Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (PS1, 2000)

 

My God. Look at how they massacred my boy.

This spinoff centers around Jax versus Kano and his Black Dragon Syndicate. It's safe to say that right now (or the last few months, anyway) is the most that anybody has played or thought about this game ever (yeah, even when it first came out). It got a lot of press due to being included in Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. I previously did a post on this and MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero, but it only covered the first few minutes of each game before I tapped out. So I dug that post up specifically to actually cover the whole game now that it's available and playable on a TV. I'll also be re-doing MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero and covering that.

God Help Me.

Originally posted a few years ago, now expanded

Some notes on these spinoffs. They were planning a whole series of these, but the idea bombed out quickly and only really got revisited with the Liu Kang / Kung Lao driven Shaolin Monks years later. That game is actually good, unlike the disasters that were the Sub-Zero and Jax games.

Special Forces was supposed to also center around Sonya, which would have added a lot to the game (and let them knock out another character from their no doubt long list of side games they'd have to do if their "do a game starring each character" madness continued). After some development hell, playable Sonya was left out of the game. Originally you chose one of the two characters at the outset and played as them throughout, with the second character appearing to offer assists or show up in cutscenes.

Well, far as I can tell Sonya was totally removed. Not sure what other game she could be in if this one was the Black Dragon Syndicate game, since her and Jax's entire backstory was them fighting the BDS. So I guess by the time they bumped Sonya, they'd probably realized they weren't going to get to all the characters anyway.

I don't know how many characters they were planning to do games for, but it appears that it was at least the original cast at the beginning. Mythologies: Sub-Zero has the titular character and Scorpion, while Special Forces was supposed to star Jax and Sonya going aganst Kano. That leaves Raiden and Liu Kang, who were...the next planned games. They also had a Baraka game on the drawing board so they may have extended into MK2's roster. I assume they would have also come up with something for Johnny Cage at some point. "Johnny Cage: Beat the Allegations Simulator" is the rumor.

The Baraka and Liu Kang games were cancelled before they got very far off the drawing board, while the concepts and assets for the Raiden game were retooled into aforementioned "only good spinoff" Shaolin Monks with Liu Kang and Kung Lao.

If I'm understanding this right, Special Forces is canonically the first game in the entire MK-verse, taking place before any of the other games in the series. Whoa. ...wait, why the hell does he have metal arms, then? Jax got metal arms between MKII and MKIII. He didn't always have them, right?

FIRST, THE SHOTS I TOOK ORIGINALLY:

We get this flashy, probably drug-fueled intro movie where Jax is pointing guns in various directions while trippy backgrounds roll by and funky music plays.

It's Kano, the villain of the game. Kinda glad the Black Dragon Syndicate got to be villains in a game. This group and the Lin Kuei were always interesting to me back in the day. MK1 was firing on all cylinders with having interesting backstories for everyone.

This whole intro is like something out of a 1970's movie, and it makes these villains (and this game) look a lot more solid than it'll actually be.

Here's Tremor, the earth-elemental ninja with brown gi. It makes sense to make an earth-based character since that was never really covered by any of MK's elemental ninjas. Except that Jax can cause earthquakes in MKII. Hey, maybe he learns that power from the fight with this guy? Would be pretty cool. (Edit: He doesn't, but yeah, it would have been cool if he did)

Tremor is probably the one really noteworthy or relevant thing to come out of this game, and makes an appearance or two in late main series MKs.

Very Metal Gear Solid title screen here. This released in 2000 and Solid Snake was all the rage so I shouldn't be surprised.

This shot of a wanted poster flashes by way too fast for anyone to actually read it, so I grabbed a screencap. Nothing really interesting here, but at least he didn't fail to pay his taxes or something really serious like that.

The Black Dragon Syndicate escaping from prison. The justice system should have known better than to put a guy who can cause earthquakes into a building like this. We've got the five bosses of the game here and one unknown. From left to right it's Tasia, No Face, Kano, ???, Tremor, and Jarek. No idea who ??? is. Maybe there was a sixth level and it got cut?

Codec call! Yes, like MGS.

