Mortal Kombat 12

Mortal Kombat : Deception
Between everything and nothing…

Between everything (MK: Deadly Alliance) and nothing (MK:Armageddon) there is Mortal Kombat: Deception. A sequel to a fighting game that came really close to perfection and a really interesting and proud follow up for the good of the whole series.
The story?

Click to show spoiler

You pretty much understand that in this installment you have to destroy Onaga, hey?
That is not all for the story but let’s come back to it later shall we?
Even after his sacrifice, Raiden will be a returning character in this installment but this time will be a much darker and angry god. Along with him, returning characters include a bunch of faces that for our appreciation were not introduced in many games. All great characters such as Nightwolf, Kabal, Sindel, Tanya, Baraka, Jade and Ermac. To name only a few. Raiden’s earthrealm warriors have failed after all so those guys are coming right away. And they are still really interesting in this new type of gameplay environment. I loved them once more.
The newcomers aren’t so bad this time again. Names include: Darrius, Ashrah, Havik, Hotaru, Shujinko and others.
Going on to the look of the game, this one isn’t much different than Deadly Alliance on that term. Some of the cool designed arenas for the Deadly Alliance are back, along with other arenas that sadly aren’t as beautiful as the ones designed for DA but no matter. There is no shame at all in the Deception arenas. Some are much darker and much more centered on the filthy aspect of Mortal Kombat.
Such as a prison tower where you can notice characters from previous games in the background. They are simply locked in cells and are shouting during the fights to encourage you, or discourage you from winning. Take care, if you get too close, they will immediately catch you and try to prevent you from defending yourself. That is a really cool blink of an eye I must say. The pit is back where you can send your opponent flying down all the way in a hole filled with sharp spikes. The acid bath that was introduced in MK2 is there too.
Arenas in MKD are beautiful but this is some kind of beauty on which one will pass really quickly this time. The beauty that was recognizable throughout most of the previous game arenas isn’t matched and this probably due to a team unwilling to reflect on how to create these arenas and moods again. One or two arenas will have the weather changing (For instance a beach). But the music in this particular one and the nuts falling on your head from the trees were so annoying that I hated that arena in particular. This time, death traps are added making the game even more tense but this is your call to let the option on or not. I personally don’t use them since I hate the fact that a fight can end so abruptly. Was that a necessary step after all? Nope. Didn’t made the game any better or any worse in my eyes. Some might say it adds to the challenge but not much. Unless you are facing someone way better than you, which would clearly mean you better stay away from the edge. You can avoid it as there is a mark on the floor right on the spot you should avoid. Since you decide or not to use them they don’t add much unlike the blood and fatality that of course remain necessary. Making you die with one blow compared to power up and impaling just killed a bit of the challenge. Some annoying stuff this time around but overall, the look of Mortal Kombat: Deception remains highly respectable.
The music and sounds don’t differ too much from the previous installment in terms of quality. Except for some sped up mixture of sounds that will at times render the experience a lot more annoying than the moody, slowed pace good music you could hear in all the Deadly Alliance arenas. The machines working as the death traps sometimes make a really disturbing noise. Creepy but annoying none the less. The trap I don’t mind but when the option is set on off, they could have add the feature that the machines were on the off switch. Security at work is really important. But there is still some good stuff and the little annoying moments won’t discourage one from playing the game over and over.
Going from the look to the gameplay. You will be provided with the very same gameplay that you were offered in deadly Alliance off course. But wait, nope. Scratch that. There are in facts some differences. To start off, you still have three fighting styles for each character. A good part of the MKDA roster is not returning for this game but it doesn’t matter one bit. You might find those missing characters fighting styles given to some of the MKD fighters and this is a good thing. This is a chance to chose one style or character and relearn the abilities mixed up with different styles. A couple things were taken out from the Deadly Alliance in fight assets but in some cases only to be replaced. Unfortunately not for the better in my opinion. For example, the impale feature does not return this time. So you are “forced” to keep your weapon. Making the course of the fights less bloody (Unless the death traps make it end fast. Impale was much more sadistic of course.) But this is needless to say. No impale or power up this time feels a little like telling a wrestler or a boxer that just hit his opponent in the growing not to try again, unless he wants to be disqualified. I know that this is intentional and not much of a drama and I’m cool with it. The power up feature also disappeared (So kiss the good old crazy amounts of damage in some of the already crazy powerful combos goodbye). Man!! Less violent and brutal from the get go!! Is there anything good about this one? Of course there is.
Yep, because this time it seems that they at least worked on a lot of the annoying glitches that showed up in Deadly Alliance, making Deception an easier and much more comfortable game to handle. So this time I haven’t seen any opponent disappear in the ground after being taken down. Or an opponent lying in the middle of the air motionless after he was supposed to fall down. In particular arenas in DA, mostly on the nethership, during a storm it would cause the game to lag a little. I haven’t seen anything like that in Deception. The combos are also a lot easier to handle this time since I never experimented as much glitches in deception that there were in Deadly Alliance where you could fail an entire combo because of one hit that doesn’t connect as it should. This little fix of the many glitches got my vote. Hands down.
