Mortal Kombat: Deception Review

The Mortal Kombat series has been familiar to gamers for a very long time now since, in the early 90’s, it was the most popular fighting game, not only on consoles, but also in arcades. Midway had a wonderful fighting franchise in its hands but at some point the series went downhill and some people lost faith in the developer. In fact, one of the key members of the Mortal Kombat team, John Tobias, left the team. When the creator of a million selling franchise decides to leave, people start to wonder why. The reason was quite simple: while others had innovated and brought new elements to the fighting genre, Mortal Kombat hadn’t evolved at all. In fact, the biggest changes were done in Mortal Kombat 2 and all the others that followed only added more characters and stages with the only worthy addition being the combo system.

Luckily for us Ed Boon, the co-creator of the Mortal Kombat franchise, had a vision. He wanted to revive Mortal Kombat and bring it back to the top, where the series was in the 90’s. A difficult task indeed, but the team put a lot of effort into it and the first outing on next-generation consoles, Deadly Alliance, was a phenomenal success. MK had been reborn in a way people had not suspected.

Because of its smashing success, the MK team went back to work on a second game. Deception is, in my opinion, the best Mortal Kombat game since Mortal Kombat 2. Deception is the MK2 of this generation. Where Deadly Alliance gave the MK franchise a rebirth of some sort, Deception brings it to a more darker world, making the game a lot more violent than it was, which is something that fits well with MK’s roots. It also brought back some characters from Mk2, plus they added a lot of new features that make this game a must own!

First of all, I’d just like to say that this game’s presentation owns! From the intro video to the title screen and then the menu, everything looks incredible. Some people think it’s stupid, but to me a menu screen is as important as the rest of the game. If the game is well presented and you see that a lot of effort was put into it, you know you can expect the same quality or even more for the rest of the game. The intro video is really a step up from Deadly Alliance with a lot more going on in it and better character models as well as a really cool fighting sequence and nice story telling. It’s not as good as stuff from Japanese companies like Square Enix and Capcom or Namco, but it’s still really well done and worth watching.

The menu screen is also very good looking with lots of stuff going on and easy navigation, and it also shows people exactly what each option means with a little video playing in the background for each of the options. I really like the fact that the guys who made the menus really used the source material to its fullest by giving us something that is not only fun to look at but is also user friendly.

Another thing that I think is important even though loading is becoming less of a problem with each passing generation is that the loading screens each feature some renders from the game. So instead of having a little bar in the bottom right corner filling itself you have a cool picture of a character from the game or of a battle and even though it doesn’t make the game itself better or worse I think it’s little touches like this that make some games stand out as it makes transitions from one fight to another seem shorter and some of the art in that game looks really cool and it’s nice to see the developer showcase it like that.

Every mode of play is available as soon as you start the game. The main mode is of course the same as it has always been which means that you select a character and fight your way through the game, fighting one character at a time until you reach the last boss and beat him. This time around the last boss is called the Dragon King. Just like his name implies he is some kind of a big dragon and he looks even meaner that past MK bosses. Each character also has his own story and they all have an ending video of some sort. What I found a little disappointing is that instead of having FMV’s we got a few drawings accompanied by text which is kind of lame as we are getting used to have a lot more than that from a lot of developers so it would have been nice if Midway had made something actually worth watching.

The second notable mode is Konquest. This is an adventure mode taking place in the MK universe. You play as Shujinko, a young boy who wishes to become a fighter and actually fight in the Mortal Kombat tournament to save Earth Realm. In his quest, Shujinko will travel to many realms including some that are really well known by gamers such as Nether Realm and Outworld but also others we haven’t heard that much about like the Chaos Realm for example. Shujinko will also learn moves he can use in fights from many of the game’s characters and it is a nice feature as it helps gamers learn moves in a fun way. But as much as the team worked on this mode and tried making it as good as possible, it falls short of being interesting. In fact, after about an hour I didn’t even want to play it anymore! The worlds offer a lot of variety in designs as they all look different and can be interesting at times, but what you have to do in them is boring. Everything always consists of talking to someone, finding an item for him and bringing it back to that character. It’s either that or you have to go around fighting people to then come back and get your reward. There are little cutscenes but they aren’t really well done and the voice acting is unbearable and I hope it’s going to be better in the future. The main quest itself is easy as you have an arrow telling you where to go so it is a little less painful than it should be, but for the sidequests you have no idea where to go most of the time and you’ll often want to give up and just concentrate on the main quest. It’s sad though as some characters and stages in the game can only be unlocked in Konquest mode and some gamers might not have the patience to take the time and do all of the sidequests to unlock everything. People doing only the important stuff should be able to finish Konquest mode in only a few hours, but those who want to unlock everything are in it for a lot longer than that!

Then comes Chess Kombat mode. It is an alternate version of chess with an MK twist to it. The goal is still to beat the king, but this time around a few rules have changed. As you start you decide which MK characters you want to use and that is going to be a crucial decision as you are going to play as those so you might as well pick ones you are best with. So you move them around with each one being able to move to a certain amount of squares on the board. As you come close to another character you can attack him. But instead of immediately beating him you have to fight him in an MK fight. That means that anyone can have a chance in winning the game even if you are usually bad at chess. There are also abilities that are available for use once during a game. These abilities range from teleportation to being able to resurrect one of your characters and can really make a difference in a chess kombat game.