It offers great replay value, and a new fighting engine, but fatalities fall short. But it's still a good game to ejnoy.
(I did reviewed Deception first, but I will be fair with this review because this game came out first.)
You can say that this Mortal Kombat took a big turn in the franchise because it is totally different from its predecessors, except that like Mortal Kombat 4, it is still 3-D combat and it should be. First things first lets talk about the fighting shall we? Each fighter now has 3 different fighting styles, 2 that are a type of martial art, and a weapon that will do little more damage. But beware that once you will equip your weapon, you’ll take a little bit more damage. You can switch to any of your fighting styles at any time to help you defeat your enemy, but beware because each fighting style does have its strengths and weaknesses. What’s awesome is the ability to take your weapon and impale your opponent, so that he will be continuously losing health by basically bleeding to death. You got you combos as well, and whats a neat feature is that fighters can link all their fighting styles when performing your combo. So it’s sweet to have if you’re trying to put up a big combo.
The Konquest mode is where you learn how to play Deadly Alliance, and to earn krypt koins. You will face hundreds of challenges on how to perform all of the moves and fighting styles for each fighter. Also between your challenges you’ll know the backgrounds for each fighter as well by reading… a lot. It is a good way to get used to the game, but this mode can get really boring if you play it too long.
What’s really cool is that they brought back “test your might” which was a great mini game in the original Mortal Kombat. It plays out the same as it did in the original but better. Also they have a new mini for you to do between so many fights and that’s test your sight. Test your sight is where they show you 3-7 cups depending how many mini games you accomplished, and they show you that one of the cups are holding a MK medallion. Then the cups start to shuffle and you need to keep a good eye to where the cup is going. After it is done, you pick to see if you pick the right one. If you do, you will be awarded with either onyx or platinum koins.
What’s new to the franchise is the krypt. The krypt is a gigantic room filled with 676 coffins where you can unlock all of the characters, alternative costumes, and bonus materials by using your koins you earned throughout the konquest, arcade, and test your might/sight challenges. Some coffins offer you sweet things for you to check out, and believe it or not some coffins don’t even have anything at all, which to me pissed me off.
The Kontent is where you can view your items you have unlocked from the krypt. You can also check out some sweet goodies that are automatically there for you to see like the making of Deadly Alliance, a cool video on the history of Mortal Kombat, and a music video. Here is where you get check out hundreds, and I do mean hundreds of goodies from video clips, photos, production art, biographies, and more.
If you are really anticipating for the fatalities, then you will be very disappointed because each character only has one, and some of them are really dumb, and that’s all you get when it comes to finishing off your opponent. You don’t have any stage fatalities, and there are not enough fatalities. What they should have done was t put in a weapon fatality for each character. Also the fatalities get way too repetitive since each only has one.
Like the previous games, you still have your versus mode so that you can go uip against a friend, and you can even bet your krypt koins against each other, which is a great feature...but sorry to say that there is no online.
So the new fighting style is awesome, and you got tons of blood that is very satisfying, but what terribly hurts the gameplay are the fatalities, because they aren’t enough, and some are disappointing.
Graphics:
This game shows real time facial damage, which is sweet, and looks great. During the battle, if you are taking an ass kicking, it will show blood, bruises, and all types of facial damages, which is really cool. The arenas are great looking too, showing rich and colorful backgrounds that really shines, also the character development looks good. The blood effects are pretty cool looking, but sorry to say a few fatalities don’t look as good as they should, especially Quan Chi’s. So overall this is a very good-looking 3-D fighter.
Sound:
The games soundtrack is great, each level, and scene has a perfectly fit theme, and so they did a good job on that. Some of the grunts and screams sounds good, but they can sound a little but annoying at times.
Value:
Well, you got 676 coffins to unlock in the krypt, which will take you forever because a lot of them are really high price, and will take a whole lot of time to open all of the onyx and platinum ones since you can only get them at the test your might/sight challenges which is a pain in the ass. You got the konquest mode for all of the fighters to learn their moves/combos, which is a total of 218 challenges. Also you can play against a friend and actually bet koins against each other, which is pretty cool. Then you got a ton of stuff to check out in the Kontent, so it will keep you busy, but trying to get all of the coffins is a throw off. So overall, hundreds of unlockables and neat features that this game has to offer and are long lasting, but the way of getting all of the goodies in the krypt can be a pain in the ass.
Flaws:
Once again I must say…Easily the biggest flaw to this game is that there is only one fatality per character, and that’s it, which to me really hurts the gameplay badly. There aren’t any stage fatalities either; just some of the environments are interactive by knocking them into a pillar, statue, etc… What the hell happened here!? This is Mortal Kombat people; this game is made famous because of the fatalities, this is what the fans want. We don’t want just one per character! Like I said before…another big flaw, sadly to say that a few of the fatalities are really lame. We want cool ones like scorpion, or sub-zero. Another big problem is that earning the onyx and platinum koins will take forever to earn, because the test your might/sight minigames appear every few fights during the arcade /versus mode, which here you can only earn them. Unless a friend has a crap load of them that would be willing bet against you with.
Conclusion:
Even though that they could have done more with this title, especially with the gameplay, it is still a really good fighting game because it is a lot different than the previous titles and that’s a good thing. For people who love fighting games and the mortal Kombat franchise should give this a try.