by
Ted Kritsonis
Faze
Video Game Editor
The
fighting genre in video games has probably taken the biggest
beating over the last five years, if you can pardon the pun.
But despite the lack of general popularity, classic fighting
game franchises like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat hold special
places in the hearts of those who grew up playing them at arcades
in the 1990s.
Now
that we’re in a new generation of consoles (and heading
for an even newer one in the next two years), Mortal Kombat:
Deception is the latest rendition of the classic series, as
Midway tries to reassert its place in the fighting genre among
diehard MK fans and younger gamers who may be newbies to the
MK world. The attempt is a valiant one, but ultimately it
comes up short.
Since the name of the game is fighting, a great deal of effort
was put into making the game easy to play considering all
the button combinations involved. It’s true that fighting
games these days are filled with crazy combos that require
you to press five or six buttons in rapid succession, and
MK: Deception has plenty of that, but some of it doesn’t
make sense.
Each
fighter has three fighting styles that they can switch in
and out of during a fight, and some combos allow you to integrate
them. It looks cool, but how can a guy pull out a sword at
the end of a combo that literally lasts less than two seconds?
And even better, what can you do when you screw up what is
already a difficult combo to pull off? The latter scenario
leaves you wide open to an easy attack from your opponent,
while the former scenario illustrates what’s wrong with
the fighting mechanics in the game. Pulling off combos comes
with practice, just like anything else, but you can’t
help but feel cheated when you keep trying to execute them
and they don’t work. That’s where an aura of frustration
really starts to set in.
Although
things sort of fall flat in the actual fighting, MK: Deception
boasts a very interesting Konquest mode that will place you
in an immersive world where you do just about everything from
fight training to unlocking the game’s bonus content
through all the trials and tribulations you go through in
this third-person adventure. The idea works quite well most
of the time, if you can ignore the brutal voice acting, which
sounds like a bunch of people who should really stick to their
day jobs.
Konquest will take plenty of time to go through and you’ll
encounter some classic characters from earlier MK games along
the way. The way in which the worlds have been produced here
will remind you of other third-person adventure games, but
you won’t really feel like they’ve bitten off
more than they can chew. Sometimes, however, you will feel
like the fighting and training get in the way of your exploration.
The
other game modes to note here are Puzzle Kombat, which is
sort of like Tetris, and Chess Kombat, which is a humourous
interpretation of chess using MK fighters. MK Online offers
the best outlet for the fighting part of the game because
it runs smoothly and MK diehards and newbies can fight to
the death over and over again online. There isn’t much
depth in terms of stats, but playing online often will no
doubt enhance your skills.
Playing
MK: Deception made me wonder if this franchise has anything
left in the tank because while some aspects work, most don’t
work well enough. There’s no doubt that MK fans will
check this out, and interested newcomers might give it a try,
but to suggest that both sides will really get a lot out of
this one is a bit of a stretch.
|
Publisher:
Midway
Developer:
Midway
Platform:
PS2
Rating:
6/10
|
