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Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance - PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance (2002) |
After the disaster that was Special Forces, nearly everybody agreed that Mortal Kombat needed a break. More importantly, it needed a retooling, something new and fresh to bring it in line with the competition. By this point, 2D fighters had almost completely fallen out of favor compared to 3D efforts like Tekken 4. This was also the point in time when arcades in the US had fallen out of favor compared to home consoles, which were no longer outclassed by arcade hardware. And so, Deadly Alliance was the first major game in the series to not be released in the arcades. It would also have an entirely redone fighting system to compete with the likes of Tekken. Did it work out? Er… not quite, sadly. During the events of Mortal Kombat 4, Scorpion managed to drag his enemy Quan Chi down with him to the Netherrealm. Using Shinnok's amulet, Quan Chi manages to escape, ending up in a tomb full of mummified soldiers. Turns out this is the army of Onaga the Dragon King, who ruled Outworld before Shao Kahn came along. The legends say that this army is supposed to be invicible; all they need is a big supply of souls and they'll be ready to fight. So Quan Chi tracks down Shang Tsung, who's an expert on this sort of thing. Shang Tsung can transfer the souls he steals into the Dragon King's mummified soldiers, while Quan Chi can bring them back to life and under his control. And so, the - title drop - Deadly Alliance is formed. Soon after their partnership, they manage to get the drop on Shao Kahn and seemingly kill him. Once he's out of the way, they ambush Liu Kang while he's training. He puts up a valiant fight, but is eventually overwhelmed, and Shang Tsung manages to snap his neck. That's right, the official hero of Mortal Kombat, the guy who's been in every game for ten years, is dead. Raiden quickly rallies the good guys as soon as he hears the news. They all gather up in Outworld, and now it's up to them to fight their way to the Deadly Alliance and thwart their plans before it's too late. Liu Kang's dead, so as you can expect, this isn't really going to be a cheery game. The tone is more along the lines of MK4, keeping the dark and mystical feel while upping the blood and drama. And, of course, there's plenty of new characters, and to Midway's credit, most of them do feel more unique than the losers in MK4. That doesn't make most of them any good, mind you. The fighting system's been given a total overhaul since the days of MK4, which it very much needed. The old high/low button setup has been thrown out entirely, along with the Run meter. You've still got four attack buttons, but these have been relabeled to the more generic Attack 1-4. Most of the time, Attack 1 & 2 will be punches, while 3 & 4 do kicks, although there are exceptions. Blocking is still done with a separate button, though. The 3D movement isn't quite as limited as it used to be, so now you're free to move in and out of the arena as much as you want by holding up or down, with jumps and crouches being performed by hitting one of the diagonal directions. The biggest change to the system is that every playable character, with the exception of Blaze and Mokap, get three fighting styles. Two of these are hand-to-hand fighting styles, like Hapkido, Judo, Jeet Kune Do, or Karate. The third fighting style is a weapon style, and this time around, the weapons are implemented much more smoothly than in MK4. A little more thought has been put into who gets what kind of weapon this time around, so Sub-Zero has an ice sword, Raiden a staff, and the flashy Johnny Cage gets nunchaku. With rare exceptions, you can no longer lose your weapon, which makes them much more practical to use in kombat. For the most part, the weapons generally do more damage than either of your hand-to-hand styles, and supposedly, you take more damage when wielding them as a trade-off. It's so hard to notice, though, so there's not really much of a reason to not use your weapon as much as you can. You can cycle through your three fighting styles at any time by hitting the style change button, and each style has a different set of moves. Every style actually does represent a unique set of basic moves now. Each button performs a different attack, and different moves can be done by hitting a direction along with one of the attack buttons, much like in Tekken. Every character still has a set of built-in combos, some of which involve switching fighting styles mid-combo. Some of these combos can get pretty lengthy, with up to twelve hits for certain characters. These combos can do major damage, and once you get stuck in one, there's not much you can do besides waiting it out.
