I must admit that I wasn’t sure what to expect from Mortal Kombat Special Forces. My fondest memories of the MK franchise are the arcade and the Sega Genesis, but I seem to remember more than a few poor interpretations since then. Thankfully, Midway put together a nice looking package with this game. The levels don’t have a lot of detail, but since the main interaction is between characters, that’s no surprise. For a “beat-em-up” game, MK Special Forces looks good, and the little touches are nice. For instance, when you shoot a guy, he drops his gun and does this weird “bob-n-weave” type thing to make a hard target for you. And, nice graphics in the women’s shower! Hey, they don’t give away that “Mature” rating for nothing! Music in the game is really moody and atmospheric, and matches the feel of each level perfectly.

Forget anything about Mortal Kombat, because the only similarity between this and the old arcade game are two characters, Jax and Kano. Jax, the big bruiser with the chrome arms, shows what brought him into the Mortal Kombat world originally, tracking down escaped superhuman convicts led by Kano. Jax starts out with kick-punch abilities, but by cracking heads, he earns experience points and combos. When going against armed opponents, he can also snag weapons and ammo, including a shotgun, sniper rifle, machine gun and rocket launcher. If all else fails, there are “special moves” for those times when you gotta clear the room.

And it would all be so cool if there was some reason to do anything but walk up to the bad guy and punch him until he falls down. I tried to get some stealth action going, but usually when I saw the enemies, they saw me. There are a couple of puzzles and more than a few locked doors needing keys, but the levels themselves feel too small. The enemies are fun to throw around, but the bosses are fairly predictable. MK Special Forces would have benefited from Fighting Force-type gameplay, but there isn’t any kind of two-player here.

With a story that just feels too one-dimensional, MK Special Forces is a victim of bad design. Game mechanics are the strongest thing going; the real problem being that everything is just kind of jumbled together. What made Metal Gear Solid so brilliant was a combination of good gameplay and good story, and MK Special Forces would have been vastly improved if someone had spent some time deciding how all these fun features were going to translate into gameplay with depth.

Usually, I don’t say much about difficulty in reviews because games are built to appeal to such a wide audience these days, and have an equally broad range of difficulty. In the case of MK Special Forces, things are just way too easy. It’s possible to beat the game in about four to five hours on Hard, and there’s almost no replay value. Enemy A.I. is inconsistent, and while you can kill one guy with nothing but button-mashing, other enemies nail you no matter what you do. The worst of them all is the rocket launcher. Even on Easy difficulty, you get hit any time an enemy fires a rocket. It doesn’t matter where you are, how much you dodge, or where the rocket lands... you fall down and take damage. Cheap!

All the little details are what make MK Special Forces a game I would recommend playing as a rental. The fighting combos are fun to try and pull-off, and nailing them in sequence recharges your “special move” meter. Weapons have a cool “scope” mode that looks a lot like Syphon Filter, and there’s even the little “Head Shot” indicator when you line up a good one with the Sniper Rifle. Jax doesn’t jump or do any fancy moves, but the controls are really about fighting and using weapons. When something requires interaction, you simply press a button. This lets you play with computers and even move blocks around like Lara. Of course, Jax is in touch with his trusty communications woman, who is secretly in love with him. She forwards information on new items, as well as hints for getting through a level. After a boss fight is complete, she contacts you with details on the next mission, and lets you save your progress. Save points seem too far apart, but it doesn’t take long to replay a level. Balancing fighting by hand and using weapons is easy to learn, and the analog control felt tight.

I love that so much went into the features for Mortal Kombat Special Forces, but I just wish Midway put the same kind of time into designing levels, tuning enemy A.I., and writing a deeper story than “Go git ‘em!!” I think anyone would have a blast with this over a weekend, and for the diehard MK fans, it’s probably a must buy. With action/adventure games like MGS and Syphon Filter out there, not to mention “top-down” fighting games like Gekido and Fighting Force, MK Special Forces ends up as a light distraction for the disposable-income crowd. It coulda been a contender!