of the stick has a thick memory foam that makes it very comfortable to place on your lap. This stick is currently limited to 20,000 units, so I'd hurry and get one if you are on the fence. I've been HAPPY enough with my purchase I ordered a 2nd stick. Other thoughts: The Overall build quality of this stick is amazing. Real serious players may eventually wear out some of the button switches. The button switches are rated for 10,000,000 cycles which should take a really long time to wear out. If they ever do wear out it would be very cheap and easy to replace them at about $1 a piece and 3 minutes of time to install them. PDP does have a 5 year warranty on this stick too.

This game will be beast and sick. Brawl and marvel vs capcom 3 are sick but they don't touch MK in violence. Bringing back the oldschool memories from SNES and N64. Will be in 2d and eye blasting 3d. Back with some classic characters like noob saibot sektor reptile cyrax and special kratos for ps3 only. Beast game, will smash on MK VS DC. Which was like sesame street to this. Can't wait to own people online with Sektor Scorpion and KRATOS.

When I saw MK will be coming back out again, I wasn't so excited. MK vs. DC left me bitter about any comeback of the MK series. But I was interested in testing it out because there was a demo available. So I downloaded it to the ps3 and tried "The Ladder" which is arcade mode in MK terms. The demo gives you 4 fighters to choose from: Scorpion, Johnny Cage, Mileena, and Sub-Zero. I played with all the available characters and tried their combos/specials/fatalities. Let me tell you, I was deeply impressed with the newest installment of the MK series. It seems they brought it back down to the roots of which made MK popular back in the 90s. The fatalities are brutal, the specials moves look great, the graphics, the stages.. everything brings me back to MK 1-3 and multiplied it by 100x. Now I almost exclusively play fighting games only ie. SFIV, MvC3, Tekken, KoF, GG, BlazBlue etc.. and I can't say enough good things from JUST THE DEMO. I highly recommend this game. Buy it, pre-order it. Keep it away from your children.

I think that this is going to be the best edition and one of the best games for 2011 man I can't wait!