Throws are independent from style, and are done by hitting forward and the "special" button. Unlike every other fighting game ever made, however, it's entirely possible to block a throw, making their actual usefulness dubious. Hitting the special button alone will activate some kind of special ability, depending on the style you're using at the time. These special abilities range from unique attacks, to quick backward dashes, shoves, and even parries. Some characters can impale their opponents with their weapon, which will cause them to slowly lose health over time until they die. Sure, you lose the weapon for that round, but it means all you have to do is play keep away until your opponent keels over. The fact that everybody gets their own unique set of special moves does help the characters stand out a little more than they used to. The problem is that with the fighting style gimmick, you basically have three sets of moves you have to learn and memorize. And compared to Tekken or Virtua Fighter, where characters get a variety of different ways to deal damage to the opponent, like charged punches, multi-step throws, or special stances, DA's characters feel kind of… basic. There's not much separating Scorpion's Hapkido from Quan Chi's Escrima, aside from each of them having different kinds of punches and kicks. Just like the Mortal Kombat games of the past, the only thing really making each character unique are their special moves. And even then, some characters only get about two specials each, with most of them losing moves they had back in MK4. One way special moves have been improved, however, is that they're now done with more "standard" inputs of the kind you'd see in most other 2D fighters. There aren't any special moves that require you to hold a button or do a 360 motion, which does make memorizing them a little easier. The combat mechanics have a very janky feel to them in general, and while not everybody was a fan of the way the older games worked, they were definitely more fluid. The biggest problem is that it feels like every move and combo has way too much recovery time, meaning you'll be spending most of your time waiting for your fighter to go back into a neutral position instead of following up for a combo. It's still possible to juggle opponents by using moves that pop them into the air, but for the most part, combos feel a lot more limited, and you're probably just better off spamming the best chain combo your character has. These tend to do so much damage that if you can actually memorize them, they're the best strategy, anyway. The stages are circular, and they're big enough that you get to use your new-found freedom to sidestep pretty well. What's strange is that they're all also surrounded by some kind of force field that activates if an opponent gets knocked into the edge. Some arenas also have small obstacles like statues or rocks you can knock your opponents into, causing them to shatter. There's also one arena where statues will spray acid on anybody who gets too close, draining their health. Sadly, however, stage Fatalities are gone entirely.
This time around, every character only gets one Fatality, which is pretty limited compared to the earlier games. Most of the Fatalities are pretty brutal, like Johnny Cage ripping out his opponent's brain, or Reptile melting the flesh off of the opponent's skull with his acid before eating it. One highlight in particular is Quan Chi's Fatality, but only because of how incredibly stupid it is. He leaps onto the other kombatant's shoulders, grabs them by the head, and starts tugging on it. Instead of tearing their head off, however, all it does is make their neck stretch out like taffy. The victim stumbles around for a few moments before falling over, not shedding a single drop of blood. Fans of Team Fortress 2 will probably be reminded of the infamous "nope.avi" video. The standard arcade mode has you fight through a series of opponents before the battle with Moloch. Just like all the sub-bosses before you, he will utterly demolish you until you manage to exploit his pattern enough you can actually win. Moloch's immune to projectiles, does a big chunk of damage with each of his hits, and can suck you towards him to get you from long range. If you can get past him, however, the final two fights against Quan Chi and Shang Tsung should give you no problems. Just like Shinnok, there's absolutely nothing separating them from their playable versions, especially since Shang Tsung has completely lost his ability to morph. You don't even get an elaborate death sequence for killing them, just a picture of them lying there dead. For an ending, you get a few still images with some narration, which considering how awful MK4's endings got, was probably the best way to handle it. There's also a couple of minigames on your way up the arcade ladder. The first is Test Your Might, which finally returned after a ten-year absence. It basically works the same way as it did in the original Mortal Kombat, where you mash buttons to build a meter up to a certain point. If you succeed, you'll smash the block in front of you and earn some koins for it. Fail, and your fighter will break their hand and get laughed at by an audience. So, don't fail. There's also Test Your Sight, which is basically a variation on the shell game. A bunch of cups move around, and if you pick the one that's hiding the dragon symbol, you get a koin bonus. There's a nice touch here if you're playing as Kenshi, who uses his hearing to listen to the cups move around instead of looking at them.