But other than that, the features that are coming to replace such things as Impale, power up or reversal features are just the flaw of the game to me. First of all, this time all the characters are equipped with a breaker feature allowing you to break a combo, almost anywhere in the middle of it by inputting the controls correctly. Instead of having to be fast enough with reversal, to take advantage right when the opponent placed his first hit. (Sad. Going back to making things easy.) All the characters having this feature, it made them all a little similar compared to the lot of differences you had in Deadly Alliance (Where one had a power up feature but the opponent not equipped with it could impale you or reverse your first hit and be granted the first combo.)
You will have three chances at using the breaker during a fight. Having that feature brought to the game isn’t bad, but seeing that the features like impale, reversal or power up weren’t given to all the characters in MKDA has me thinking that it should have been the same for the breaker. It doesn’t make it more balanced to give them all but it tones the challenge down in my point of view. And that lack of differences bores me. Instead of dying right now in the death trap, an impaled opponent would work his ass off to win before he bled to death. Even the ridiculously large boss of the arcade mode Onaga becomes really easy to defeat with any character once you understand his weakness and pattern. I won’t spoil them but they sadly are so obvious. This boss, mostly due to his weaknesses, that breaker for all and the features cut out from MKDA, isn’t anything compared to the equipped Quan Chi and Shang Tsung. That both had devastating assets after all. Even Raiden is a relatively easy character to beat on arcade this time because any character you pick up is equipped with the same three breakers and Thunder God doesn’t have the reversal feature which he was spamming against me in MKDA. So that Raiden was often blocking my first hit and following up with a style branch combo. Cycling through his three fighting styles each time. DAMN YOU THUNDER GOD!! This time, only the sub boss is providing the challenge on arcade mode. This is a tag team made with Smoke and Noob Saibot that you will have to defeat with your solo character. Makes a pretty angry and cool tag team! Equipped with a lot of devastating special moves. Once one will connect, you be sure that another one is coming so if you happen to block or avoid a first hit, remain on your guards.
After all that, Mortal Kombat deception remains a really gory game but this time around, the bloodiest and goriest stuff evolve around fatalities. Each character has two of them, plus a feature called Hara Kiri that was added. This last one makes you able to kill yourself in the MK grizzly fashion way before you are killed by the opponent. When your opponent goes on and perform the hara kiri without letting you finish him off it’s a little annoying. Even though you are still provided with a crazy violent scene. For instance, Tanya will take bones out of her legs and drive them like knives right through her eyes. OUCH! Poor baby! Don’t do that! Since Havik has one fatality where he will eat both of your arms faster than a bunny chews on carrots you don’t have to be so hard on yourself! Ashrah will use a voodoo doll that she will stab at many places to finish off with your throat. For her part, Mileena has a fatality that will make her bite at your neck so hard that she’ll take your head off. Bo Rai Cho has a really fun fatality involving a fart and fire, enough said. Poor Tanya let your opponent do his job. Ah, so much fun. But I love Tanya. I use her in the game and still love her look. That lovely traitor of mine! I would let myself be cheated.
The fatalities being the goriest moment like it should probably be in the eyes of many, the voice talents are still really good. And they add to many fatalities. During some fatalities you can hear the opponent please. They are begging you not to kill them. That is insanely cool!! I already live by a code that prevents me from performing a fatality on the Vampire Nitara but Tanya and Jade? Let’s slit them lovely ladies in two anyway. I can’t start sparing everyone so I’ll keep my merciful side for only one. But, knowing that I would hear Nitara begging me to spare her if I started a fatality. Would i be tempted to perform a fatality on her once just to hear that? Gives me Goosebumps just thinking about it! I suddenly scare myself! I’m mad, I’m evil! But since she evolves so much around blood, is it so bad? “NO, NO, NO PLEASE!” WO! I NEED TO TAKE FIVE. AND READ WHAT I JUST WROTE AGAIN! Meh, she’s tuff. She doesn’t please and she wouldn’t. I would make her please anyway!!
That all being said, I finally found a feature that I would have loved to have in Deadly Alliance.
“NO, NO, NO PLEASE.” Oh, Sure we will now… Talk about the modes that were featured in deception. Starting with two mini games. One of them called puzzle Kombat is a little similar to a Tetris game. You will have both of your characters at the bottom of the screen and they will be striking each other each time a row will be taken from your opponent or filled correctly for your side. I don’t play Tetris so if you wonder what I’m talking about, this is alright.
The second mini game is a chess Kombat. This is a really fun feature to try for a couple of hours to say the least. So you don’t need to know that you will have to form your clan with MK characters and place each character at the position that you will have assigned them. You advance on a chess board and you have to try and take a character out of your opponent’s team. That until you defeated his king obviously. There are some features that one of your allies (the sorcerer) can use to help you along the way like killing off an opponent while staying on his square. Most of the confrontations will require a one on one fight though and some positions in the ladder will be allowed advantages to begin the fight with. For instance an attacking character might get an extra boost of his life bar. Seeing a king that isn’t well guarded can provide you a chance at a final blow. I advice using your Champion if one is still available. At the end of the fight, when you beat the king a fatality is automatically performed by your character. You have a free gory scene without having to input any controls! A little like when the hara Kiri shows up in arcade or versus. Moneytalks!!
The Konquest mode returns and this time it is the mode that will tell you how Onaga’s been awakened. You will play as Shujinko, a new character and new hero for the time of that one game.

