The Mortal Kombat franchise has a long and storied history so no one would give it a second thought if Mortal Kombat: Deception (MKD) just provided the same arcade-style, best 2 out of 3 scraps as prior incarnations of the game. However MKD instead continues further down the path blazed by its predecessor, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, by providing a variety of other game modes and by bringing Mortal Kombat into the new millennium by introducing online play to the franchise.

First let’s look at the fight system itself. MKD’s is as good as any other fighter’s out there and adds a unique twist in that each fighter has three fighting styles to choose from drawn from a myriad of martial art (and martial arts inspired) disciplines - one of which is always weapons-based. You can switch between styles on the fly, giving you a wide range of strategic options during fights. There are even some combos that involve switching styles mid-combo. Should you find yourself on the receiving end of an endless stream of combos, MKD lets you perform a limited number of combo-breaker moves per match. Characters also all have their own set of unique moves, as well as two “fatality” moves that Mortal Kombat is famous for. The fighting stays true to form in MKD, delivering the same fast-paced, smooth, and very bloody action as before. Control is pretty tight and responsive, although it can at times feel that combo sequences require your button presses to be just a bit too fast.

Puzzle Kombat is just one of the game's new modes.

MKD also includes a good variety of arenas in which to conduct your battles. Most also feature a destructible point that will lead to a second level of the arena. These second levels are where you’ll find exotic death traps – if you can throw your opponent into one of the traps, you’ll instantly win the round.

When it comes to game modes, MKD delivers with quite a variety from which to choose. The basic battle mode let’s you take on another player or the AI in best two out of three matches. Against the AI you play the matches in an increasingly challenging progression until you meet a “boss” fighter. Beat the boss and you’re rewarded with an ending cutscene. Most fighters would stop there, but in MKD you’re only just getting started.

Puzzle Kombat is like a bloody version of Tetris. As cartoonish versions of two fighters square off, colored blocks begin to fall in the game board behind them. Unlike Tetris, though, completing rows of blocks does not cause them to disappear. You need to wait for special fist blocks to drop for that. When a fist block hits a block of the same color, it will destroy that block and any adjacent blocks of the same color. In addition, for each block you destroy, an extra block is dropped on your opponent’s board. How your fighter fares depends on how well you do destroying blocks. The game ends when the blocks reach the top of one of the boards. Puzzle Kombat is basically a head to head puzzle game with the fighters thrown in just to tie things in to the Mortal Kombat fighting theme. In fact, the fighters have an annoying habit of blocking the lower rows of blocks from view. It’s pretty much as you’d expect here – if you like puzzle games you’ll like Puzzle Kombat, otherwise you’ll simply pass on this mode.

Chess Kombat is a variation on the classic strategy game, except in this case moving onto an opponent’s square does not guarantee that you’ll take the piece. In Chess Kombat you need to fight an express, one round fight to see which piece gets to emerge victoriously. The relative strength of the pieces is mirrored in their health bars. A pawn fighting a queen can expect to do so with a handicap of two thirds of a bar of health. To liven things up a bit more, there are power squares on the border that give the owner a boost on battle and you can cast a limited number of spells that have effects such as resurrecting dead pieces and instantly killing enemy pieces. There is an element of strategy to the game, but it does not go as deep as it does in chess as fighting skills will win the game over pure brainpower.

Page 2 of 2 »