Mortal Kombat: Deception
Flawless Victory.....NOT!!!
For the life of me, I have NEVER understood why anyone thought the Mortal Kombat series was better than the Street Fighter series when the two were leading the console beat'em wars in the mid-'90s.
One side rooted for the technical aspect of Street Fighter's gameplay, while the other enjoyed Mortal Kombat's bizzare juggling combo system as well as the gore and fatalities which caused video games to be rated for content and adding further fuel to the fire at the time that video games made kids violent.
The Game
I never picked up Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and the storyline of this game picks up right where that one left off. Raiden sacrificed himself at the end of that one to try and destroy Onaga, the Dragon King. But his sacrifice was in vain as it didn't even scratch the big guy, leading to his world conquest.
So now the survivors of Onaga's holocaust are battling back to reclaim the Earth Realm.
And if you didn't know, the game is now in full 3D, gone are the scanned actors that made the original games in the series stand out from other games. This was probably for the best though.
You start off with about a dozen characters, while there are about a dozen more that are hidden and can be unlocked. A noticeable omision is that there's no Johnny Cage! Instead, they just gave his moves to someone else which is kinda lame.
All the characters now have two Fatality moves as opposed to Deadly Alliance where they only had one. You also have a Harakiri move to finish off yourself should you lose a fight! And to make things more interesting, the backgrounds have become more interactive, and that's not just limited to knocking opponents through walls or down floors. Some areas have dangerous backgrounds that can cause instant fatalities should you or your opponent get knocked into them! But if you beat your opponent in the first round like that, they'll still be back for the 2nd round.
Gameplay
Your given the usual two punches, two kicks and a block button combination that made the game what it was all those years ago. By pressing the directional button also adds some variety to the moves you have to help chain combos together. Each character also has THREE fighting styles. Two are hand-to-hand, and the third is a weapon style. And you can switch styles right in the middle of the action with a simple press of the button. But you'll mostly be finding yourself just sticking with one style that gets best results.
I would also like to point out that to this day I still HATE when you have to block by pressing a button.
I'm not sure why also, but I've noticed a kinda of bug in the gameplay. For example, one minute you can pull-off a good 5-hit combo, but try for it again, and the moves just won't come out. What gives with that??? Is that the CPU's idea of learning your moves and countering your strategies?
Graphics and Sound
As with the rest of the series, settings are all dark and gloomy with music to match. The characters are all nicely done and detailed, which small touches like bumps and bruises to a characters face as the fights progress. And blood splatters everywhere throughout a fight and you leave footprints as you walk past the blood soaked floors.
Like I mentioned above, there's alot of doom 'n' gloom in the soundtrack if your into all that goth stuff. But some of it just doesn't seem to fit the mood for kickin' ass though. If they sped up the beat a bit like the soundtrack for the movies, I could get into the action more.
Miscellanious
There are TONS of extra stuff in this game! As you battle throughout the game, you are given Koins (coins)as credits that you can use to buy stuff in the Krypt. These range from concept art, to video clips, to pictures of the games designers, to additional backgrounds to play in. The problem here is that you don't know what your buying till after you pay for it. You run around a graveyard and pick out a tombstone with a number on it that signifies the amount of Koins needed to purchase whats buried there. Once you pick a tombstone to "buy", the game instantly saves to prevent you from changing your mind, and THEN they let you see what you just wasted our cash on.
There are also a bunch of fun mini-games. Like the puzzle-drop game and battle-chess with the MK characters. But the big addition is the Quest Mode, which could have been a game in itself. Here you run around the MK world learning new moves and gaining experiance. The character you play as here has a significant role in the main storyline too.
Now to get to the bad of the game. This game doesn't have a much needed quick continue option. As soon as you lose a match and continue, it's back to the player select screen to select your player, and then WAIT for the fight to load all over again! Things like this really spoils your momentum and ultimately pisses you off at times. And like I mentioned above, there's a kinda glitch with the combo system. If they meant for it to be that way to force you to change your fight style on the fly, then that sucks too.
Overall
This game does take awhile to get used to, though it should be easy to pick up if your a fan of the series and have already played Deadly Alliance. This is a good fighter, but it's definately not flawless.