The other main single player mode is the Konquest Mode, which is the closest thing Deadly Alliance has to a dedicated story mode. It's more of a glorified tutorial than anything else, though, not that there's anything in this game that's worth learning. Your progress through this mode is represented by a Shaolin monk who moves forward through different areas with each challenge you complete. There's ten training missions that explain the basic controls of the game, along with ten missions for each character, for a total of 218 missions. Each time you're fed a little bit of story through a text box, then made to practice some moves and combos. Sometimes you get a mission where the dummy will actually fight back, but pretty much all the challenge there is limited to pulling off some of the trickier combos. At least some of the text is kind of amusing, like a reference to Culture Club and the reveal that Johnny Cage was once a contestant on Smash TV. If you complete the entire Konquest mode, you unlock Blaze and Mokap as playable characters, which, given how long and boring Konquest mode actually is, isn't really worth it at all. Completing missions in Konquest mode, playing through the arcade mode, and winning minigames will bring you koins, which you can spend in the Krypt. The Krypt is a huge tomb with 676 coffins, each costing a certain amount of koins to open. For whatever reason, however, the koins come in a different variety of colors, and you can only open coffins of the matching type. Got a lot of gold koins, but not many in jade? Too bad, because there's no way to exchange them. Hope you enjoy grinding! What's even worse, the kind of koins you get seems to be random, and some seem to be rarer than others. So opening a koffin that costs 1,000 of one type of koin will take a lot longer than a koffin that costs the same amount of another. There's a very weird way the game handles saving what you earn in the krypt, forcing you to create a profile and a password to protect it. Apparently this is so you can wager koins against other players' profiles, but it's still a lot of effort for such a dumb idea. By opening the coffins, you unlock new characters, stages, and alternate costumes. Minor rewards include concept art, test renders, photos of stuff around the Midway office, and other curiosities. The cool thing about each picture is that it comes with a small description, which is especially interesting for things that got cut out of the game. There's also goofier content, like fake advertisements for Kan-O's, the breakfast cereal that turns your milk blood red. The highlight, however, would have to be "Cooking with Scorpion," a fake commercial for a cooking show where Scorpion chops things, tenderizes things, chops things, decorates cakes, and chops things. That's not a typo, by the way. While its visuals are leagues above Mortal Kombat 4, Deadly Alliance still doesn't look particularly good. The characters have a plastic figurine look, about on par with the obscure Xbox fighter Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, which was made by Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias. But while Tao Feng showed bruises and cuts over the whole character model, in Deadly Alliance only the faces show wear towards the end of the round. The blood is once again hilariously exaggerated, and looks like someone just threw a bunch of red marbles with varying sizes into the air. Other special effects like fire aren't much more impressive, but certainly less funny. Stages are designed alright, but with few exceptions they feel empty and lifeless, and some faraway objects are very obvious bitmaps. There are some nice visual touches, like the way Scorpion will throw his spear into the air to pull himself off the floor after losing a match, but it doesn't help the characters to feel any more distinct.
The Game Boy Advance version is actually split into two games, one with the Deadly Alliance title and one titled Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition. Not that you're ever likely to find any kind of professional tournament that would run either version. They both play more or less exactly the same, but Tournament Edition has a few exclusive characters, including one of Sareena's very few playable appearances. It also has a few extra modes, including a training mode and a Tag Team mode, where you can use the Select button to switch between fighters. Tournament Edition also has a second, weapon-based Fatality for every character, although none of these are all that impressive. It should be said that Deadly Alliance GBA is a much, much, much better game than Mortal Kombat Advance. It's by no means amazing, but that should still be pointed out first and foremost. What's impressive about this particular port is that it's actually been made to play as closely to the console versions as the GBA's hardware can handle. The controls work similarly to the console versions, only you're given two attack buttons to work with. Each fighter retains the two hand-to-hand fighting styles, although you don't get nearly as many moves and combos as the console versions. There's no third style for the weapons, instead you do weapon moves like special moves. The problem, however, is that the controls tend to be a little sluggish, and some of the animations are kind of slow, so don't expect to pull of any particularly fancy juggle combos. It's not that it's impossible, just more difficult than it really should be.