This codec call just goes on and on, and I can see this is gonna be a thing in this game.

In any case, we start in an abandoned warehouse and have to find these guys.

Time to find out how this plays. Will it be a fighting game? A side-scrolling beat em up hybrid like the previous game?

......................

Yeah so basically it's an MGS clone, but mainly focused around the terrible up-close fighting. I did NOT see that coming!

You run around with an overhead viewpoint and punch goons who have tons of HP. Their life meters are those tiny, barely-visible lines in the top right. The lines may be tiny, but it takes forever to defeat anybody.

I also quickly discover that you can totally stunlock enemies by just spamming quick punch. Over...and over...and over.

You can gain levels in this game. It unlocks new moves and combos that sometimes work, maybe, if you're lucky.

However, this is that Brutal: Paws of Fury type of levelup system where it detracts more than it adds to the game. You should start with Jax's moves but instead you have to grind enemies to unlock them. And half the time they don't work. You have to fiddle around with the delay between button presses to get the combos to actually combo.

This game isn't so much bad as it is DULL. The environments are so insanely un-interesting that the hard part is staying awake.

And these overhead, way-too-close camera views are also a problem. This warehouse is sprawling and everything looks the same, so once I clear all the enemies (with barely a scratch) I'm just roaming around lost.

Alright, this elevator needs power. Gotta find the power room.

Alright, here's the power room. Gotta flip the switch. Needed a key to unlock this. Once the switch is flipped the elevator works, then you gotta find another key I think?

Alright, back at the elevator. Now I have access to all floors of the warehouse, so I can be even more confused because I've been to several of them already. Also picked up a machine gun that can torch a foe, maybe two if you're lucky, but runs out of bullets almost immediately.

Annnnd more roaming around lost. This game is so incredibly unappealing. At least the Sub-Zero game has some appeal and feels like MK. This is a very uninspired MGS clone that seems more like it got rushed through development in a week after they spent the previous year using the game budget to party on cocaine. WHOOO!

Welp.

The sad thing is, while some of the portable MKs were just really, really bad... these two spinoff games had the potential to be good. They handle fine, they have some solid ideas (no pun intended). Neither could get out of its own way though. Remove the pillars and platforming from Mythologies: Sub-Zero and remove the sprawling "lost without a clue" environments of this game and just give it normal levels, and both would be substantially improved. It wouldn't take much.

NOW, THE 2026 REVISITATION:

...yeah, the game is still pretty fugly, even on this collection with TV scanlines to make it a little more 2000-accurate.

If one is platinuming the MK Legacy Kollection (I'm all over platinuming things lately) it's important to play through this game normally for a little while to reach Level 3 and unlock the trophy for that.

Once that's done...start the game over and enable MKLK's "all moves and weapons" option, which puts you at max level from the start and makes the game way, way more fun. I mean, good luck actually doing some of these moves/combos, but at least they're there.

The max health difference isn't as stark as you'd think. At level 1 your max health is something like 4800, and at level 11/max it's 7235. So your health is +50% or so from where you started, which isn't any overpowering advantage. You still have to be careful.

Better than the moves/combos is unlocking all the weapons (and actual AMMO for them so you don't have to scrounge for tiny amounts here and there). The shotgun is particularly great because it does the most damage up-close. Enemies close the distance with you fast, and this weapon keeps you from ending up trading punches with them.

There's a first-person mode you can go into via a shoulder button, which is kind of cool. You can't move around but you can punch or shoot. This is basically the only thing separating this game from something that could have easily been made on a 16-bit system (and would have probably been nicer-looking too).

The sniper rifle can take out foes at range, but I didn't get much use out of it considering how dark everything is, how small the rooms are, how everything aggros on sight...

The Rocket Launcher is awesome, and the explosions have a big area of effect radius. The actual shots from it don't really do any damage, the explosion does. So you can fire at a wall right behind a foe, like here.

Other weapons include the Machine Gun, which is really solid and fires quick (I prefer the shotgun overall but the MG has better range), and the useless Grenade Launcher, which lobs explosives that bounce around (the Rocket Launcher is far better).

