Mortal Kombat: Deception

Written by John Scalzo  on April 15, 2004

First Impressions: There will be no need for extra K's in this komment. Dammit!

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The Mortal Kombat series will never die. After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that showed gamers were sick of the MK franchise came Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. And everyone ate it up. Mortal Kombat fans, fighting game fans, other gamers who hadn't looked at a Mortal Kombat game in years. It was a huge success and naturally prompted a sequel, Mortal Kombat: Deception.

You can tell right away that Midway is bringing back some of the features from previous MKs that they kept out of Deadly Alliance to make it stand out. There's no more of this single fatality crap, every character has at least two fatalities and a stage fatality. Midway also tried to make Deadly Alliance less about the classic characters and more about new ones like Blind Kenshi and Bo Rai Cho. While Deception's final fighter roster hasn't been revealed yet, we do that plenty of classic Mortal Kombat characters like Baraka, Noob Saibot and Mileena will be making a return in Deception.

One more thing that Mortal Kombat has obviously never been shy about is it's blood donations. With Deception, Ed Boon and company want to crank up the bloodletting even more. The new feature that I think is most interesting are the kamikaze fatalities. After the voice orders you to "Finish Him!", both the victor and the dead man standing will have the opportunity to perform a fatality. If the loser punches in his button combo first, he'll perform a suicide fatality and kill his opponent before succumbing himself. If there was ever a feature that just screamed "Mortal Kombat", this is it.

Getting to those finishers has become a bit tougher of a road though. Deception will feature completely interactive environments. Players will have to survive the world as well as their opponent. In the two most famous cases floating around the web, Midway has said that the Beach level will feature a light world and a dark world. When the match takes place in the light world it's just your regular beach. But when the screen morphs into the dark world you will have to dodge rocks, spikes, fire and whatever else the sadists at Midway throw at you. The other famous example they've given is fighting on top of a mountain ledge that is slowly crumbling. The last fighter standing is obviously the winner, no fatality required. Other levels will have similar environment hazards, a feature I've been waiting to be fully integrated into a fighter for a long time.

Deadly Alliance gave Mortal Kombat that final jump to 3D that it needed and it looks like Deception will continue the trend of making the Mortal Kombat series an actual deep fighter. One of the best new features introduced in Deadly Alliance was the idea of multiple fighting stances that could be switched on the fly. This will be returning in Deception but Midway has also described a new meter they call "indicator lights." As the lights shift to various colors over the course of the fight it is a signal that your opponent is open to a counter, a throw, able to be pushed into an environmental danger and more. Midway has also added a position swap move that allows you to switch places with your opponent when you're getting your ass handed to you in a corner.

As I said before, Deception is returning to some of Mortal Kombat's roots by including fan favorites like Baraka, Mileena and Noob Saibot, fighters we haven't seen in a while. The game will feature a roster of 24 characters total, with 14 available right out of the gate. Among the others that have been confirmed are Sub-Zero (who is sporting a new look that reminds me of Shredder), Scorpion, Ermac, Blind Kenshi, Nightwolf and a new character named Ashra (who almost looks like a female Raiden). Seven other new characters are also said to be joining the Kombat.

Finally, Midway has always packed Mortal Kombat full of extras and Deception will be no different. The Krypt and Koins will make an expected return, but Deadly Alliance's Konquest mode will be beefed up considerably. Midway is attempting to make the mode take on a full RPG approach. Almost a game within a game. The premise is to take a teenager across the world over the course of decades to train him in the art of Mortal Kombat. The game will actually be built around the idea of meeting other characters at certain game times to train and increase your skills. Ed Boon has also promised that character to ever appear in a Mortal Kombat game will make some kind of appearance in Konquest. Even Stryker. It's also been said that after your character is fully trained in Konquest, you will be able to use him as a fighter in the Mortal Kombat tournament. That's just too sweet.

Deception will also include two full on puzzle mini games that are beginning to look like more than just short diversions. MK Chess will feature Mortal Kombat characters in a modified game of chess that will require players to set each character in a class. These classes will set a character's battle stats because when you try to take a piece from your opponent, you have to fight for it in turn based Kombat. There's no real specifics yet in how MK Chess will work, but I'm interested. The second mini-game will be much simpler though. MK Puzzle is basically a reworking of Super Puzzle Fighter with Mortal Kombat characters. How can that not be fun?