Mortal Kombat: Deception
- September 27, 2004 15:59 PM PST
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It?s been two years since the last Mortal Kombat was released, so we traveled to the windy city to catch up with the men behind the Mortal for a look at what could be the biggest MK yet.
One of the most enduring fighting games in the history of the genre is Mortal Kombat. Born in the arcades, Mortal initially turned heads with its gruesome graphic violence and digitized fighters (it was responsible for an epidemic of misspellings of second names), which had parents and politicians screaming. Mortal Kombat II upped the ante with a more in-depth play engine and even more violence. Each successive MK game was a hit in its own right, and the phenomenon spawned a couple of side games (Special Forces and Mythologies: Sub-Zero) outside the fighting genre, two motion pictures, comic books, and a slew of other media and merchandise. But as the arcades dried up, the development team set their sights on the home console systems. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was the first MK fighting game designed solely for the home market from scratch, and it brought the fighting series back to its roots with more of an emphasis on fighting and fewer gimmicks like Babalities, Friendships, and Animalities.
?Fight!?
The latest MK, Deception, strives to be the biggest Mortal yet. Not only does it retain the one-on-one fighting style and play of Deadly Alliance, but it also features a host of additional modes?Puzzle, Chess, and Konquest?and most modes will support online play. Tucked away on a dead-end street in Chicago is Midway?s Midwest development headquarters, where MK creator and Project Leader Ed Boon and his team dutifully apply the final polish to the many facets of Deception.
Deadly Alliance already featured a solid 3D fighting-game engine, and Deception retains the core elements while adding some key techniques. ?One of the comments that we got from the last game was that the role of the combos is kinda high,? says Boon. ?So we added ways to break or get out of combos.? When fighting on the ground, you can knock an attacker away in the middle of a combo by simultaneously pressing into them and pushing the Block button. The jury?s out on countering air juggles, though. ?We?re still toying with the idea of making the juggles uncounterable,? says Boon, ?as our air juggles are more elaborate here than they were in Deadly Alliance.?
?Finish Him!?
Fatalities, perhaps the most popular MK trademark, have been expanded. Whereas each character in Deadly Alliance had one fatality, Deception adds an extra finisher per fighter, along with a new suicide move. At the end of a second round, when a fighter is defeated, the beaten character can execute himself in a gory way, thus depriving the winner of a fatality. ?The fatality window is erased,? says Boon, ?so now it?s a matter of who is the quickest to input the fatality or suicide command.? Sub-Zero, for instance, can chill himself into a solid block of ice that falls over and thus shatters his whole body. The fighting stages themselves also provide a way to gruesomely finish off an opponent. Players can be knocked into grinders, presses, beds of spikes, and other harmful surfaces any time during a match. One stage is set high atop a circular platform where the edges slowly erode and force the two fighters closer together. ?You can turn off the death traps, and that will be an option for online play, too,? says Boon. ?When you add something that radical to the whole mix, you don?t want to force people into that if they want the more traditional fighting.?
Another notable feature is multitiered stages?something that was introduced in the 2D MK3, but here has been taken to a greater degree thanks to the 3D space and more interactive objects. Combatants can be knocked through walls, windows, and ceilings, and land in completely different rooms. One stage starts on the deck of a ship, but a well-timed blow can send an opponent through the railing and to the deck below where several dangling corpses can bump into fighters.
Puzzles and, um, Chess (That?s Right, Chess)
If ?anytime? stage fatalities are considered radical, then what are players to make of Puzzle Kombat? ?One of the games the guys on the development team really enjoy is Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo,? says Boon. ?So we took that premise but with Mortal Kombat characters.? Of Deception?s modes, Puzzle Kombat is the most addicting, and gamers who don?t even like Mortal Kombat could find themselves engaged in this contest of block clearing for hours. You choose any midget-version combatant and start the match with a one-ton weight suspended over each player?s head. The object is simple: clear out blocks to keep your side as clean as possible. Clearing rows in rapid succession dumps debris on your opponent, but each player has a Super that gradually fills as well; once it?s full, you can execute a nasty move on your opponent (for instance, jumble their pieces). When one player?s area is so full of pieces that no more can fall, the one-ton weight?well, you get the idea.
Chess Kombat is loosely based on the actual board game: Pieces can move in the directions you expect, but there?s a fighting element to the game, too. When two pieces move onto the same square, or one piece tries to take another, the action switches to a retro MK background for a one-on-one battle (more powerful pieces have longer life meters). Each player can place one hidden bomb on the board, some pieces can cast spells that can help or hinder, and two green squares in the middle of the board restore health that?s lost during a fight.
Konquest
Konquest is a third-person fighting adventure and the only mode that doesn?t fully support online play as it sharply focuses on the one-player aspect. You start out as a young man who can explore six realms of the MK universe. You can talk to characters, collect Koins, and find hidden treasure chests. The loot you collect here ranges from extra fighting stages to instructions as to how to perform fatality and suicide moves. Combat training plays a key role: As you encounter various fighting masters and train with them, your character can learn a series of special moves and techniques. When you complete Konquest, you can take your character, Shujinko, to the online arena and battle it out with other fighters in cyberspace. Although Deception seems online-heavy, downloadable content (for instance, fighters and stages) will not be available for Deception, but Boon hinted that these features might be available in the next Mortal Kombat game.
Final Round
With all of Deception?s varied games and modes, some aspects of Deadly Alliance were left on the sidelines?such as the Test Your Might and Sight intermissions during Arcade mode. ?Puzzle Kombat and Chess are kind of like our hyper versions of Test Your Might and Test Your Sight,? says Boon. ?We had them in the game for a while, but there were so many different things that we didn?t want the fighting game to become, say, one of 30 different games.? The Krypt, where you can spend your hard-earned Kurrency, will return, albeit with a new graveyard setting and various MK characters running around and hiding behind things. ?That?s what we?re most excited about?there?s a ton of content that we piled in the game,? says Boon. ?We didn?t have to spend as much time building a fighting engine?we enhanced it, but we spent a majority of our time on content this time.