Nice rug here, looks....exactly like the only rug I own. What a coincidence. It functions well as both a yoga mat and a more comfortable way to make love on the floor.

First boss is No Face, and he's got a flamethrower. I don't know HOW people are supposed to defeat this guy on a new file. Getting close to him is difficult with his flamethrower, and he has a ton of HP. I could see a lot of players giving up on the game here.

The key to winning is saving whatever weapons you find during the level and unleashing those during the fight. Or in my case, blasting away because I've got so many weapons and ammo. Hey, if he's gonna bring a flamethrower to a fistfight, then I'll bring a rocket launcher.

Jarek (from MK4) is one of Kano's goons in this game. I thought Jarek was the BDS leader / Kano's boss? Well, nope. This game is all about fighting the Black Dragon Syndicate, and Kano is the final boss. So I guess that settles who the leader is.

Level 2 (of five) is the sewers. Because what this game needed was a sewer level. At this point we've pretty much seen most of what the game has to offer. All five levels are the same sort of maze with keys. So I'll be quickly summing up from here on out. One thing I've noticed now that I'm out of level 1 is that most of the enemies have guns from here on out, so you pretty much have to always have one yourself or you'll get chewed up with bullets while running towards them to punch.

One huge, glaring problem with this game: Enemies can shoot you from off-screen, or get the drop on you immediately when they're on-screen, and with the camera as zoomed-in as it is, this happens CONSTANTLY. Sometimes I get riddled with bullets if there are two foes off-screen firing at once, and in that situation I often can't even move.

One solution is to advance slowly and use the Sniper Rifle to scout ahead and take out foes before you get in their range and get shredded. But normally sniper ammo is very scarce, and who wants to creep along sniping in this game? It's MK, and you're playing as JAX, you want to barrel ahead and bowl everything over.

Other than the occasional door code, the basic game loop is intact: Find keys, open doors. Find keycards, use them to reach the goal. Yawn

Once all the keycards for this level are found, using them at terminals will cause a bridge to extend all the way to the boss room. The level design in this game isn't actually bad; problem is you can barely see anything, and what you can see looks like shite.

Early 3D on PS1 was a real downgrade from the heights 2D was reaching in the late 90's, and this game didn't even need to use 3D. Everything it does would have been totally fine being 2D, would have looked better, and probably would have cost them a lot less to make too. The game itself is very comparable to True Lies for the SNES, only without a much-needed dive roll.

Tasia is the next boss. She's got two swords and throws these light projectiles that stun Jax, making this a really annoying fight. ....all the bosses are annoying fights, actually. I think she might have made it into some of the later games in the series, but I'm not sure, and nothing is immediately popping up.

With 3 special moves (the rest of the bosses have 2), this is probably the most interesting boss in the game to fight with. Which isn't saying much, but it's something.

Level 3 has Jax recording license plates like some kind of creepy weirdo.

This gets him the codes to open doors. Or you can just look up the codes online and save yourself some time.

The bland and boring locations continue with this office building, but at least it isn't a sewer.

Whoa, is this Kintaro's car? ....probably not. Can you imagine Kintaro sitting in a car?

After enough scanning license plates, Jax gains access to the Black Dragon Syndicate HQ. They have a pretty sweet logo, featuring Kano's weapon of choice: The Knife.

Been playing enough Dragon Quest that I instinctively tried to check drawers for Mini Medals. Then I realized that I could be playing a bright, colorful, fun game instead of doddering about in what might be the ugliest game I've played in years.

Level 3 is over pretty quickly, and culminates with a rooftop fight against Jarek (of Mortal Kombat 4 fame). Always thought this guy was Kano's boss, but apparently not, just another member of the Black Dragon Syndicate.

His main move is the Knife Throw (ala Kano) and he likes to spam it. This fight transpiring on the roof of a building COULD be awesome, if the game had any budget. If the camera could pan a bit, and there was a cityscape all around the fight arena, that would be really cool. Instead there's a void of nothingness. Why is this even 3D, again?

