Mortal Kombat: Armageddon | Nintendo Wii

Important: Game may not include original DLC, bonus-content, online-pass, season-pass, or other digital redemption codes. Any included codes may have already been redeemed or expired.

Preorder and launch bonuses, promotional or bonus inserts, and bundled bonus-game downloads are not guaranteed. Content supplied on the game disc or cartridge is unaffected.

A crowded gathering of Mortal Kombat fighters

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon brings a broad selection of the series' combatants together for a violent fighting game with several ways to play on Wii. Its roster spans familiar heroes, villains and stranger corners of the Mortal Kombat world, while the Wii release adds the female Khameleon. One-on-one battles sit alongside the Konquest adventure, character creation, an Endurance challenge and Motor Kombat racing. That range gives the package its character: you can concentrate on learning a favorite fighter, build a competitor of your own, or explore an entirely different mode between matches.

Fighting styles, special moves and arena danger

The core combat combines normal strikes, fighting styles, special attacks and combos in three-dimensional arenas. Familiar techniques give returning characters recognizable tools: Scorpion can pull an opponent toward him with his spear, while Sub-Zero can freeze a target. Air combos add follow-up opportunities after a launch, and defensive techniques include parries and combo breakers. Learning a character means considering how those options fit together at different distances. A move that creates an opening is useful only if you are ready to follow it, while a dangerous arena edge can change the value of where a fight is taking place.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuk control scheme gives special moves a physical input. With the B trigger held, specific Remote motions call up special attacks; ordinary attacks use the Remote's directional pad, while the Nunchuk handles movement and other combat functions. The game also supports a Classic Controller or a GameCube controller on Wii hardware with the appropriate controller ports. These options matter because gestures and a conventional button layout ask you to learn different habits. You can explore the motion system's special-move patterns or choose supported traditional controls, then practice connecting your attacks without having to change the game's fighting systems.

Make a fighter and finish a match your way

Kreate-A-Fighter lets you shape both the appearance and attacks of a custom combatant. Clothing, hair, facial details and fighting stances are part of the selection, alongside choices for the moves assigned to attack combinations. It is a mode for players who enjoy spending time on an idea and then seeing how it works in a fight. Visual decisions give the character a personality, while move selection makes the exercise more than dressing an existing fighter. Revising a creation after a few matches can be a useful way to understand what its chosen attacks actually provide.

Kreate-A-Fatality changes the end of a victorious fight into an input sequence of its own. You link finishing actions together, choosing how to continue the punishment instead of simply watching one fixed character-specific finisher. The violence is explicit, and the mode belongs to the same grimly theatrical world as the arena traps and exaggerated special attacks. Its separate rhythm gives you another set of actions to learn after the main combat is over. For someone returning to older Mortal Kombat games, understanding this finishing system is part of learning what makes Armageddon's matches work.

Konquest and the rewards around the fights

Konquest follows Taven through a story connected to the approaching Armageddon. This mode takes you through environments where you move around, meet characters, collect items and fight enemies along the way. Traps and stretches of action give the journey a different structure from choosing successive opponents on a fighting ladder. The appeal is in encountering the wider setting while working through a directed adventure, with collectibles supplying reasons to examine what is around you. It gives a solo player a continuing route through the game's world, alongside the more immediately repeatable rounds of the main fighting modes.

For a shorter sequence of direct combat, Arcade sends you through opponents toward a boss. The Wii version also includes Endurance, where fighters arrive one after another and occasional health replenishment helps you continue. That creates a different objective from winning one isolated match: avoid spending too much health dealing with the current opponent when another is waiting. Across the modes, earned koins can be used for Krypt unlockables and character-creation items. Alternate outfits, music and concept art are among the rewards around the fighting, giving continued play some additional collection goals.

Motor Kombat and matches on one console

Motor Kombat puts miniature versions of the fighters into karts for a separate racing diversion. Character attacks and course hazards carry the series' destructive personality onto the track, and the Wii version allows up to four people to race locally in split-screen. A race asks a different question from a duel: finding a clear route and coping with interference matter alongside using a special move against another driver. The mode offers a change of pace for a group that wants to stay within Armageddon's cast while taking a break from trading blows in the arenas.

The Wii release's multiplayer is local: two players can fight in versus mode, and Motor Kombat provides the four-player option. This edition has no online play. Its atmosphere comes from the combatants' elaborate attacks, dangerous stages and heavy emphasis on bloody spectacle, so the tone remains consistent even as you move between modes. A useful first session is to choose a supported control method, try several familiar fighters, and then decide whether to pursue Konquest, experiment with a creation or arrange a local rivalry. Each route draws on a different part of this unusually broad Mortal Kombat collection.