Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance Review

When playing the arcade game it’s like in previous versions except that instead of having a huge pillar with all of the characters’ pictures there’s the earth and it turns as you advance, revealing new islands where you are going to fight. Since Gorro is now gone he has been replaced by another big monster called Moloch. After that you have to fight Quan Chi and then Shang Tsung. That’s right, the villains of the last Mortal Kombat games are back and they’ve formed an alliance, hence the name Deadly Alliance.

The story is quite simple: both Quand Chi and Shang Tsung have decided to join force to kill all of their competitors and they try to resurrect the mythological army of the Dragon King. With this army, they will be able to control the whole world and then destroy the Earth realm.

But we don’t really care about the story as it’s far from being the most important aspect of a fighting game. They’ve sure made a nice intro video telling the story and each character has it’s own ending and backstory but it’s only there fill in a few blanks as it makes for a better presentation and some people might actually care about it.

A new mode that wasn’t available in past games is Konquest. I thought it was gonna be a huge mode of play where you’d fight your way through many levels but instead it’s more of a training where they teach you how to fight with each of the characters. Each character has 10 missions and there are 8 training levels, making for a total of 218 missions. So if like me you had difficulty playing then this mode is quite helpful and it helps you get more coins to unlock new stuff. It’s very well presented as you see a monk walking in Mortal Kombat land going forward to new places as you advance. There’s also a little story told through text before each mission and different depending on what character you are playing with.

Unlockables, in a Mortal Kombat game? I’ve never seen that much! There is an option called The Krypt where you are in an underground cave and have to open 676 coffins. Each one is locked and you need to pay a certain amount of MK coins to open them and unlock new characters, new arenas, new videos, concept arts, pictures, etc. There 6 different types of coins, some being more rare than others. It’s quite long to unlock all the stuff and you’ll be playing arcade mode a lot until you’ve got everything. Some of the stuff is also quite fun. One video has Scorpion showing you how to cook! Wonderful!

Graphically speaking, this game looks awesome! Midway used Renderware from Criterion Software and I think it made for a huge difference as character models are very detailed, arenas are huge with lots of stuff happening in the background, there is destroyable stuff, great particle effects, nice lighting and, best of all, a steady 60 frames per second! The character animation is equally impressive as everything was motion captured and it’s really smooth. This game had to be incredibly polished as it is one of the best looking fighting games for it’s time. There’s also a lot of blood flying everywhere when hitting opponents and you see some going down their body and then falling on the ground. I was very impressed by the technical aspects of this game and I can’t wait to see what it’s gonna look like in MK: Deception.

Sound effects are also very good with different sounds when hitting your ennemies as well as differents sounds for your weapons. Each character also has it’s own voice and you’re gonna hear them yell a lot as, apparently, getting hit by a blade is painful! The anouncer is also back and his manly voice sounds as good as ever. The music is exactly like it was in previous MK games. I don’t really know how to describe it as it really is it’s own style of music. It’s some kind of insane music, heavy at times, mixed with a little bit of horror and stuff, there really isn’t any way to describe it except than saying it’s Mortal Kombat music. I swear, someone could make me listen to music and each time they’d play a MK song I’d recognize it as it sounds really different from the rest. The music in Deadly Alliance sounds like the one in previous games except it’s in better quality.

There are also making of videos as well as a video about the story of Mortal kombat and a music video performed by Adema. Frankly, this game is jam-packed and there is no reason why Mortal Kombat fans wouldn’t want it. The same can be said about fighting games fans. This game has huge production values and the MK team has made sure we’d be be occupied for a very long time and that it would be worth our hard earned money. For an american fighting game, it surprises and it’s up there with the Tekkens, Virtua Fighters and Soul Caliburs. You’ll be coming back to it and it makes for a good multiplayer game when you have a few buddies with you. It’s fast, deadly, and best of all, extremely gory! Do yourself a favor and buy it, you won’t be disapointed!