The fighters' sprites seem to have been made from the same models as the console versions, and put into sprite form. If you've ever played Tekken Advance, it's a lot like that. The animation suffers for it, though, and the blood looks even cheaper than the big red spurts of jelly you'd see on the console versions. The arenas use a Mode 7 tiled floor with a static looking background, which, while not really the fanciest way to handle a 3D playfield, means that you get plenty of room to move around. This version's also a little easier to finish than the console versions, mostly because Moloch is thankfully nowhere to be seen. Quite a few of the extra features from the console versions are included, like the Test Your Might & Sight minigames, and a Krypt to spend your koins in. It's not a bad conversion for the hardware, overall, but you'd probably be better off getting something like the Street Fighter Alpha 3 port. Or Deception: Unchained for the PSP. |
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox) |
Ending Scenes
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Fatalities
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Concept Art
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Mortal Kombat Deception / Mortal Kombat Unchained - PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, PSP (2004) |
Compared to the likes of Special Forces, Deception starts off not long after the events of Deadly Alliance, and things are getting real bad, real fast. For one thing, the Deadly Alliance won. Shang Tsung and Quan Chi have sent the Dragon King's invincible army out after the heroes of Earthrealm, who find out that it actually is invincible. While most of the heroes of Earthrealm are getting killed off, Raiden charges in to try and put a stop to the Deadly Alliance himself. He puts up a good fight, but it doesn't work. The only thing that could possibly stop Quan Chi and Shang Tsung now is if Onaga himself showed up. And then he actually does. Raiden and the Deadly Alliance are even forced to team up to try to take Onaga down, but nothing they try works. In a last resort, Raiden blows himself and the Deadly Alliance up, but it doesn't even scratch Onaga. Onaga's plan, now that there's nobody to stop him, is to gather six artifacts known as the Kamidogu, which are apparently part of an omnipotent power known as the One Being. If the One Being awakens, it will merge all the realms into itself, which basically means it'll destroy the universe. The good news is that Raiden survived blowing himself up, but now he's super pissed. He's put in so much effort protecting Earthrealm, and now that some idiot went out and resurrected Onaga, he's going to protect the hell out of Earthrealm, whether they want it or not. And by protect, he means "Bring unlife to Liu Kang's rotting corpse and use it as its enforcer." As you can imagine from the way the story goes, things are even darker and gritter this time. You can tell even from the menus that this won't be a happy game, with a thunderstorm going on in the background and the dark techno that plays over the character select screen. Speaking of characters, there's actually a lot more than there were in the predecessor. Some of them return from Deadly Alliance, but there's also quite a few characters who haven't made an appearance in a "major" MK game since the 2D games, like Sindel and Baraka. And of course, there are a few new guys in there, too. Not that most of them are any good. The basic fighting mechanics are mostly unchanged from Deadly Alliance. Everybody stills gets two fighting styles and one weapon. Many combos have been shortened down, with few that have more than about five hits. Some characters like Kenshi still have some insanely long combos for 10 inputs or more, though, if you happen to be a genius at memorizing things. If you get trapped in a combo, however, you're not entirely screwed anymore. Hitting forward and block while you're