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MK Shaolin Monks thread

Damn, dude. I finally beat those last bosses. I appreciate the advice, but unfortunately for me, I was using Liu Kang, not Kung Lao. My strategy pretty much broke down like this:

Shang Tsung: Just combo his ass repeatedly. Not a hard fight, but his throw moves would occassionally claim priority over everything and I'd lose health. Usually get down to about half my health from this fight alone.

Kintaro: Run along the outside of the ring and wait until he throws a fireball. Immediately stop and do Liu's 3-fireball combo on him. Continue running until he throws another one and repeat. When he does the jumping-stomp-teleport move, just keep running and try to be in the space he is leaving from as he rarely strikes the same spot twice in a row. Like lightning. Long fight, but you can get through it this way wihout losing much health at all. My best attempt had me take only 2 hits.

Shao Kahn Pre-hammer: See Kintaro strategy.

Shao Kahn Hammer: Same shit, but you gotta run a lot because he just keeps doing those shoulder charges and never fireballs anymore. When he does that lame spin move, you gotta run your ass off and use the double jump to get away. Use the flying kick manuever for a quick getaway if you get in a bind.

Took me like 8 tries but I finally finished it today. Unlocked Scorpion in story mode. Really curious to see how that plays out. I wonder if the cinemas are new? I hope its not a watered-down version of the story like you get with extra characters in Castlevania games.
 
It's lame. The story is exactly the same, they just replace the monks in the cutscenes. They're just like skins. They play a bit differently though.

I beat it on Hard tonight. It was barely any different. You just take a bit more damage.
 
I walked into Best Buy a few days ago and saw they had it, so I picked it up with one of the gift cards I had with me. I tried to resist... I really did... :(

I've already gone throught it twice on single player (Kung Lao/Sub-Zero) and once on co-op. The game is simply fun as hell and I keep coming back for more! At this point I wouldn't mind if they scrapped the fighting game side of the MK series and just continued it in "Shaolin Monk" games. :lol

I think I had around 85% of the secrets on my Kuno Lao file, I unlocked MK2 etc but unless there's anything else of value (don't care about vs mode at all, co-op > versus) I don't think I'll be searching for any more secrets..... though Ermac is calling me. :(

Dear God let there be a sequel.

pleasekthanx,

raYne.
 
If they do a sequel I hope it's based on MK3. If there's any story that would fit as an adventure game it's that since it was basically the surviving humans trying to get to Kahn's tower while being attacked by squads of bad guys.
 
Anyanka said:
If they do a sequel I hope it's based on MK3. If there's any story that would fit as an adventure game it's that since it was basically the surviving humans trying to get to Kahn's tower while being attacked by squads of bad guys.
Click to expand...


It's pretty much a given that there's gonna be a sequel, though I expect it will be in 2 years.

Next year we get another fighter: MK 7.

Though we dunno if it's for next gen consoles or not.
 
DarkCloud said:
I'm pretty sure MK7 was already announced as a next gen title quite awhile back. 2006 3rd-4th quarter release.
Click to expand...

In an interview from e3 with MKOnline, Ed Boon said they were studying current gen and next gen possibilities.

linky
 
I don't care what systems they go with, they need to drop the current engine. I can't stand another that plays like DA and Deception.
 
I saw it before, it's a shame that stuff like that wouldn't air in the US...

Back to the game, I loaded up my Kung Lao file and found a few more secrets which we all know Anya has done already. :p The extras I'm currently doing have to do with fighting other characters.
Mileena
done,
Ermac
done,
Kano
to go.

It's a shame they didn't hide all the secrets this way. Then I'd have some motivation to go do it, if only just the see how the characters were "re-designed".

I'm guesing that there isn't a way, other than dl'ing some hacked save, to start the game from the beginning with all abilities unlocked? It's slightly annoying to have to go through the upgrade process over and over.

The game is still fun as... actually, I think I'll go play it right now. :lol
 
I don't mind getting all the abilities again since you can afford most of them like halfway through.

What is disappointing to me about the secrets was that most of the concept art was just the art with no commentary. In Deadly Alliance and Deception they had descriptions to go with it and often had some interesting details and stories about the development process. Like the character Dairou in Deception was originally intended to be in DA.


That Ermac fight was cool, as was seeing the Warrior Shrine.

It's weird how Mileena is basically the only villain to survive Shaolin Monks when in the actual MK II story she was one of the only ones that died.


The game is so addicting. It's got me back into MK. After Deception I was down on MK, the most apathetic I've ever been. I had almost no hype for SM until about 2 weeks before it came out. A few nights ago I beat all the fighting games in a row. I even played through Mythologies last night. The only one I have no desire to go back to is Special Forces. Once was enough.
 
