Mortal Kombat: Deception

Written by John Scalzo  on April 21, 2005

Review: I half kontemplated khanging every c to a k in this review

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Mortal Kombat fans have a lot to be grateful for today. Deadly Alliance was a huge hit and a great game and made Mortal cool again. The planned third is still stuck in development hell and I think we can all agree that's a great thing after the abysmal Annihilation. And last year we got Mortal Kombat: Deception, a game that improves on Deadly Alliance in nearly every way and has online play to boot.

Deception picks up right where Deadly Alliance ended. Raiden had fought his way through the minions of Quan Chi and Shang Tsung and confronted the two sorcerers in Mortal Kombat. They defeated him but not before the monster responsible for the MK logo: The Dragon King, rose from his grave to reclaim his army. All three joined forces and tried to stop The Dragon King, but it was too late. In a last ditch effort, Raiden sacrificed himself, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung in a great ball of energy that left The Dragon King unscratched. Say what you will about the stories of most fighting games, but Mortal Kombat knows how to work in a compelling story and I was hooked from that opening cinematic.

Ed Boon and company often said that Deadly Alliance was a return to simplicity for the series. So if DA could be considered Mortal Kombat I Redux then Deception is definitely Mortal Kombat II and 3 better than ever. Many old friends were pulled from the MK scrap heap to become part of the original 12 in Deception (with 12 more hidden). Baraka, Mileena, Nightwolf (!), Ermac, Noob Saibot & Smoke and Kabal round out the unlikely (or forgotten) picks from MK's past. I guess my man Stryker (no one else I know will even consider playing as him) was left on the cutting room floor.

Standbys Scorpion and Sub-Zero are also on hand along with a few characters from Deadly Alliance and a few new ones. The new characters are a mixed bag and I mostly stick with the classics. Although I think Kobra weaseled his way in to the wrong game. He's obviously a member of Cobra on the run from the G.I. Joe. Think about it. His name is Kobra. He has the symbol of the Cobra terrorist organization on his hand. And he looks like one of the twins that were Cobra Commander's right hands. It's obvious now that they were triplets and the one that didn't want to do that stupid talk in unison thing was kicked to the curb. Also, Onaga The Dragon King looks like Unicron.

Why yes I did watch a lot of cartoons as a child, why do you ask?

Otherwise, the fighting in Deception uses the exact same fighting engine as Deadly Alliance, but refined and running smooth. The graphics are more detailed and the fighting is quicker. Deadly Alliance was the test run and Deception was Ed Boon's ideal project. Everything comes back. The three fighting stances, the last one being a weapon style. Combos, sidestepping and pop-ups. The only thing that was cut was the Impale move that many fans hated but that I thought was fantastically bloody brilliant. In it's place come several new moves. Uppercuts are back. Each character has multiple and bloody Fatalities again. Each character also has a ritual suicide move that denies their opponent the chance at a Fatality. Finally, Midway has decided cornering will no longer be an option in the MK-verse. With breakers, a player can stop their opponent's attack in mid-motion and strike back with a well placed haymaker. It adds quite a bit to the fights.

Midway also promised that most of the levels would be interactive and they have delivered again. Nearly every stage has a stage fatality. Yin Yang Island constantly changes from light to dark and if you're standing in the water when the dark would comes you'll boil in acid. Favorites like The Pit and The Dead Pool are back and rather than having to wait until the end, players can push their opponent off the edge at any time. The Factory has a grinder, the Sky Temple is a long way to the bottom and the Cliffs are slowly crumbling away. I could go on and on, but I won't. I will however say that you still must win two rounds even after your kombatant has been bloodily dismembered. Push them off The Pit in round one and they still come back for round two.

The Krypt is back, this time with 400 graves instead of the DA's 676. it's still intimidating to attempt to open them all. But I can still sit there for hours inspecting all of the "Kontent" I've won including production art, photos, music, movies and character bios. Konquest is also back and this time Midway took the basic training mode of DA and surrounded it with a simple RPG world to move your character from training session to training session. It's still boring, repetitive and overly difficult to pull off some of your training moves, but now Konquest is nearly mandatory. If you want to unlock the remaining twelve fighters, you have to find their keys in the Konquest world. It's not fun but it must be done.

Midway more than makes up for the Konquest blunder with the inclusion of Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat. Puzzle Kombat is very similar to Super Puzzle Fighter in that two-piece multicolored blocks fall down and players must use matching color "breakers" to clear them and then dump an equal number of blocks on their opponent's side. The first one over the top loses. It's completely addictive and learning how to best use each super deformed characters special move is half the fun. Even playing against the CPU brings a smile to my face. Of course playing against an actual person is ten times better.

I'm told Chess Kombat is similar to the game Archon in that every piece has a class. This class denotes how much of an energy bonus they'll receive. The pieces move like chess pieces and when they meet on a square they start a game of real Battle Chess, er Mortal Kombat. The pieces fight it out in a standard MK one-on-one fight and last one standing wins. It works well but the computer AI goes from pushover to unbeatable very quickly. Another great inclusion and another where two-player is most welcome. I actually think if Midway wanted to, they could have put a $20 online-enabled disc featuring only Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat and it would have sold. They're that good.