caught in a combo will let you use one of your "breakers," represented by lightning bolts under your health bar. Using a break will knock your opponent away from you and end their combo. Unfortunately, you only get three per match. Not per round, per match. And you can't recharge them, ever. They've also removed the style-specific moves, which means you can't jab something into your opponent and wait for them to bleed to death anymore. The arenas also have a bit more interactivity to them, compared to the flat shapes of Deadly Alliance. Midway has taken a page from Dead or Alive, and some parts of the stage are marked with glowing yellow borders. If you do a strong enough attack while your opponent is near this border, you'll send them to another part of the arena, doing some extra damage in the process. There's other hazards besides the stage transitions, too. The Dark Prison stage, for example, has characters who aren't playable in Deception, like Quan Chi, locked inside the cells. If you get too close to one of the prisoners, they'll grab you and leave you open for your opponent's attacks. Some stages also have unique weapons that any character can pick up and use. Some parts of the stage, however, are marked red, and these are death traps. If you knock your opponent into one of these, they die in some horrible way, and you instantly win the round. Unlike stage Fatalities, these can be used at any point in the match, on any round. So, yes, if you knock an opponent off of a cliff, sending them falling to their death on a stalagmite, they still return for Round 2, perfectly unharmed. If the death traps were only available on a winning round, it wouldn't be quite as dumb, but as it is, you can only turn them on or off wholesale. The sub-boss this time around is a tag team with Noob Saibot and Smoke. They're actually playable, if you can find the key that unlocks them in the Konquest mode. Mortal Kombat hasn't really ever done a tag team before, and the way it works is that Noob and Smoke get one fighting style each. Switching fighting styles will switch between characters, giving you access to the special moves of either. Thankfully, they both share the same health bar, which helps to balance out getting two characters in one. Onaga himself puts up a decent fight, even though he's not nearly as tough as Shao Kahn, or even Moloch. He is, however, not a complete a wuss like Shinnok. What makes him so bearable, compared to the more unfair bosses before them, is Onaga's decision to place the Kamidogu around his arena, for whatever reason. Touching any of them will make them shatter, stunning Onaga so you can get some hits in on him. You only have six to work with per attempt on him, but it does help. He also gets whiny if you use low attacks on him, yelling "No kicking!" at you. Seriously. He's also nice enough to get set on fire and explode for you, which Quan Chi and Shang Tsung didn't even bother with. Everybody gets two Fatalities again, which is nice compared to the single one everybody got in Deadly Alliance. Most of them are decent, like the one where Lei Mei goes Kenshiro on her opponent, although some do get pretty dumb. Like the one where Raiden ends up blowing himself up with his opponent. Somehow, just like Smoke blowing up the planet, this still means he wins. There's also a new kind of finishing move called the Hara-Kiri, where you finish… er, yourself. If you put in the right combination before your opponent can do a Fatality, you'll basically do a Fatality on yourself. You still lose, but at least you can deny your opponent the satisfaction of a Fatality. Or something. Most of these are pretty goofy, like Sindel doing a backflip, which ends with her landing on her face and breaking her neck. Or Ashrah spinning around so fast her body parts fly off. Or Bo Rai Cho becoming so full of gas he explodes. Raiden blows himself up again, which seems to be becoming a really bad habit for him.