Anyanka said:
The only one I have no desire to go back to is Special Forces. Once was enough.
Click to expand...
:lol

It seems to me that all the changes, especially
Mileena's
survival and
Quan Chi gaining the medallian
, were made simply to set up the sequel. So if I were to guess I'd say it'd include the transition between MK3 and MK4(including Gold since
Mileena
was in that one.)

I hope they throw in quite a few more playable (in single/co-op) in the next one. Sub and Scorp are cool and all, but expected. Pretty much like putting Wolverine in an X-men game.
 
A Mk4 based game would be good. We know basically all of what happened in MK3 but hardly anything about MK4 except Scorpion sending Quan Chi to neatherealm. We don't even know what happened to Shinnok. So they've got a lot they could cover there.


It sucks that Kintaro is only in the game for like 5 minutes. He remains one of the most underdeveloped characters in the series, despite being a boss. Where does he come from? Why does he want to avenge Goro so bad? Why is he Kahn's right hand man after Goro died, did he just ask for a promotion? Kahn goes through so many henchmen. First Goro, then Kintaro, then Motaro, then Kano and now back to Goro in present day. Working for Kahn has a high turn over rate.

And Goro should not be in SM, except for the end of MK1. Liu Kang should have beat him in MK1. Goro was the reigning champion, not Shang Tsung. It makes no sense for Goro to just be chilling out in the Wasteland.
 
If they base the next game on MK3, then they should have a multitude of playable characters, 6-8 at least, ranging from Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sub-Zero, Kabal, Stryker, Kitana etc., each with their own path and story.
 
*shakes head*

Nope.. Stryker gets a guest appearance and that's all. At least Cage is there for comedy's sake. Stryker is just an all around bad character. Sindel and Kabal are at my personal top two for extra playable characters in the next one. The banshee screams, hair whips and super speed w/ hooked swords used as default attacks.. Mmmmm...

It's a shame that they aren't major players when it comes to the storyline so it'll never happen. :lol
 
Sindel is a major character in MK3. She is the whole reason for the game. She kind of disapeared afterwards until Deception but if they did a MK3 based game she'd have to be an important part of it, just probably not playable since she was evil for most of it.

Stryker is really good. In my top 5 all time favorites. He just looks lame. If he was in the next game he wouldn't look like he did in MK3 anyway. They could make him look cool with a redesign, give him a black SWAT outfit or something.


Mileena is in the living forest. Near the beginning there's this save point. Around that area is a bunch of branches you can swing on. Start swinging till you reach the tree above the savepoint and climb up to a new area.
 
Anyanka said:
Sindel is a major character in MK3. She is the whole reason for the game. She kind of disapeared afterwards until Deception but if they did a MK3 based game she'd have to be an important part of it, just probably not playable since she was evil for most of it.
Click to expand...
I know how important she is in 3. Other than that as you said she was forgotten until Deception. And even then she didn't have that important a role.

In any case, my main point was really about popularity. And the two characters simply aren't popular enough to be made playable in the sequel.
 
Kabal is fairly popular and was just in MKD so I could see him coming back. I hope so, I've always liked him.

Sub-Zero, Kabal, Baraka, Stryker, Cyrax & Sektor are my favorites.
 
Anyanka said:
...
Mileena is in the living forest. Near the beginning there's this save point. Around that area is a bunch of branches you can swing on. Start swinging till you reach the tree above the savepoint and climb up to a new area.
Click to expand...


No. She is WAS in the living Forrest, that's where you go and fight against her for the 2ND time. After you beat her she escapes again which means that you have to go find her for the 3RD and final time. I'm having great trouble finding her again for our final confrontation.

Does anyone else know where to find this annoying bi*ch!? :D
 
Trust me, I have 68/68 secrets and 111% completion....there's only that second fight.

You find out what happened to Kitana later, but Mileena never shows up again. In the actual MK II story Kitana should have killed her but I guess Midway forgot.
 
I've already completed the game but I'm just working backwards to increase the completion rate. Yes, that including defeating Kano, Ermac, Smoke missions and so on...

That's EXTREMELY annoying on Midway's part, to allow her to escape like that without showing what happens to her next whether killed by Kitana or not is damn right annoying. She's like a slippery rat that somehow figures out a way to overpower her opponents even though the opponents has the opportunity to kill her off. ugh!

Anyhow, it's a very good game so I think I should review it soon.
 
Anyanka said:
Trust me, I have 68/68 secrets and 111% completion....there's only that second fight.