Level 4 starts with a run down a really long canyon where enemies snipe you with rocket launchers the whole way. I couldn't find any way to reliably avoid all these rockets. The enemies are up on perches so you can't hit them back unless you stop and snipe (while probably taking a rocket to the face). Best thing to do is just sprint through and take the hits. Nice wasting of your healing items here, but by now the player probably has tons of those.

Level 4 goes full Tomb Raider for a bit, with pushable objects (for the first time all game) and hidden passages to find. You also have to use bombs to smash certain walls to find hidden rooms. The breakable walls are REALLY hard to spot without a guide; they barely look any different from anything else most of the time.

The objective here is to find three gems hidden throughout the level. One of them, the Emerald (seen here) gave me some grief because it's right at the beginning and I missed it. It's, you guessed it, behind a breakable wall that is at the very start of the level and barely stands out at all.

The gems mercifully function as light sources, making the game much, much more tolerable. Why couldn't you have a light source the rest of the time? Unfortunately, eventually they have to be placed on these altars. The gems go with the altars that have a name starting with the same first letter; for instance, the Emerald goes on the shrine of Eliza.

After another new mechanic outta nowhere (climb onto climbable platforms with Triangle!) I find... a Stargate? My God! A Stargate!

This leads to a brawl with the fourth boss: Tremor. The coolest of the BDS, he's a ninja in a brown/tan outfit who has Earth elemental powers. Sorta the reverse of Rain.

The fight itself...is pretty lame, but it's about as cool as this game ever gets. It seems bosses either stunlock you or you stunlock them.

At this point we've had the entire color scheme of these ninjas, think the only one missing is a white outfit ninja. That would have looked pretty bad-ass. Smoke might count, depending on how light grey his garb is in any particular game.

Turns out the Stargate takes Jax to Outworld, where the enemies have way more HP. I got excited for a second thinking the game was going to suddenly be much cooler now that I'm in Outworld. Nope, everything is still a pitch-black void outside of the immediate area, and there's nothing interesting in the immediate area.

The game gets frustrating here, with super-narrow platforms you have to run across. Fall down and you start the level over! Wheee! This wasn't cool when the original Double Dragon did it like 13 years earlier.

The other main thing Outworld has are these portals that warp you around the level. Other than that, it's pretty much all that first screenshot of Outworld, just purple room after purple room with nothing in them. They could have done so much with this idea, and instead they just...didn't

Kano appears! GLAD THEY MADE THE GAME 3D SO WE COULD GET THIS CUTSCENE WITH SUPERDEFORMED CHARACTERS

This would have been so much better off as a 2D game with some comic book strip style 2D cutscenes here.

Kano is a real douchebag to fight, and spams the Cannonball attack where he just barrels across the screen over and over again. When he isn't doing that, he's throwing knives like Jarek, except Kano's knives HOME IN ON YOU.

I just got in close and stunlocked him by hammering the shotgun as fast as possible. It's either that or get stunlocked by him chaining Cannonballs.

Win, and Jax gets the crystal or whatever that Kano was trying to use to take over or whatever. Whatever.

The one highlight of this entire game is Jax's voiced "Awww yeaaaaah" when hearing that the Black Dragon Syndicate is basically disbanded, with all their members in prison.

Can really feel the lack of Sonya's presence in this game. Like it feels like she's supposed to be right in the middle of all this, and there isn't even a MENTION of her.

The first name we see in the credits is Ed Boon, who I'm guessing doesn't really want the association.

Legend says that John Tobias was so ashamed of this game (which he had very little to do with, really) that he left the company.

Why IS Mortal Kombat: Special Forces so damn BAD?

Well, there we go.

Things would get better for Jax. Later he'd meet what had to have been an absolute babe, and they spawned the gorgeous Jacqui Briggs, who would grow up to beat people up in Mortal Kombat 10:

Next up: MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero. It's the perfect thing to be playing during this MEGA-BLIZZARD we have going on right now.

It's worth playing these two games solely because they were all I had left in covering the entire Mortal Kombat series. It'll be another series down, as I push on with wrapping things up.

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Other Mortal Kombat Posts