hen the original Mortal Kombat hit arcades years ago, little did the industry know that the fighting game would almost single handedly define the genre for years to come.  With stylized fighting and immense amounts of gore and blood, the series was both praised and lambasted almost immediately.  Throughout the years that followed, Midway stuck to their franchise, cultivating it with new characters, new Fatalities, and even some questionable forays into the world of adventure gaming.  While the series still held a special place in many a gamer’s heart, it was becoming clear that the franchise was losing steam.  With the release of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Midway showed the public that they still had what it took to take the series in a new direction.  Now with the impending release of Mortal Kombat: Deception, they’re about to show everyone that they haven’t seen anything yet.  Today I go the chance to toy with a near final version of the game and am happy to say that Midway has done the impossible: reinvent Mortal Kombat while at the same time still sticking to their roots.

If you’d ask the average gamer what a Mortal Kombat game is all about, they’d probably give an answer like, “It’s all about fighting and blood.”  Well for the most part, a response like that would be true.  Deception is all about fighting, which is showcased nicely in the standard Arcade Mode.  You’ll progress through a tower of opponents and with each victory you’ll earn Koins, which can be used to buy and unlock hundreds of secret bonus items that await you in the Krypt.  But while the “one opponent after another” system isn’t new, the way that Midway goes about presenting it is.  First of all, most levels now feature death traps.  If an opponent is knocked into one, they’ll die, regardless of how much health they may have.  Needless to say, the traps are both cunning and brutal.  One level has two giant spiked rollers that can smash an opponent into tiny, bloody bits, while another features a large metal stamping mechanism that can smash a person into cinders.  With the new traps, fighting becomes more frantic and the possibility of setting an opponent up for a quick kill becomes an integral fighting strategy.

While the death traps are neat feature, they really don’t set the Arcade Mode apart from anything that you’re seen before in a fighting game.  Where Deception really sets itself apart is in its Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat, and Konquest Modes.  Chess Kombat is perhaps the most unique take on the classic Mortal Kombat formula and has you playing a virtual game of chess, using characters from the game.  When you start off a game you’ll choose which characters you want associated with a particular chess piece.  While the game doesn’t use the classic terms like pawn, knight, rook, and so on, if you have a familiarity with chess you should be able to decipher the roles of each piece.  To mix things up a bit, you can also use certain pieces to perform spells or special actions.  The Sorcerer piece can imprison enemy pieces on a square for a certain amount of move or even resurrect a piece that has been captured.  Traps can also be set on the board to stifle enemy progression, which actually ends up injecting quite a bit of strategy in how you move about.  Once two opposing pieces step foot on the same square, the game goes into the classic Mortal Kombat mode of fighting.  The victor claims the square while the loser is removed from the board.  While definitely quirky (and pretty reliant on the fact that you need to know how to play chess), Chess Kombat is a nice diversion and harkens back to the days of Battle Chess.

Puzzle Kombat is another odd offering, but like Chess Kombat, is still fun and addictive.  Similar to Columns or Puzzle Fighter, your goal is to line up colored blocks in your playing field that drop down from the top of the screen.  When you start up a game you’ll choose an avatar from the regular characters in the game and as you play they’ll duke it out against the computer in a cartoony fight at the bottom of the screen.  As you line up colors, every so often a special “fist” block will appear.  If you drop the fist block on a regular block that matches its color, it will explode and eliminate the regular blocks.  While this results in your cartoony character beating the bejeezus out of your opponent during their mock fight, it will also drop colored blocks on their playing field which makes it harder for them to match up an blocks of their own.  While the mode is most certainly lighthearted, given the character’s oversized heads and comical moves, it also has a nice dose of realism which comes in the end of match Fatalities that reduce those cute and cuddly fighters into kibble if they lose.

The last and perhaps most expansive mode is Konquest, which takes the Mortal Kombat franchise into a more adventure focused direction.  When you begin Konquest you’re given a default character who wishes to learn the ways of fighting.  You’ll start off with virtually no skills but through the tutelage of fighters that you encounter during your journeys, you’ll pick up the tricks of the trade.  It’s also important to note that Konquest spans a number of different and expansive worlds, filled with people and places to see.  Townspeople and other characters can be talked to and feature their own unique voice-over clips, which helps to add a nice dose of personality to each one.  You’ll also be able to run errands and perform tasks for certain people, which rewards you with valuable Koins if you complete them.  As you progress through the game you’ll study the fighting arts under the care of some of the regular game’s characters, such as Sub-Zero, Ashrah, and Bo’ Rai Cho.  Essentially each study is a tutorial so that you can better acquaint yourself with using that character, which is nice alternative to simply trying out move sets via the game’s Practice mode.  Also, once you’ve completed a teacher’s final test (which is defeating them in battle) you’ll be able to use them.  Certain fights seem to be tied to different characters that you can fight as, but essentially you’ll be given an equal dose of trying out each character so you can get the hang of fighting with each one.