You find out what happened to Kitana later, but Mileena never shows up again. In the actual MK II story Kitana should have killed her but I guess Midway forgot.
Click to expand...


hmmmmm.... Vogel forgot.


the story messes up Mk 2 BIG TIME.
 
Well she completes her mission and you end up saving Kitana in the end so I guess Midway didn't feel the need to show her again since we know she'll be back in the other games. Sub-Zero just disapearing is worse. He goes off to chase Noob and is just never seen again.

The changes to Sub-Zero's story was really stupid. In Deception they said the brothers hadn't met since the old Sub became Noob Saibot, yet in this he knows years before then. The way it's set up now he finds out and chases him in Outworld then apparently gives up and just doesn't care in 3, 4 and 5. They really should have done a better job with the Scorpion/Sub-Zero rivalry. In the intro you see the older Sub and Scorpion fight but they can't finish it due to Tsung's island falling apart. Then it's just forgotten and hours later Liu Kang casually mentions that Raiden had told them they fought later and Scorpion had won. Huh? Scorpion went through the portal and Sub got away. That means Scorpion either had to travel to Earth and kill him or Sub went to Outworld. Why didn't they just have Scorpion kill him in the intro? The way they do it off screen as if it's no big deal is so anticlimatic. The only reason I could see for doing that is to hold it off for another game. Also for years there's been debate about wether Scorpion vowed to protect the younger Sub or not, as seen in his MK II ending. UMK3 mentioned this but MK4 seemed to have ignored it. This was the perfect chance to finally clear that up. Instead there is no conclusion at all. Scorpion seems to just let him go and instead wants to kill the monks.


Vogel was only a consultant for SM, so depending on how much work he put in he may not know of these mistakes, not care or he may support them and plans to make them part of the story. What sucks about Midway is that they're always so vague so the fans are left having to decide and argue amongst themselves what to accept. We now have two different versions of MK II, the original game and SM. How are we supposed to know what is true and what isn't? Is SM a non-canon alternate take on the story that won't be brought up again or does it now replace MK II completely? Midway will probably never say, which will just make things confusing for years to come.

It could be like the movie where as a whole it's non-canon but they occasioanlly just randomly take pieces of it and add them to the story as if they had always been like that. Just look at Raiden. Him being the mentor, guide and protector is taken straight from the movie, he was nothing like that in the original and II. Same with Kitana and Liu Kang's relationship. They had almost no interaction at all in 1-3 but suddenly in 4 she's asking him to marry her. I could see them taking things from SM, like Kitana being under a spell or Quan Chi getting the amulet from Kahn and just ignoring the rest.
 
Disguisting.

As a MK1, 2 and 3 fan I am quite happy with respect to the seriousness, but story wise this game totally screws up.

Oh well, just enjoy the game.
 
I find it funny that Anyanka is trying to make sense of something the creators themselves didn't care about:P

Anywhoo, I am having fun with it so far playing as Liu Kang.
 
Was just alerted to the fact that this game is actually good, and now I'm interested. I was a huge fan of MKI-II, so this is a definite purchase for me. Good co-op play is nice to hear about, too. How's the framerate? 60fps?
 
jiji said:
Was just alerted to the fact that this game is actually good, and now I'm interested. I was a huge fan of MKI-II, so this is a definite purchase for me. Good co-op play is nice to hear about, too. How's the framerate? 60fps?
Click to expand...
Jesus.. just buy the game already! :p
 
Story nitpicking aside... this is like a MK2 fanboy's dream. If you ever liked MK2 you should, at least, rent this sucker. I love all the hidden jokes and shit thrown throughout the game. Even when you knock someone in the dead pool you can hear a "ohhhh wwwahhhh" :lol or knock them on the hooks (something always rumored about MK2 but was never true).
 
jiji said:
I won't be buying any games for a month or more, so I have time to obsess a bit. :p
Click to expand...
Could have been worse.. at least you didn't compare it to MGS4... :lol

No clue about the actualy framerate numbers. I don't obsess over trivialities unless it's unstable. Not that this is the type of game that supposedly "needs" 60fps, but it never slows down on single player.

Co-op has its moments when there are 5 enemies on screen and some are spell casting, with fire and lightning effects going on in the background while both players are running the combo meter into the high #'s. But it never affects actual gameplay, plus the other 95+% of the time the game is totally stable.
 
I swear to God, I had a dream one night of playing a side scrolling BEU based off of MK2 at around the time of MK2's release (remember being SO hyped for that game). This actually sounds fairly interesting, worth a rental at least.
 
djtiesto said:
I swear to God, I had a dream one night of playing a side scrolling BEU based off of MK2 at around the time of MK2's release (remember being SO hyped for that game). This actually sounds fairly interesting, worth a rental at least.
Click to expand...
Similarly around the time MK3 came out a couple friends and I had a discussion about how the MK universe would be kick-ass in a beat em up game. And here we are.... heh.
 