The stages are pretty interesting, now that they're more than just flat shapes for the characters to walk on. There's some interesting level concepts in there, too, like the Ying Yang Island stage. It's a stage that half of the time is a sunny island, with palm trees swaying in the breeze and upbeat steel drum music playing in the background. Every so often, however, the island switches over to an evil version of itself, with a harsh thunderstorm, the trees becoming giant serperts, and grungy sounding techno for the soundtrack. It's a little distracting in practice, but it's a cool idea. There's also the Falling Cliffs, where every so often, part of the arena will fall apart, giving you less and less room to work with, until it's the smallest arena in the game. There's also a few arenas brought back from the 2D games, including the original pit, the Dead Pool, and the Living Forest. Thankfully, they've expanded the formerly narrow bridges in the first two stages so that you can actually move around without falling off. There's also a couple of mini games added besides the main fighting modes, which the more cynical might say are supposed to make up for the shortcomings of the fighting engine. One of these is Puzzle Kombat, which is more or less ripped wholesale from Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. You pick a super-deformed version of one of twelve characters from the main game, and kombat your opponent with colored blocks. Just like Puzzle Fighter, what you do is gather up blocks of the same color and use a breaker icon to shatter them, dumping more blocks onto your opponent for them to deal with. While you play, the characters fight it out below, and the closer somebody is to losing, the closer they are to getting pushed into one of the death traps at either side of the screen. Each character also has a super meter that fills up when they destroy blocks, and once it's full, they can use a special ability that either helps them or hurts their opponent. That's right, they finally put supers in an MK game and they use them for the minigame. Puzzle Kombat is actually pretty fun, if you're a fan of the genre and/or Puzzle Fighter, but if you're a hardcore fan of Capcom's version, you'll probably find a lot of issues with how it plays. There's also Chess Kombat, where instead of aping Puzzle Fighter, the old computer game Archon is ripped off instead. Each player picks five characters for their team, each one making up the five classes that appear on the board. The Leader is the king, and if he dies, you lose. The two champions you get serve as the queens, with a full health bar and a free range of movement. The two sorcerers can only move diagonally, but they each get a set of spells that can help you or harm your opponent. The three Shifters move like Rooks, and they become whatever opponent they fight, unless they're fighting another Shifter. The Grunts have the smallest amount of starting health and the lowest range of movement, but you get eight of them. Before the game starts, you also have the option to place an invisible trap somewhere on the board. If an enemy piece steps on a trap, they get blown way into the air, before crashing back into the ground in a bloody explosion. Actually playing Chess Kombat is a lot like a cross between chess and Archon. If a piece tries to capture another piece, the game moves over to the main fighting engine for a single round. Any damage a piece sustains after a fight stays, but pieces can be healed with a certain spell, or by moving over a power square. Power squares fully heal a piece that moves over them for the first time, and give it a 25% health boost if it gets into a fight while occupying it. To win, you have to use one of your pieces to capture the opponent's leader. Honestly, there's not all that much strategy involved in Chess Kombat, and if you're really good at the main game, you could probably beat the AI with just a few pieces. It's an interesting concept, though, and one that should have definitely been revisited with a better fighting engine.
The biggest of the new modes, however, would have to be the newly revamped Konquest mode. On paper, it sounds like a fantastic idea. An open world RPG/adventure, where you, as a new combatant, get to explore the realms, see the major events of MK history, and meet and battle the kombatants. In actual practice, however, it doesn't really work like that. In Konquest mode, you take the role of a young boy named Shujinko, a student of Bo Rai Cho who would do anything to leave his village and be a hero in Mortal Kombat. After a few tutorials on the basic mechanics, a glowing ball of light named Damashi appears and offers Shujinko a quest to gather the Kamidogu and save the realms. Each of the six realms has a Kamidogu somewhere that Shujinko needs to complete his quest, and there's usually a lot of rigmarole he'll have to get through to actually earn it. For example, at one point, Bo Rai Cho wants you to go find his missing medallion. So you have to go talk to the fisherman he was drinking with. But it turns out a bandit took his key, so you have to go find him and punch him to get it. And it goes on like this. Some of the quests you'll run across are at least kind of amusing. There's one where you find an old man who's complaining about a tootache, and wants you to find a way to fix it. How do you fix his tooth? You just punch him right in the face. Having dislodged his tooth, the old man happily repays you. If you explore, though, you'll run across things like koins to pick up, treasure chests that contain coins or keys, as well as other collectibles like music and videos. Some of these things will only appear at certain times of the game year, so there'll often