Mortal Kombat: Armageddon - Reception

Reception

Reception for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has been generally favorable with an average critic rating of 78% for the PS2, 79% for the Xbox, and 72% for the Wii at GameRankings. The game was notably praised for including a complete character roster. IGN stated that "the inclusion of 62 total warriors is a massive achievement," while Game Informer said that "nothing really comes close to what Midway has thrown together here." GameSpot praised the Konquest mode, "which was such a low point of MK: Deception, is one of the relative strengths of MK: Armageddon."

Reception to the Kreate-A-Fatality feature was mixed. While GameSpot called it "a disappointing replacement to the classics," IGN noted not having set fatalities adds variety to gameplay. The reception to the Kreate-A-Fighter mode was also mixed, where some noted limitations yet with others like GameSpy saying they "haven't seen a character creation tool this robust since City of Heroes."

The game's engine was criticized for being built entirely upon that of the previous 3-D Mortal Kombat titles. PSM went as far as saying the system was not innovative. While many of the gameplay flaws in MK: Deception have been fixed (lack of a wake-up game that allows 50/50 attacks upon knocking down an opponent, and the slow jumping system, which prevents players from jumping over most projectiles, infinite combos), new glitches arise with the new Air Kombat and Parry systems. Eurogamer noted that despite the large choice of characters, "much of this number is made up by the huge number of clone characters" and that "so many characters look and play alike."

The game won the award for Best Fighting Game at the Spike Video Game Awards in 2006. IGN named it as the Best PS2 Fighting Game. The journal Official Xbox Magazine put Armageddon as the "Xbox Game of the Year" during an issue from 2006. Gaming Target put the game in its "52 Games We'll Still Be Playing From 2006" selection.

As well as its counter part Mortal Kombat: Deception, Armageddon was not played at big name tournaments like Evolution Championship Series, but was played at many local tournaments and still seems to have a cult following of sorts. Pakistan also held a tournament for Armageddon that was the biggest Tournament the country had ever seen.