Mortal Kombat: Deception Review

And for all the fans of Super Puzzle Fighter here is the MK version of it. It is not as deep or as fun as the other puzzle fighters, but with a little tweaking it could become something great and I hope it stays in future MK games. The goal of this mini game is to align blocks of the same color together and then drop a breaker on them. What the breaker does is that it will make all of the blocks of the same color as the breaker that touch each other disappear thus clearing some space which is the goal of the game as you have to last as long as possible. By clearing blocks you will make some fall on your adversary’s side and the goal is to fill the enemy’s screen with blocks. There is a super move bar that you can fill and when it’s full your character can use a special move that has the potential of causing a lot of damage to the other player. Each stage also has a different fatality and the super deformed characters are funny as hell!

Deadly Alliance offered a lot of new gameplay mechanics that had never been seen before in a fighting game. The 3 different fighting styles was something new and it truly offered gamers the chance to use a different approach when fighting their opponents. You could either use a fighting style that was faster or something that might be a little slower but stronger, or go with the weapon and use devastating attacks but have no defense at all. Depending on the situation you would use a different fighting style and it made for some really interesting fights. Besides that though, while it was a very fun game, it still lacked a few things compared to other fighting games.

It seems like the Mortal Kombat team has played a lot of fighting games to get some inspiration because there are a few elements that have been taken directly from other franchises like the multi level stages where you can, for example, kick an opponent down to a lower level and then fight in another area. This is not only fun to do but in some areas it looks great. One of the areas I liked is where you can punch the opponent in the air and have him go through a glass roof to then fall on the floor and with all of those little glass particles falling everywhere it makes for a very nice effect. Changing floor doesn’t have any real effect on the fight though except for the fact that it makes it more interesting and faster paced.

Another big addition this year are the death traps. The name explains it well actually; it’s a trap that instantly kills you no matter how much health you have left. Those traps are in a lot of the stages in the game and are all varied in style. In one stage it is a pit with lots of spikes at the bottom, in another stage where you constantly change between 2 realms you can launch your opponent in acid water, in another you can have them get crushed by huge claws… you see that the developers have taken the time to find some interesting ways of killing people with death traps which doesn’t seem to be the case with the fatalities as they become quite repetitive, especially if you have played past Mortal Kombat games. I’d also like it if they’d bring back the babalities, friendships and animalities. I LOVED those and I wish they would bring them back. Mortal Kombat isn’t the kind of game that you take too seriously and once again the developers brought a little bit of humor to the game. At least they have added Hara Kiri to Deception which is some kind of fatality that you perform on yourself. So if you do not want your opponent to have the satisfaction of killing you, you can commit suicide. It’s not the most incredible thing they’ve added to the game but it’s funny nonetheless and can be quite frustrating for the other player especially when he has been trying to perform a certain fatality on you for a few matches in a row!

While seeing tons of blood and gore and people being cut in half is not the most beautiful sight for some, I have to say that it looks superb in MKD! The fine folks at Midway have reworked the original’s engine and made it a lot better while keeping the same steady 60 frames per second framerate. We get better textures and more detailed characters while environments have a higher polygon count, better particle effects, awesome lighting… there is a lot to be said about this game’s graphics. We are getting close to the end of this generation and developers are truly getting used to the hardware so we get much better results. The only thing that still needs some work, though, are the animations. They look good and the fact that they’ve included so many fighting styles, each with its own set of moves all differently animated, is quite an accomplishment, but the animation isn’t all that fluid yet compared to other fighters like Dead or Alive. Midway is getting there though and maybe with the next version we’ll get near perfection, but it still needs a little bit of tweaking.

The above impressions of the graphics though apply only to some of the game modes as Konquest is a different story. Personally, I think more time could have been used to polish this one as it looks like crap. I’ve seen stuff on Dreamcast that looked a lot better than that and I am not exaggerating. I know this was probably a second thought, though, and that the most effort was put on the fighting aspect of the game, but it looks so bad it seems like it was developed by a completely different team. The draw distance is not that great and the environments are mostly empty with a low polygon count on characters and buildings as well as blurry textures and special effects are mostly non-existent. Animation is also on the same level as Charlie’s Angels here and that isn’t a nice thing to say about any game. I hope their next Mortal Kombat adventure looks better than this. The only cool effect in Konquest is when you meditate as the game advances extremely fast and you see everyone walking at insane speeds around you and the say change to night and I think it looks great.

As for the sound, people will be pleased to hear that it’s as good as ever. This time around the surround sound is even better and even though most of the sound effects seem to come from the front speakers there were a few environmental effects that came from the rear speakers. Overall, it sounds good for a fighting game. The sound effects are typical Mortal Kombat stuff and the music, as usual, rocks! I’ve always liked MK music as I think it has its on style and it fits so well with the game. There are a few remixes in the game and I’m sure some older gamers will be pleased to hear them.

Overall I am quite pleased with this game. It is a nice update to Deadly Alliance and is a nice addition to any gamer’s collection. The game features a lot of extras about the game like videos on the development as well as pictures of the staff and renders. There are a few hundred unlockables, enough to keep gamers busy for a long time. There are 28 characters to choose from including 2 GameCube exclusive characters and a lot of unlockable stages. The many game modes offer a lot of replayability and while the GC version does not include online play the 2 player mode is still fun and should be enough for most people. Frankly, I can’t wait to see what the next version of this game will be like, but I just hope it won’t go downhill like it did in the past. Keep up the good work Midway!