As the title suggests, the main focus is on the Shaolin Monks, Liu Kang and Kung Lao. It’s a real cool intro that harkens back to the simple days of Mortal Kombat before urban invasion and zombie heroes were a thing. The floor crumbles and some of the heroes get out, but Liu Kang and Kung Lao fall through and get separated from everyone else. The game actually opens with a badass cutscene that depicts a battle royale placed at the end of the first tournament, with all the good guys (Raiden, Liu Kang, Sonya, Johnny Cage, and Sub-Zero) against the ungood guys (Scorpion, Kano, Reptile, Baraka, and Shang Tsung), when Kung Lao jumps in (disguised as a tournament guard) and Liu gives the old wizard a severe beating, but Goro’s intervention allows Shang Tsung to create a portal and escape. Said charm is heavily based on the game’s semi-canonical place as an interquel taking place right at the end of the first Mortal Kombat with the events leading up to MK2. It proved that not only could a good MK action game could be made, but it also brought back some of that old-school charm evocative of the series’ early games. Considering their prior track record with beat-em-ups, no one really expected much from Shaolin Monks when it was first released, but it turned out to be a surprisingly fine effort. MK did truly suffer through the dark ages throughout the zeroes, but there was one fairly bright spot right in the middle of it with Shaolin Monks, Midway’s third attempt at an MK action game. After Special Forces, the series was starting to lose touch with its original spirit by introducing lame characters and terrible plotlines that revolved around said characters, particularly Deception‘s dreadful quest mode starring some Shaw Brothers reject calling himself the hero. Not even MK4 was as bad as these two Shokan-sized mistakes, but admittedly it wasn’t much better, either. Special Forces turned out even worse, churning out a horribly bland product that nobody would guess had anything to do with Mortal Kombat just by glancing at it. Mythologies had an interesting premise, but it was ultimately hampered by unfair difficulty complemented by too many pitfalls mixed with one of the worst control schemes in game history. Mortal Kombat‘s previous attempts to break out of its conventional one-on-one fighting roots have been… if there’s a more condescending way to say “subpar,” that’d be the best adjective.

Game mortal kombat shaolin monks