Rented it, playing as Kung Lao...all I gotta say is fuck Reptile's Lair. I get to where you have to punch five statues, and I can't get him to get to the fourth. :\
 
:lol I got to the end--I completely dominate everything until hammer Shao. :(

Kintaro is the easiest boss in the game--just double jump, pound into him with Kung Lao's rapid fire kicks, and right before you get to the 4 that hit automatically at the end, hit circle.
 
Okay, weird ending--I'm kinda pissed that Kintaro didn't get the killing that he got in official canon...

Apparently he just got flash fried by ol' lightning breath when he walked on in the original canon. :lol
 
Raiden killing Kintaro has never been official. That is from a dubious source that has been passed around the internet as fact for so many years that everyone just accepts it as truth now. I've never taken it seriously and I'm glad they ignored it in Shaolin Monks. It's from Threshold's Ultimate Guide to MK CD-Rom, a source no better than the movies or comics.


In the games they've never mentioned what happened to him in MK II. They've never really explained any of the climax of MK II. MK3 starts off pretty much ignoring it except for saying Liu and his friends escaped from Outworld. In MKD it is said Liu has 4 medals in his tomb representing his 4 tournament victories, implying he beat Kahn in MK II(and in 3, and Shinnok in 4) but that's not much to go on.


In MKD's Konquest mode he is mentioned as still being alive. Konquest isn't the greatest source but it's all we have to go by in the games.
 
This game may be fun for one-player... but I played it with a buddy this weekend, and it kinda sucked in 2-player.

1) The camera just plain sucks. You end up spending most of your time at the edges of the screen cause it doesnt pull back enough, with enemies spending most of their time off-screen.

2) If just got really stale, we looked up a faq for extra Fatalities to keep up the excitement.. and well, even that didn't help.
 
Bojangles said:
This game may be fun for one-player... but I played it with a buddy this weekend, and it kinda sucked in 2-player.

1) The camera just plain sucks. You end up spending most of your time at the edges of the screen cause it doesnt pull back enough, with enemies spending most of their time off-screen.

2) If just got really stale, we looked up a faq for extra Fatalities to keep up the excitement.. and well, even that didn't help.
Click to expand...

I found the Vs mode to be really fun. 4 of us were switching off kicking each other's asses. Since it's not that deep anyone could pick up and play.

tons of fun! :D
 
Shit, I don't know what to do. I need a good action game for my PS2, but I can't pick between Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and X-Men Legends II.

I decided to ask for opinions in this thread instead of creating a new one. Has anyone here played both? My main concern is replay value, and I don't have long stretches of time to play the game in. So, which is a longer game that I can pick up and play for about a half hour and still make good progress?

EDIT: Or maybe Ultimate Spiderman. Or Hulk. Fuck, I don't know. HELP ME GAF!
 
Duck of Death said:
Shit, I don't know what to do. I need a good action game for my PS2, but I can't pick between Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and X-Men Legends II.
Click to expand...

Rent MKSM, buy XMLII when it comes down in price.
 
I have no opinion on either Hulk or Ultimate Spiderman, having played neither.

Legends is far longer than this, but if you don't have friends/Live access I'd say go with Shaolin Monks, especially if you're either a MK or beat em up fan. They really aren't the same type of game.

Legends is about leveling up your character and outfitting them to take advantage of each characters strength. Configuring teams that compliment each other and all that. It really is more RPG than action. Especially since the actual fighting action is really lacking in this (Legends) series.

Shaolin Monks is a beat em up ala Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Turtles in Time vein. It's far more about beating the hell out of enemies and stringing together long combos. Put it has a fantastic fighting system featuring air combos, environmental dangers/puzzles/deaths. Unlike the games from the past I mentioned, this also lets you upgrade your character give him more moves, combos, fatalities etc. Plus you'll be able to create and adapt your own combo style depending on which of the 4 characters you're using.

Bottom line, Shaolin Monks is more action while Legends is more RPG. However, there is a lot more to unlock in Legends since it's mission based... even of those things are a bunch of comic book covers etc that don't really matter. But that also means you'll be wondering around for probably more than one would like doing nothing. Especially if you've already cleared the area of baddies since they don't respawn.

But since it's an action game you're looking for... Shaolin Monks all the way! Especially since you don't have the time for long gaming stretches and each of the 4 characters play completely differently.
 
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