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Title: Mortal Kombat Deception
Platform: Xbox
Publisher: Midway
Difficulty: Varied
Review written by: Bradley
Mortal Kombat has been through its good and its bad. Mortal Kombat 1-3 = good. Any MK spinoffs = bad. Due to the fact that apparantly no one at Midway can spell, I will honor their tradition by spelling everything that starts with a C, with a K. With the recent release of Deception, i must say, this is a great game.
The graphics in this game are pretty sweet if i do say so myself. At least, the visuals you see while in the fighting and the kutscenes. In Konquest mode though, it's another story. The overall graphics are fairly decent, but the kharacters in the worlds all look like krap. There is almost no facial animations and the kutscenes from Konquest are done in game, so it's not like they fare any better. The fighting, on the other hand, looks great. All the kharacters in the fights look great and are well designed. But the women in the game are definitely a little racy. Talk about scantely klad. There is also a puzzle game and a khess game, and the graphics in them both are ok. The little kharacters in the puzzle game have huge heads and fight as you're laying down blocks ala Tetris. The worlds in konquest mode are actually pretty big. There is lots of places to go and with a good amount of worlds, you won't get tired of seeing the same scenery over and over. So overall, the graphics are pretty nice.
The sound is this game is ok. The music, good. The voices, absolutely horrible. Seriously, the voices in koquest mode are probably the worst i've ever laid ears on since Resident Evil, and that's saying a lot. As far as the actual music goes, it's good. It's got this klassic khinese style going and it fits with some of the levels, and then in other levels it plays this rocking style. The music is pretty good. Then of kourse you have the klassic Mortal Kombat announcer guy. Bringing you into every fight, he gets you pumped and of kourse, he sounds good. Overall, the sound presentation is decent.
Story in this game? HA! The story is, well... krap. It's not particularly interesting to me. You play a kid named Shujinko. He is playing with his friends when they have to go train. So he goes off to training. Once you get done with training, you get pulled to the side by a floating avatar of a spirit named Damashi. Damashi says he has been sent by the Elder Gods (that's new) and he is going to send you on a quest to save the world! (Wow, haven't heard this before). So you start your quest. You have to kollect these things called Kamidogus. There is one in each realm you visit. That's it. In each realm you'll meet various kharacters from the Mortal Kombat universe and they will teach you their fighting styles, which takes you through another training mission each time you talk to them. This, in turn, gets annoying. But i'm rambling now, the story, is krap.
Last but very far from least, is the gameplay. This is where Deception really shines. Although the controls while in the worlds in konquest mode are a little flimsy and the camera can get kind of wonky, the fighting is where the REAL gameplay takes place.
Of kourse you fight now in a 3-d plane, opposed to the older MKs besides Deadly Alliance, but now those planes may have death traps, or deadly ring-outs, or randomly placed heavy weapons that deal lots of damage. Most of the environments are multi-layer, much like DOA, and falling off those layers will hurt the kharacter. You will know what you kan knock the opponent off of by little strips of color placed at the edges of these layers. If it's yellow, you will just knock them off a layer, but if it's red, that is instant death. So if you are at a ledge, you might want to nimbly dodge out of the way and turn the tables on your opponent.
There are lots and lots of combos for you to learn, and with 3 styles per kharacter, you may want to khoose a few that you are good with and stick with them. Personally, i khose Ermac, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero. There are various style branching kombos, where you do a select set of button presses and then hit L to switch styles. This kan lead to some good attacks. Of kourse, you also have special attacks. Left, Down, A; you know, those kinds. Each kharacter has about 5 special attacks and they all have different grab attacks. Just hit "black" to grab your opponent and kause some pretty good damage.
Now, I have beat the game and unlocked all the unlockable kharacters, but once i did, i found myself saying, "WTF?! Where's my Reptile?! No Kano?! Sonya?! Jonny Cage?! Where are you guys?!" Yes, sadly, some of the old klassics are not unlockable but have been replaced by noobies like Tonya. Although some people follow the "khange is good" attitude, when it komes to my good ole' klassics, i just got to have them. So yes, i am docking some points for that.
There is uber unlockables in this game. Kharacters, stages, development images, photos, soundtracks... it's all here. Some of it is a little iffy, like when you go into The Krypt and pay 600 of your hard earned koins for a photo that you could care less about. The unlockables for the most part though, are pretty sweet.
The puzzle game is pretty weird, it's suedo-Tetris but with breaker blocks. Me personally, i hated this mode because i have never been good at Tetris or any other puzzle games like Tetris for that matter. But it is kind of kool watching your little avatar fighting another with their hugely out of proportion heads. If you are winning, you're avatar beats the krap out of the opponent. That's ok.
The khess kombat actually is barely like khess. The peices don't move the same ways, and kheck doesn't mean a thing. You move, you take out other peices, you take the king or "leader" in the game, and you win. This all being said, the mode is actually really fun to play. You have 5 different peices. You kan khoose the kharacters you want to play each peice. The one thing that's weird, is you khoose a shifter, but when you go into kombat, you shift into the kharacter you are fighting against. So i don't see the point in choosing a shifter except for if you get attacked. That's another thing that's kool about khess kombat, you actually fight to take a square. So you best sharpen up on those fighting skills.
I will now stop saying everything with a K instead of a C.
This game is really a great addition to every gamer's collection. With so many unlockables via "The Krypt" and great extra content and modes, you probably won't get tired of this one, especially if you like kicking your friends ass. I will say some of the extra content is a little iffy and didn't appeal to me, but i still enjoyed some of it. Overall, this is a really good game and since it has went down on the price some, you should pick it up if you haven't already.
I give Mortal Kombat Deception a 9...out of 10.
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