Game Ratings:
Graphics - 7
Sounds - 6
Gameplay - 6
Lifespan - 6
Overall - 6
For the life of me, I have NEVER understood why anyone thought the Mortal Kombat series was better than the Street Fighter series when the two were leading the console beat'em wars in the mid-'90s.
One side rooted for the technical aspect of Street Fighter's gameplay, while the other enjoyed Mortal Kombat's bizzare juggling combo system as well as the gore and fatalities which caused video games to be rated for content and adding further fuel to the fire at the time that video games made kids violent.
The Game
I never picked up Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and the storyline of this game picks up right where that one left off. Raiden sacrificed himself at the end of that one to try and destroy Onaga, the Dragon King. But his sacrifice was in vain as it didn't even scratch the big guy, leading to his world conquest.
So now the survivors of Onaga's holocaust are battling back to reclaim the Earth Realm.
And if you didn't know, the game is now in full 3D, gone are the scanned actors that made the original games in the series stand out from other games. This was probably for the best though.
You start off with about a dozen characters, while there are about a dozen more that are hidden and can be unlocked. A noticeable omision is that there's no Johnny Cage! Instead, they just gave his moves to someone else which is kinda lame.
All the characters now have two Fatality moves as opposed to Deadly Alliance where they only had one. You also have a Harakiri move to finish off yourself should you lose a fight! And to make things more interesting, the backgrounds have become more interactive, and that's not just limited to knocking opponents through walls or down floors. Some areas have dangerous backgrounds that can cause instant fatalities should you or your opponent get knocked into them! But if you beat your opponent in the first round like that, they'll still be back for the 2nd round.
Gameplay
Your given the usual two punches, two kicks and a block button combination that made the game what it was all those years ago. By pressing the directional button also adds some variety to the moves you have to help chain combos together. Each character also has THREE fighting styles. Two are hand-to-hand, and the third is a weapon style. And you can switch styles right in the middle of the action with a simple press of the button. But you'll mostly be finding yourself just sticking with one style that gets best results.
I would also like to point out that to this day I still HATE when you have to block by pressing a button.
I'm not sure why also, but I've noticed a kinda of bug in the gameplay. For example, one minute you can pull-off a good 5-hit combo, but try for it again, and the moves just won't come out. What gives with that??? Is that the CPU's idea of learning your moves and countering your strategies?
Graphics and Sound
As with the rest of the series, settings are all dark and gloomy with music to match. The characters are all nicely done and detailed, which small touches like bumps and bruises to a characters face as the fights progress. And blood splatters everywhere throughout a fight and you leave footprints as you walk past the blood soaked floors.
Like I mentioned above, there's alot of doom 'n' gloom in the soundtrack if your into all that goth stuff. But some of it just doesn't seem to fit the mood for kickin' ass though. If they sped up the beat a bit like the soundtrack for the movies, I could get into the action more.
Miscellanious
There are TONS of extra stuff in this game! As you battle throughout the game, you are given Koins (coins)as credits that you can use to buy stuff in the Krypt. These range from concept art, to video clips, to pictures of the games designers, to additional backgrounds to play in. The problem here is that you don't know what your buying till after you pay for it. You run around a graveyard and pick out a tombstone with a number on it that signifies the amount of Koins needed to purchase whats buried there. Once you pick a tombstone to "buy", the game instantly saves to prevent you from changing your mind, and THEN they let you see what you just wasted our cash on.
There are also a bunch of fun mini-games. Like the puzzle-drop game and battle-chess with the MK characters. But the big addition is the Quest Mode, which could have been a game in itself. Here you run around the MK world learning new moves and gaining experiance. The character you play as here has a significant role in the main storyline too.
Now to get to the bad of the game. This game doesn't have a much needed quick continue option. As soon as you lose a match and continue, it's back to the player select screen to select your player, and then WAIT for the fight to load all over again! Things like this really spoils your momentum and ultimately pisses you off at times. And like I mentioned above, there's a kinda glitch with the combo system. If they meant for it to be that way to force you to change your fight style on the fly, then that sucks too.
Overall
This game does take awhile to get used to, though it should be easy to pick up if your a fan of the series and have already played Deadly Alliance. This is a good fighter, but it's definately not flawless.
Game Ratings:
Graphics - 7
Sounds - 6
Gameplay - 6
Lifespan - 6
Overall - 6
posted by Eric Extreme at 10/27/2004 01:31:00 PM
0 comments
