Mortal Kombat: Deception (Second Opinion) Review

Mortal Kombat: Deception is a very impressive game when it comes to the graphical presentation, but it’s surely not without its shortcomings. The biggest strengths for the game’s graphics probably deal with the actual character and arena designs. The weaknesses deal mainly with Konquest mode and all the environments contained therein. There are also the two “side game” modes in Puzzle and Chess Kombat, but they didn’t need to be paid attention to quite as much so it’s understandable how they look.

But in terms of the actual character and arena designs, Midway did a great job bringing each to life. There is a true diversity in the looks of the characters, and the outfits were designed to accentuate that. Surprisingly, there is a good number of female characters compared to the male characters and that is a very nice thing. The females consist of fighters like Kira, Jade, Tanya, Mileena and Ashrah. Males do indeed dominate the fighter roster, with such members as Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Ermac, Kenshi and Bo’ Rai Cho. There are six realms in the MK universe, and each of the characters originate from each of the different ones. Also in a bonus to GameCube game owners, infamous MK bosses Goro and Shao Kahn are actually playable in this version! But so as to not get off track here, the characters were designed incredibly well and look superb. Each has their own unique outfit made of different kinds of material while dawning a plethora of color and cosmetic appeal. A really awesome looking fighter happens to be MK favorite Sub-Zero, who dawns a “Len Keui” champion’s outfit. It basically makes him look like an advanced medieval knight with armor similar to that of Batman’s in the movie Batman Begins. Just everything about the characters is quite impressive looking, even if their actual movements can appear awkward sometimes.

Not all the arenas are great looking, but how Midway chose to go about implementing the possible interactivity with them made a lot of them look superb. You have anything from an innocent looking island in the middle of nowhere (that changes from sunny to a storm multiple times), the top of an ancient Japanese-looking tower, a prison and many more! What’s great about each arena is there is always at least one death trap that you can get your opponent destroyed by. In the island, the water around you seems infested by man-eating fish. At the tower, if you knock your opponent down two levels, you’ll witness a rather gruesome “explosion” of their body. In the prison, there is a wall dawned with spike pillars that you can grate your opponent through! It definitely adds to the tense and exciting atmosphere of the game’s fights, and how great the backgrounds look in the arenas helps that along nicely!

Now Konquest mode isn’t terrible looking by any means, but it certainly won’t “wow” you on any accord. It could be that there are six different worlds and many things are contained within, both natural and man-made. Plus each realm is very different looking from one another, because they are all virtually fantasy-driven. But in Earthrealm in particular, the natural environment around you (which there is a lot of) almost looks like it could’ve been easily generated by the Nintendo 64. The textures and 3D elaboration are just downright pitiful in some areas, and all the buildings look no different from one another. Then you have the actual citizens, and surprisingly a lot of them appear blocky. Really the only things that look pretty nice are the actual MK characters you encounter in the different realms. But other than that, you will most likely not be impressed. Some of the realms like the Orderrealm and Outworld actually look cool in terms of layout, but the layout doesn’t mean much when the design contained within looks so uninspired.

Puzzle Kombat looks almost like a version of Tetris Attack MK style. You simply have colored blocks and various special features while you watch extremely funny looking (and miniaturized) avatars of available MK characters. It’s nothing awesome, but the graphics serve the purpose. Then with Chess Kombat, you choose four levels of pieces: Grunt, Shifter, Sorcerer and Commander. Then you have an almost standard chess board littered with the characters you have chosen to take on whatever role you gave them. This mode is presented in a more isometric layout than anything, but it is pretty cool to experience.

However, the most impressive graphical feature of this game is definitely the introductory FMV mentioned earlier. It features Raiden, Quan Chi, Shang Tsung and a plethora of other things, and the rendering of it all is simply breath taking. It is a fairly long FMV too, so you are treated to a great presentation of in-game cinematics when viewing it. It helps you understand the story very well, and it’s just awesome to look at.

Overall, Midway did very nicely to make the graphics of MK: Deception stand out in its own unique way. Unfortunately, your experience with Arcade mode will more than likely end up being the most impressive because the attention to detail was paid to the arena and character designs. Konquest just isn’t that impressive looking, and with Puzzle/Chess Kombat not doing much else to help out, the graphics aren’t as excellent as they could’ve been.

Anyone who may happen to be a loyalist to the MK franchise or has any knowledge of it whatsoever, you’re bound to know what the music and sound effects are like in this game. So yes that pretty much means that everything you may have heard or are familiar with from the past, you will be hearing it here. But if you think about it, that’s not much of a bad thing at all.

The music is very similar to that of previous MK iterations. Almost all if not all the themes have a sort of moody, “you better be prepared for a fight” kind of style. It’s not really horror driven, but it could be considered pretty close. However, it is really meant to keep the action going and at an interesting enough pace so as to pretty much never make battles unexciting. But that’s hardly ever an issue anyway, since the computer will always keep you on your toes. Probably the coolest sounding music comes up when you initiate your fighter’s particular Fatality. It doesn’t exactly last that long, but just how the theme makes the situation feel “doomed” is really cool.

Now the music isn’t exactly a vital part of the game, even though it does do its job. The sound effects is
the area in which Deception truly shines. Now if you happen to be a MK fan, the first sound that may indeed come to mind is that grisly male voice in the background that starts every battle. “Round 1…..FIGHT!” What loyal MK fan wouldn’t remember that awesome voice? Then of course you have each character’s particular grunts and yells during the battle that will bring out their egos and fighting styles. You’ll also hear some lovely screaming as you torture your opponents with your weapon or an arena’s unique death trap. Then with each victory, hearing that grisly voice say, “Kenshi Wins!” really brings back memories of any previous MK titles you may have played. Also hearing him say “Fatality” and “Hara Kiri” when the fight has been decided adds a nice touch to the action as well.

Another area in which Deception shines is the game’s voice acting. In Konquest mode, each MK character you interact with and every citizen you speak to has a unique voice to come along them. All of them sound surprisingly good, even though the quality of some of the citizens’ lines may remind you of the shoddy voice acting of Baten Kaitos at the beginning of that game. But really, each MK fighter’s voice sounds fairly authentic, especially Scorpion and Bo’ Rai Cho. The only one that seems a little out of place is the NPC Shang Tsung. For some odd reason he just sounds like an up and coming teenage boy when you speak to him at length. But all the other characters have great sounding voices and that helps add to the experience of Konquest. The male announcer for fights also has work done with each character’s particular ending in Arcade mode, and that was done very well too.

The music and sounds of Deception will easily bring any franchise lovers back to the roots of MK history. The nostalgia you will feel when hearing and listening to some of the things presented in this game is enough to please any gamer. While the music isn’t exactly expansive, it retains the MK atmosphere well and the great voice acting certainly helps to overcome any possible shortcomings.

Players of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance should most definitely be pleased with the fighting engine in Deception of you happened to enjoy DA. The same mechanics pretty much apply here, but like stated previously, it’s a little more simplified. Now a lot of people like to say that the GameCube’s controller wasn’t really meant for fighting games. That obviously is based on personal opinion, but it really isn’t so bad as some make it out to be. You have the B and Y buttons for punching, A and X for kicking, L and R for blocking and Z for grabbing. Now that isn’t exactly difficult is it? Then if you take the time to actually go through Konquest mode, you will receive some nice training from the game’s more prominent characters. There are around 12 in all for that, but there could be more. But nevertheless, when you do get trained, you can easily take what you do in those sessions outside of Konquest and deliver it in Arcade mode pretty well. Sure it may take some time with the character to learn their more advanced and deadly combos, but it’s pretty worth it considering how fun it is in the game.