be a time when you have to sit and meditate, which speeds up the game clock immensely. But even though the game keeps track of time down to the month, day, and year, nothing in the plot will ever happen unless you make it happen. Which isn't a bad thing, since it gives you all the time you need to putz around and collect stuff. You'll also run across people who will offer you side quests, which usually involves finding a thing and bringing it to them for extra koins. It seems especially silly when the actual kombatants from the main game start making you do fetch quests. It's hard to feel like a warrior of Mortal Kombat when Scorpion is making you do his errands. Sometimes, the kombatants will challenge you to a fight with some kind of condition applied to it. If you win, you get some koins out of it, and if you lose, Shujinko picks himself up off the ground with no real consequence. There's absolutely no way to lose in Konquest mode, you just have to try again whatever you're doing. All you really do in Konquest mode most of the time is moving from objective to objective. It's not that difficult to find out where you're supposed to go, since you're given a compass that points directly to the giant green beam that points to exactly where you need to be going. Most of the objectives themselves are basically just tutorials, where the characters you meet will make you do the combos and special moves they tell you to do. When this happens, you actually become the character you're training with, for whatever reason. For the most part, this is all that ever happens in the Konquest mode. Sure, you end up going to places like the Netherrealm, but still all you do is wander around and do tutorials, only everything is redder. It's not even worth doing for the story, since most of the voice acting is terrible in a way that's not even amusing. It's not like Shujinko is that interesting of a character, either, given that his catchphrase seems to be "I will do as you ask." Probably the most amusement you'll get out of Konquest is the punch button, which you can use on anybody in the game. On most people, it'll knock them out for several days, while others will block it and counterattack. The kombatants will pull you into a fight, although nothing will actually happen, whether you win or lose. The problem with Konquest mode is that it's just boring. It feels more like a glorified tutorial than the grand adventure it's supposed to be presented as, and the worst part is you're pretty much forced to comb through it to unlock anything of worth. Even worse, it turns out by the end that Damashi was just a projection of the Dragon King, who was using Shujinko to gather the Kamidogu for him. It's hard to feel sympathy for a glowing ball of light whose name translates to something along the lines of "I am tricking you." What's worse is that in the main fighting mode, Shujinko starts with absolutely no special moves, and he has to actually find and unlock them in the Konquest mode to be able to use them. Not only that, but they're all ripped off from the other characters. It should be mentioned, at this point, that apparently Shujinko was supposed to be the "next-generation Liu Kang." The Krypt returns, although a little smaller than the one in Deadly Alliance. The good news is that there's no more empty coffins, meaning anything you open will be guaranteed to at least have something in it. The bad news is that the coffins containing the major unlockables, like characters, costumes, and arenas, are locked. The keys to unlock them can only be found in the Konquest mode, which means you pretty much have to play it. And it still keeps the stupid koin denomination system from Deadly Alliance, along with the profile system, whatever it's supposed to do. Deception is a big improvement over Deadly Alliance, but not so much that many people would call it a great game. There's a lot more content, the fighting mechanics have been tightened up, and the stage interactivity is nice. That is, when it isn't being used against you for a cheap shot victory. Some of the issues with Deadly Alliance are still there, though, like the lack of character individuality, the fighting style gimmick, and the stiff controls. We still have one more game using the DA engine to go, and it's going to be a big one…
While the PlayStation 2 and XBox versions are more or less identical, the GameCube port wouldn't hit until 2005. Apparently, this was during a point when Midway wasn't sure if they wanted to continue supporting Nintendo hardware, which explains the delay. The online features are gone, since the GameCube doesn't really do online. The trade-off is that you get Goro and Shao Kahn as playable characters, although they've been weakened down to be on level with the rest of the cast. Apparently the Shao Khan who had died during Deadly Alliance was a magical clone or some such. This version also unlocks half of the secret characters from the start, which means less time spent in Konquest mode. The PSP version, renamed Mortal Kombat: Unchained, has Shao Kahn and Goro along with four characters from Deadly Alliance. Unfortunately, they're copied and pasted straight from their original appearance, which means that they have the same exact move set, one Fatality, and no Hara-Kiri. It also has a new Endurance mode, if survival modes happen to be your thing. |
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (Xbox)
Mortal Kombat Deception (GameCube)
Mortal Kombat Deception (GameCube)
Mortal Kombat Deception (GameCube) |
Mortal Kombat: Unchained (PSP)
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Fatalities
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Concept Art
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