Mortal Kombat: Special Forces

Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (MK:SF) is a 3D action-adventure game developed and released by Midway Games for the PlayStation in 2000. The game stars the character Jackson "Jax" Briggs from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.[1] The game was panned by critics for its lack of traditional Mortal Kombat-style violence, poor level design, and tedious gameplay.

Gameplay
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces is a third-person view action-adventure game. The only playable character is Jax, who uses not only hand-to-hand combat techniques but also firearms and explosives. There are five levels set on Earth in Otherrealm, with a boss battle at the end of each of them. Exploring the locations in the search for keys, the players solve puzzles, find the codes to unlock the doors, and blast hidden passages in walls. Jax can ascend to a higher level platforms even as he can not jump, but he can push large blocks.

The player can restore Jax's health meter using first-aid kits. The player also has a limited energy reserve: whenever Jax performs one of his special techniques, he spends energy that can be replenished by performing certain combos. Jax can attack with his hands and feet, as well as block counter strikes. Although there are no Fatality systems, the combo system allows finishing off the opponent with the final blow in case the enemy's health line is exhausted by this moment. The experience points that a player gains by defeating enemies allow one to get new combos. In-game menu displays the presence of items in the player's inventory, and also contains information on the purpose of the current mission. After completing the game, the player can activate the cheat menu to start a new game with additional bonuses.

Plot
Special Forces is chronologically the first game in the Mortal Kombat storyline, as its events take place even before Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The story of the game involves Kano freeing his gang, the Black Dragon from a maximum security prison. Major Jax, seeking revenge for the slaughter of his Special Forces comrades at the hands of the Black Dragon, undertakes a mission to stop them from retrieving an artifact of great power, the Eye of Chitian. The true power of the artifact is shown in the ending that it can open portals to other realms when Jax uses the artifact to teleport himself and Kano back to Earthrealm after defeating him.

Characters
Besides Jax, Kano, and Kano's Black Dragon subordinates Tremor and Jarek, the game features three characters exclusive to this entry in the series:
 * Gemini: Jax's base operative, relaying information and messages to him from headquarters. The two share a friendship, and Gemini worries excessively about Jax. Operating over radio only, she is never seen in-game.
 * No Face: A member of the Black Dragon organization led by Kano, who freed him from a high-security prison. He is described as only having knowledge of explosive devices, he wears sticks of dynamites strapped to his chest and uses a flame thrower as a weapon. He has no nose, ears, hair and a pale complexion, based on his name.
 * Tasia: An expert swordswoman and deadly ninja master who is a member of Kano's Black Dragon organization.[2] Like Tremor, No Face and Jarek, Kano freed her from a high-security prison. She wields two ninjatō swords and has an ability to teleport. She appears along with Jarek to capture Cassie and Jacqui by the orders of Black Dragon in Mortal Kombat X comic book.

Development
This was the second Mortal Kombat game developed by Midway that was more of a platformer than a fighting game, after having tested the waters with Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero in 1997. Series co-creator John Tobias intended to work on a series of platform games to expand the Mortal Kombat universe, including titles centering on Baraka and Liu Kang; only the latter was actually released by Midway (2005's Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks) despite having sat on the drawing board for many years.

Although Special Forces was only released on the PlayStation, it was also supposed to be released both on the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast.[3] Many of Midway Games staff, including Tobias, left the company in 1999 for various reasons while the game was still in production. The plot of Special Forces (which originally included Sonya Blade[4]) was greatly revised following Tobias's departure and the game was rushed to completion.

Tobias said about the final version: "You know I really never played it, I saw it at E3 and I maybe played it for like five minutes and never really played it after that. So I'm not really familiar with how it ended up."[5] Ed Boon later recalled: "I didn't work on Special Forces. The game and project were riddled with all kinds of problems. I could write a book on that."[6]

Reception
As of 2014, it has a very low averaged review score of only 28/100 at Metacritic, including ratings of 2.1/10 from GameSpot and 3/10 from IGN.[7]

Of all the Mortal Kombat games, Special Forces is considered by some to be the worst.[8] Its sales were so low that Midway placed the series on hold in preparation for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002). Ed Boon himself stated: "The game had a pretty bumpy development ride and the game didn't turn out very good at all."[9] In 2011, GamesRadar ranked it as the second most absurd Mortal Kombat offshoot (behind only Mortal Kombat: Live Tour).[10] In 2013, GamesRadar also ranked it as the 41st worst game ever made.[11]

Conversely, some of the reviews have been more positive. Video Games: The Ultimate Guide gave the game 7 out of 10,[12] GameVortex gave it 79%,[13] and Electric Playground scored it 7 out of 10.[14]

Trivia

 * Of all the Mortal Kombat games, Special Forces is considered to be the worst. This has much to do with the fact that many of Midway's staff, including series co-creator John Tobias, had left the company in 1999 for various reasons while the game was still in production. (Tobias eventually founded Studio Gigante, the creators of Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, a game with some similarities with Mortal Kombat, but unlike the latter, the game never ran for a sequel.)


 * This was the second Mortal Kombat game developed by Midway that was a platform rather than a fighting game, after having tested the waters with Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero in 1997. Tobias intended to work on a series of platform games to expand the Mortal Kombat universe, including titles centering around Baraka and the Shaolin Monks Liu Kang and Kung Lao; only the latter was actually released by Midway (in 2005) despite having sat on the drawing board for many years.


 * Mortal Kombat: Special Forces was rushed to completion following Tobias's departure, and sold so terribly that Midway placed the series on hiatus in preparation for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. It was the last Mortal Kombat game to be released until the release of Deadly Alliance - widely regarded by gamers as the title that revived the once-sagging MK franchise - in 2002.


 * Sonya Blade was originally supposed to be playable alongside Jax in the game, but due to Midway making numerous changes to the game after Tobias left, she was omitted. In early shots of Special Forces at the time when Sonya was still in the game, it listed her code name as "Panther".
 * The Medipak items have the Red Cross logo on them, which is not allowed to be included in video games by the International Committee of the Red Cross.