With the release of ‘The Joker’ as the new DLC character in Mortal Kombat, I was excited to have a crack at him and see just how chaotic he could be. I hadn’t seen any of his game play trailers so it was all first-time experiences that made it even more exciting, both as a Mortal Kombat fan and as a DC fan.

We’ll start with the positives. As a character, he is pretty solid, I was able to quickly get through the tower and unlock his ending. His intro scenes are great and some even have stabs at other DC characters, a very nice nod for comic lovers.

His move set is nicely balanced out with some quick succession attacks and some more technical and precision timed attacks. My favourite moves are the ones involving the Batman puppet gun/missile launcher; it was more the character’s commentating going on in the background though that made me enjoy it.

Although ‘The Joker’ is a fun and interesting character to play, a few minor things did leave me a little let down and wanting more. The character design and the voice didn’t quite do it for me, it wasn’t quite Joker enough in presence. The customisable capabilities for the characters is a nice touch however, and helps alleviate the issue with his look, though the Justin Bieber-like hair could have been left out of the options.

His ending was satisfactory enough but probably could have been a little more chaotic and didn’t quite feel the manic Joker we all know and psychotically love. Unless you consecutively hit with combos he feels like ‘Kotal’, sluggish and slow, but I made sure I learned as many combos as possible because of how much pleasure I took in beating my opponent with a hostage dressed as ‘The Joker’ from a wheelchair.

His starting fatality is amazing from the exploding cake to the tommy gun, which all screams the Joker. Even at the end, which for me I believe is taken from the death of ‘Jason Todd’ where ‘The Joker’ almost beat the opponent to death with a crowbar, in this case his cane, seems to be a throwback.

All in all, thumbs up for this downloadable character, a great addition with his chaotic, whimsical violence to offset the standard and entertaining violence that Mortal Kombat always famously delivers.

Written by: Adam Brasher