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Mortal Kombat: Deception Review - Xbox

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was one of the biggest risky franchise games in the history of gaming. Mortal Kombat had been losing fans slowly as the series progressed, and with the new consoles Midway would need to do something special to redeem itself. Luckily, Deadly Alliance was a well made game. Complete with its own storyline, it put you in control of all the Mortal Kombat characters to pursue their goals either against or for the Deadly Alliance. Now comes the next test in the series' life: Mortal Kombat: Deception. Hardcore Mortal Kombat fans would know Onaga, the original ruler of the Outworld Guess what folks, he's back. Making his return shortly after the Deadly Alliance deteriorates due to greed, Quan Chi is left to try and stop Onaga.

Without much hope, Raiden and Shang Tsung join with Quan Chi in a last attempt to destroy Onaga, but he is too powerful and casts all three of them to the underworld. Now with the fiercest fighters in the world obliterated, the Mortal Kombat world is facing complete destruction.

Gameplay

Mortal Kombat: Deception has four main modes of gameplay - Kombat, Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat and Konquest. They're all fairly self explanatory, but just in case, Kombat is your basic fighting mode, Chess Kombat is a game of chess, where if your characters meet they battle, with the stronger characters obviously having stronger moves and more health. Puzzle Kombat is in the form of a game of duel Tetris where two mini characters fight at the bottom of the screen, being controlled by your moves with the blocks, and the final mode Konquest is an Adventure game - and quite a good one at that.

For those that have played Deadly Alliance, you will instantly realise that the combat physics are exactly the same. All the favourites are back in the game, but you'll find that if you haven't played a Mortal Kombat game since MK3, then much has changed with respect to characters. In order to load your profile up fully, you must enter in your profile code which is a code you've entered with the buttons on your controller. If you forget this code, your game is basically screwed, and we couldn't see any real reason to have a code when you load your profile, apart from to annoy people that forget theirs.

Once in the main menu, you'll notice the Krypt and Kontent selections. The Krypt will take you to a massive graveyard with over 700 tombstones. Each tombstone unlocks something from the Kontent for you to marvel at. Apart from the Profiles and Options menus, the only one left on the main screen is your Xbox Live option. You can now battle against many other fighters around the world, and Xbox Live brings it into your living room, lag free. The multiplayer in Mortal Kombat (continued next page)