Click to show spoiler

Anyway, Shujinko starts as a kid and will be trained by Bo Rai Cho before embarking on his quest. This is needless to say that this is the mode where you will find all the keys to unlock characters and their costumes. This is also during his quest that Shujinko will have to learn all the characters abilities. Pretty much like the Deadly Alliance Konquest. You will not be forced to learn all the characters this time once more but before you completed the quest, it sucks that you have a good amount of characters to meet and let them teach you what they have to teach. But other than that little flaw, the journey is really fun since this is a quest throughout a part of the really vast world of Mortal Kombat. You will even encounter some characters that won’t learn anything to you but commend you to do something for them. If you’re willing to take the time to do, you will be rewarded with Koins. Like I said, it’s where you will find the keys to unlock characters and costumes. Because you need keys instead of koins this time and some chests in which you will find these keys aren’t easy to find. For a number of them, you have to be at an exact spot, in an exact realm and at an exact time. Back when I made it, I didn’t have the help of the net at my disposition but using it will help you know where and when to find each key. Shujinko having the ability to make the time go forward at a ridiculous speed, that should make it pretty easy to clear this search for those characters and costumes.
Once your quest is completed and Shujinko woke up Onaga (Shujinko will be an old creep by that time. Sucks that you can’t use his little younger mix of Clint Eastwood and Kung lao during fights.) you can still come back in your saved game and search the realms once again. If only to find the missing keys, learn the characters that you haven’t yet learn or even just to say hi to your favorite MK character which might be hidden somewhere in a realm. If you find a vampire once you will be asked by a random man in a robe to reveal the location of a vampire to him since he wants to drive a stake through her heart but for only some koins? He could forget that, I never went back to him. I ain’t for sale. But koins help of course.
Well, I could talk about how Shujinko woke up Onaga but I said I wouldn’t spoil you with the Dragon king’s weaknesses in the arcade mode so I’ll let you find out for yourself. It is sad though that a gigantic and cool looking boss like him ended up being so disappointing in terms of difficulty. Making it almost ridiculously weak after all. But he was still really fun to battle. His arena is beautiful.
In conclusion, with the addition of death traps, breakers and having left behind so much of what made Deadly Alliance a pretty cool challenge like reversal and power up for some characters (But not all of them), Mortal Kombat Deception could barely stand on its two feet against a good punch or kick from its previous game. It also suffers from a lack of originality in characters or background designs imo. The two fatalities, Hara Kiri and death traps are gory and bloody but the graphic violence added to the overall beauty seems much smoother than what you were offered with the boosted Deadly Alliance gameplay and the almost overused substance called blood that game featured. Along with the blood spittle contest, you had the impale feature that you could use as a funny spoof with a friend. Using two characters that would impale and had the feature of the life regaining move. Using Shang Tsung and then impaling Nitara to watch her bleed while she’s spamming her throw to regain some life. Spamming her blood spit after. Using Tsung soul steal and causing him to regain his life fully. Could result in watching the vampire bleed to death with a sword across her chest for so long that it made it ridiculously sadistic. Nitara was the only character able to produce blood even with the option turn off. Deception hasn’t a chance in hell to top the previous installment in terms of bloody, grizzly, and bully violence. But on the other end, that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t have anything to try and stand up to the task. Never in a million years. Deception remains well made in most of its aspects if not as impressive as the effort put forth on Deadly Alliance. It is a bloody and gory sequel none the less and with the little glitches such as lags in certain arenas fixed this time around, the game scores a couple points. It is still really fun to play on arcade and versus modes and the Konquest and mini games will add up to the enjoyment.
Having also lost a lot on the side of difficulty, I will still give Deception a lot of respect because it is what it deserves you can be sure for remaining that fun, great, violent and well made.
I will rate it 8.5/10. That game could have fallen real hard and could have taken Deadly Alliance with it causing both to collapse but it stood its ground and hung both on top . I would have liked more of DA new characters in the roster but doesn’t matter since until those youngsters are developed, MKD’s youngsters were really interesting too. Had MKA been a little better, I would have dared proudly calling that generation The golden years of Mortal Kombat. Sad it won’t be. But if you’ve been living under a rock during that whole generation and never played one, you can spend on both Deadly Alliance and Deception and shouldn’t regret it at all. Assuming you are willing to make a 360 degrees turn and not back to the 2d stuff at all. DA and MKD felt way more different than any other MK. Only the violence remained about MK at that time, or almost. The fun was but amplified in my opinion.
Is it violent? Is this game MK? Of course. FATALITY!

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