Mortal Kombat: Deception
- October 12, 2004 07:28 AM PST
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Round 7: Fight! Mortal Kombat: Deception comes on strong with several diverse modes of play, but the series remains as bloody as ever.
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Part of its success is the violent content and grisly fatality finishing moves, but cheap thrills aside, a robust fighting system has emerged throughout the years, and honed to near perfection with Deadly Alliance. Deception continues the legacy, and lives up to its name with additional play modes outside the fighting genre.
Make Mine Mortal
The 3D engine from Deadly Alliance remains relatively unchanged. Each character still has three stances?one weapon-based?but each fighter has an extra fatality and a new suicide move to deprive a victorious opponent the glory of a gruesome finale. Other key additions include a combo breaker move and multi-tiered fighting stages, which some of the latter allow you to defeat an opponent instantly (it?s the same effect as a Soul Calibur ring-out, except the loser dies a gruesome death). The controls do an ample job of keeping the action flowing, but some of the flashier, multi-style combos can become a guessing game.
Puzzle Kombat is a Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo clone where two super-deformed kombatants try and bury each other underneath a pile of multi-colored bricks. Sure, it?s similar to Capcom?s puzzler, but nevertheless highly addictive. Chess is a cool spin on the ageless board game, but with spells, bombs, and fighting thrown into the mix. And, yes, there?s blood aplenty and other MK carnage--even in Puzzle Kombat: decapitations, disembowelings, you name it. Kombat, Chess, and Puzzle are all online ready, too.
Deception?s drop-dead gorgeous graphics are loaded with clever details (Mileena?s thinly veiled mouth or razor-sharp teeth, for instance) and vibrant colors. The Xbox version has the edge over its PlayStation 2 brother with sharper graphics; otherwise the two console offerings are identical. The audio?s equally effective and it has the right mix of blows being delivered and taken.
What Lies Beneath
Then there are the secrets?lots of them, and what had to be done in Deadly Alliance was a cakewalk compared to the flaming hoops one must jump through here. Sure, the Krypt is back (where you can spend Kurrency that?s earned through the different play modes), but Konquest mode is where the real secrets are revealed.
In it, you take a wannabe combatant through six different, time-consuming, MK realms, converse with characters, complete various tasks, train (learn every fighter?s special moves and combo strings) for the tournament, and find Krypt keys. But the difficulty gets ramped up to a near impossible degree, as you eventually fight enemies under increasingly ludicrous conditions. It?s Deception?s biggest glaring flaw.
Deception gives gamers a lot to digest, as it cleverly-weaves multi-genre offerings under a fighting-game roof. Fans of the series will doubtlessly be pleased, and attracting non-fighting fans to the MK universe doesn?t hurt either.
