GameSpot has honored Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks as the Most Surprisingly Good Game of 2005. It competed against Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for Xbox, Mercenaries for Xbox and PlayStation 2, Racing Gears Advance for the Gameboy Advance and Star Wars Republic Commando for the Xbox and PC. Here is what GameSpot had to say about this honor.
At GameSpot we make every effort to approach each new game without any preconceptions about its quality. But in some cases, a game will surprise us with how good it is, which makes us realize that we weren't really expecting much from it, for one reason or another. Maybe the game seemed generic at first glance, or maybe the concept seemed too gimmicky. Oftentimes, the odds are stacked against a game from the outset. Movie-licensed games, for instance, have a long tradition of being, well, garbage. Some genres simply have a reputation for being too unwieldy for or inaccessible to the average gamer. The sleeper is the one that rises above any preconceived limitations and proves itself to be truly great, which is exactly what these five games have done.
Considering that every other Mortal Kombat game that didn't focus solely on one-on-one fighting absolutely tanked, and the developer's previous work included duds like Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style and Backyard Wrestling, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was a real long shot.
Suffice it to say, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was selected as the winner, due to the fact that the previous Mortal Kombat adventure games were so abysmal that Shaolin Monks had extremely low expectations for being a good game.
