Mortal Kombat: Deception : Web Wombat : Games

Once one of the mightiest fighting juggernauts on the arcade market, the Mortal Kombat franchise, like newspaper clippings and leftovers not stored in the fridge, slowly faded (and actually grew a tad mouldy, come to think of it).

Over-the-top fatalities just could not hold an audience increasingly swayed by the bright, anti-aliased likes of Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive.

Until now.

Revitalised by the release of the first half-decent Mortal Kombat game in years (Deadly Alliance, also the first Mortal Kombat game to run in full 3D), Midway this year brings us the solid, if not mind-blowing, Deception, a release that indicates there's still some serious fight left in the old dog.

A mish-mash of game-modes, unlockable content (far more than any other fighting game on the market) and, a fighter first, online play, Deception puts a lot of balls in the air.

Unfortunately, it handles some balls better than others (no giggling up the back, I'm being serious), and so the performance ends up feeling a tad uneven.

As with previous Mortal Kombat games, the story behind the whole affair isn't particularly important, but involves, as usual, an evil demon hellbent on conquering Earth. Oh, and Raiden, professional Lightning God and one of the original Mortal Kombat cast members, bites the big one in the opening cutscene (much like Liu Kang in the neck-snapping intro to Deadly Alliance).

One might suspect killing off original characters is a great way to piss off your core fans, but, hey, apparently Midway knows best, so who are we plebes to argue?

Apart from the obvious Arcade/Versus modes of play, which I'll get to in a moment, the newcomers are:

Konquest	A third-person adventure that basically boils down to a lot of very boring running through very plain looking environments and staring at very common loading screens. A mix of 'fetch-this-item' quests with some versus matches against the AI to provide a touch of variety to the shambles that is Konquest's lack of half-decent gameplay. Konquest is worst of the modes Deception has to offer, but is unfortunately necessary (due to the 'koins' [points to be spent on unlocking extras] to be collected during play).
Chess Kombat	Place your pieces on the board and go at it, with any interaction between opposing pieces transporting you to a straight-out bout of fisticuffs, the victor taking the loser's square. Following several rules of Chess and making up several more of it's own, Chess Kombat makes for an interesting diversion better played against a mate than the AI.
Puzzle Kombat	A thinly-veiled homage to Capcom's Puzzle Fighter, this is two-player Tetris, with your quite cute mini-avatars fighting it out as the game progresses. Again, better with a mate.
Online Play	Does what it says on the box. Unfortunately, lag can be a problem here, as Mortal Kombat's fighting style has always been extremely timing-sensitive. Still, get a decent connection and roll on the multiplayer mayhem!

Deception's actual fighting model is an upgraded and much-tweaked version of Deadly Alliance. Each character has two martial arts fighting styles and one weapon-based fighting style, as well as one grapple move and, while there is some general differences between characters, there's a bit too much of the same going on for there to be any real differentiation between avatars.

On the level-side of things, Deception's environmental model allows for multi-tiered arenas (much like Dead or Alive, in fact), some real-time physics and, best of all, level-specific weapons. Yes, folks, there's nothing like beating your enemy to a bloody pulp with a war hammer.

Puzzle Kombat kan be kwite fun

And speaking of bloody pulp, that brings me to my next point. This isn't a game for the kiddies.

There has been no slacking off on the violence here, as far as Deception is concerned, and gameplay has only gotten more gruesome, to the point where you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

People get beaten to death with their own ripped-off arms, explode, immolated, mutilated, emaciated, impaled, corroded and generally suffer extremely graphic, painful deaths.

Mid-match, fountains of blood pour from broken noses, spilt claret is tracked around by footsteps and, as the rounds progress, characters get sweatier and more bruised.

Overall, Mortal Kombat's visuals are excellent, even on the PS2, with highly-detailed character models and environments. Despite this, the framerate is constantly smooth no matter the action on screen. Animations are normally good, although some of the blocking motions look a bit stilted on occasion, while fatality animations are particularly well done (although whether or not one can consider this a good thing is a matter for serious debate).

Audio is basic but reasonable, with some nice grunts and wet connection sounds, but in the end it's nothing to write home about. Dialogue is typically overdone, but it least it started out in English, meaning you'll see no half-arsed translations here a la Tekken 4, although at some points one might have cause to wonder.

A step in the right direction for the Mortal Kombat series, Deception shows there is light at the end of the tunnel for Kombat fans, even if there's still a ways to go before it can fully stand up to the juggernauts of the genre. Try before you buy.

Game: Mortal Kombat: Deception
System: PS2
Players: 1-2
Online: Yes
Developer: Midway
Distributor: Red-Ant

Rating: 75%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Mortal Kombat: Deception is on the shelves now.

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