
	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Fighting Publisher Midway Developer Midway ESRB M (Mature) Released Q4 2004

- Really cool new environments - Like the Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat

- Who are these characters? - If you don’t want to play Konquest, you won’t get much

Review: Soul Calibur II (PS2) Review: Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution (PS2)
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Mortal Kombat: Deception

Score: 8.5/10

Leave it to the makers of the Mortal Kombat series to make the reviewing of a fighting game difficult and time consuming. Mortal Kombat: Deception (MK:D) is a good progenitor of the series, as it contains a whole pile of hidden material which will dramatically increase the game’s playing time until everything is unlocked. The number of playable characters is frightening, but unfortunately, almost every available character must be opened through the Konquest mode. A serious gamer will probably have to spend about 80 to 100 hours playing the game to get everything unlocked – more if you get stuck on your run through of the Konquest mode like I did.

The in-game engine is pretty much the same engine as Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, which is a good thing. Mortal Kombat: Dark Alliance is a Greatest Hits game for a reason, and the fighting is still pretty darn cool. Over Dark Alliance, MK: D now features some really interactive arenas. Most of them are tiered (able to knock an enemy down to a lower level), some have weapons scattered about (usually some pretty nasty weapons to assault your opponent with), and some even have kill zones (which can be turned off for pansies).

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The kill zones are a sight to behold – they are specific areas on the fighting area which you can throw your opponent into for an immediate round victory (impale them on a spike, into a grinder, into piranhas, a giant press… you get the idea). For those fixated on the fatalities, each character comes with 2 of them and a Hara-Kiri which is a suicide move which prevents the opponent from using a fatality. (You can’t kill me if I kill me HAHAHAHA!)

MK: D has 5 modes of play: Kombat, Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat, Konquest, and MK

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Online. Kombat is pretty much self-explanatory – it’s the basic Arcade mode, fight in the tournament or kick your friends’ asses. Chess Kombat is a pretty neat idea and reminds me of all those great times that I had playing Archon on my old Commodore 64; you play against an opponent on a chess board with Grunts, Shifters, Sorcerers, Champions, and a Leader (all of which you select from playable characters) and instead of the attacking piece winning, you fight for the square when you meet on the board. As you’d expect, there are some twists like spells that can change the game dynamics and the power cells that benefit all members on your team as long as you hold those points. Puzzle Kombat reminds me of Columns or Dr. Mario except that pieces will break only when a breaker of the same color is near; and each playable puzzle character has a Super Attack than can be unleashed on your unsuspecting opponent. The Konquest mode is easily the most innovative idea in a fighting game – it’s a sort of tutorial that will allow your guide to take you through each person’s fighting style and learn pretty much everything about the game. This mode is one part tutorial and one part RPG – you get to explore all of the worlds of Mortal Kombat and interact with some of the characters of the universe. Except this mode has a few problems, it’s on the long side, and if you get stuck on a specific challenge you are pretty much screwed. Half of the people that I spoke with liked it, and the other half hated it vehemently (I didn’t like it much, I don’t like to have to do something basic to get full access to a game, it’s a buzz kill).

Visually and aurally this game is amazing. The fighting animations are smooth and look realistic, even when they aren’t. The sound effects are pretty accurate for what you’d expect, and the background music is expertly blended to the arenas that the battle is taking place in. All of the characters have been updated again, returning SubZero looks much more like a member of the Mongol horde than Lin Kuei, Ermac looks like a Arabic oracle, and Jade and Li Mei make you wonder how they can fight in those outfits. 18 selectable characters are eventually accessible.

After nine games, the Mortal Kombat universe is pretty crowded, especially with all of the new characters that are introduced in each game. Which begs the question, who the heck are these characters? I could identify, about 2/3rds of them, and some of which I certainly was happy living without them. No Kung Lao, no Sektor, no Cyrax, no Kitana, no Frost, no Reptile, no Sonya, no Jax and instead we get a bunch of new characters that probably won’t be back again – it’s frustrating to have a game filled with characters that aren’t worth the graphics that they are animated with.

I understand that the developers of Mortal Kombat: Deception tried to make the game somewhat different from Deadly Alliance so that people would be more inclined to pick it up, but instead we end up with a great game that seems to be missing something, all of the great characters that we love to use.

- Tazman

(November 14, 2004)

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