While Konquest is essentially a souped up training mode, it offers up gamers a truly unique opportunity to get acquainted with the new features of Deception.  Also it’s one of the main ways of acquiring Koins to use to unlock bonus items.  Aside from winning Koins from helping out people with tasks and from beating enemies, you can also find Koins scattered randomly about the worlds you travel through.  Koins also come housed in treasure chests, although they’re usually hidden a bit more inconspicuously.  But regardless, you’ll never find a shortage of Koins to find while playing through Konquest, which is nice, considering the sheer amount of bonus items and goodies that you can buy.  Also given the mode’s time progression, you’ll see your character age and eventually become a wise old man.  But besides wisdom he’ll also have the knowledge of all the fighting styles he’s come across, so you can basically go into a fight and whip out moves from all of the character’s that you’ve bested throughout your life.  Even better is the fact that you can take this souped up fighter online, which should prove interesting for those gamers out there looking for a challenge.

On the gameplay front Deception plays quite similarly to Deadly Alliance and as a result, the on-screen action is fast and sometimes unforgiving.  The new addition of death traps helps to add a bit of strategy to the overall package, but if you played the heck out of the last Mortal Kombat, you shouldn’t have a problem getting the feel of Deception.  Both Chess and Puzzle Kombat, although new, also feature some tight gameplay.  Konquest, being largely in 3D, is also pretty noteworthy, although we did notice some odd occurrences.  The mode features a real-time day/night clock that cycles continuously while you’re playing.  One minute in the life of your character roughly translates to one second in the game.  While neat, the actual act of running around and talking to people doesn’t conform to this clock system.  While not a glaring oddity, it’s a bit strange when you step up to a townsperson and listen to their one line of text, only to realize that in the game’s frame of reference that line of text took 10 minutes to say.  Also Konquest seems to run quite faster than it should.  When you’re running about you move pretty quickly.  Pressing the R trigger (on the Xbox version) allows you to sprint, which is handy way to get around more quickly.  The only glaring thing is that when you do sprint you move about as fast as a roadrunner, which really makes your actions seem overly comical.

Fatalities are also once again back, although this time they’ve brought along a friend in the new Hara-Kiri moves.  When you’ve been pummeled by an opponent and are set up to die by a Fatality, you can input commands on the controller to actually take your own life rather than give your opponent the satisfaction of killing you.  Every character has a suicide move, which ultimately can set up some nice races to see who can pull off a Fatality or suicide move first at the end of match.

While not directly tied to gameplay, the Krypt is one of the most enjoyable features in Deception given the fact that it’s the place you can use your Koins to purchase bonus items.  New characters, concept art, concept movies, bonus costumes, staff pictures, and alternate character bios are all available for purchase.  The only catch is that you won’t actually know what you’re buying until you buy it.  The Krypt is made up of hundreds of tombstones that are only designated with a price.  After you pay the required amount of Koins, a coffin juts up out of the ground and your prize is revealed.  This is cool if you like the element of surprise, but not so hot if you’re gunning for a new character and shell out a ton of Koins, only to discover that you’ve unlocked a piece of concept art that you really didn’t care about.  But for those gamers who love the thrill of the hunt, the Krypt offers up literally hours of pick and choose goodness.  To combat cheaters from purchasing an item and then resetting their machine after they decide they don’t like it, the game will save the moment you confirm a purchase, so once you buy something it’s set in stone. 

Visually Deception is a step up from Deadly Alliance and sports some very impressive character models and fluid animations.  While the title does fall back on its distinctive “lock and move” style of fighting, the overall look of the action unfolding on-screen is still on par with other fighting titles on the market.  Particle effects and blood are also well rendered and although the gore at times seems to be more strawberry jelly than actual blood, the copious amounts that fly everywhere should keep everyone happy.  The only real drawback that I can find in the visuals is the somewhat sketchy character models in Konquest.  While the main characters are well rendered, secondary characters are generic.  In any particular world, you’ll run across and fight the same enemies over and over again, which is bit less than appealing.  Even townspeople models are recycled over and over again, which really detracts from the idea that you’re running around a living and breathing town.

Perhaps one of the most impressive visual elements in Deception comes in the form of the multi-tiered levels that not only feature different levels but also a great deal of objects that can be interacted with while you’re fighting.  Enemies (and yourself) can be ejected through windows, down drop offs, and through walls, which not only adds more damage that they receive but also opens up new areas of a level to play in.  Some levels also feature objects that can be used as weapons, including our favorite of some dead bodies hanging from some ropes that can be batted at your opponent.

Audio-wise Deception offers up some pretty respectable music and sound effects, especially when it comes to fighting.  The music tracks and moody and epic and fans of the tunes can even listen to the entire soundtrack for the game via the Kollection menu (which also houses your concept art and other unlockables).  Fights are also filled with all manner of wails and screams of pain, especially during death trap sequences and Fatalities.

Overall Mortal Kombat: Deception would have been an admirable game simply with the enhanced visuals and new death traps, Fatalities, and suicide moves.  But, with the inclusion of Chess and Puzzle Kombat, as well as Konquest, the overall package is nearly mind blowing.  Never before has a fighting game attempted the sheer amount of content that Deception has, and most surprisingly is that Midway seems to have gotten it right on their first attempt.  The inclusion of online fighting for both versions of the game (PS2 and Xbox) only sweetens the deal even more.  Kudos go out to Midway on managing to reinvent their beloved franchise.  They’re about to revolutionize the fighting genre.