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Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
So after installing like 15 games on my xbox i had a hard time deciding what to play. Finally i decide to try out the new MK. Since i started a fresh game with no unlocked chars or anything i say to myself, well guess i'll go do this Konquest mode stuff first. This is where my love/hate relationship began.
A history lesson. Everyone knows that MK 2 is the pinnacle of the MK series. It had the most playability of them all. MK 3 and all the damn versions they spawned afterwards (including trilogy and gold) paled in comparison in the gameplay dept. A run button (cuz Street Fighter has 6 buttons, we should too!) and lame dial-a-combo's were added for "greater" gameplay. Rrrrriiighht. I digress...never played 4, wasn't really interested in playing another MK after the many 3's, especially one that was goin 3D. After all, VF, Tekken, and Soul Edge/Calibur were the premier 3D fighters. So one day Midway announces they are gonna do an MK5. Midway having shutdown their arcade operations (cept for those damn addicting games you see at bars, you know the ones with like strip solitaire...) decides this game will be console only. This is a good move, because now they don't have to freakin break out updates every time ppl figure out the fucking fatalities, and i'm not about to learn fatalities that i can't even remember anyway 3 times over. So begins the review.
Each character has 2 martial arts fighting styles and 1 weapon fighting style (except for some lame ones and some hidden chars). Each style can have a "variety" of attacks moves. I quote that because some styles are practically worthless and are really only in there for some of the combos. Which btw is still similar to the MK3 dial-a-combo...kind of a letdown. But, each char now has some combo's that involve switching styles in the middle of the combo. So a) yes you'll have put down the weed and practice your memorizational skills or b) your like me and everytime you pick a diff char you pause and do a refresher on which combos are which. Seriously, there's so many styles and combos there's no way i can memorize all that. Which kinda makes up for the dial-a-combo thing. While not the uber combo afficianado my colleague Mr Whitefolks is (big words, go look em up), i can appreciate the high damage or lots of hits combos. And there's some pretty neato stuff you can come up with...
The Hate:
As i said, this game and i have a love/hate relationship. Since i hadn't unlocked any chars/stages/2ndary outfits yet, i figured, well lets start with Konquest mode. Basically this is where you go thru and do what the comp tells you to do, everything from learning basic attacks for each style to getting into combos. Similar to the quest mode in soul edge. This isn't so bad when you first start out. Even some of the multiple style combos aren't that tough....when you first start out. You see, some chars have some long ass combos and some require the right timing. I mean you didn't think you'd just jump on and button mash did you? If so go play some Tekken... Anyway, eventually the last thing you need to do for each char is fight yourself. Not so tough for some chars, and this is where the true hate shows. Evidentally this part becomes progressively harder as you go along? So yea...um after getting quite a few of the "cool" chars that i liked done i gotta start doing the crap ones i don't like. Take my advice, do the crap ones first...seriously when i did Reptile i had to fight him like 50 times. The AI, like a true MK game was so FUCKING CHEAP GODDAMN! I was getting so pissed but was doing my best to maintain that uber arcade coolness aura i once possessed. I even made my 6 yr old son leave the room so he wouldn't see me get mad and wonder why i yell at him when he does the same thing. So anyway, as you play the game, pretty much whatever you do earns you Koins. There's 6 diff types that you can save/spend on chars, stages, 2ndary outfits, lame videos, and other artwork type goodies. So i finally buy all the chars and finish the Konquest mode. Btw, use the faq to buy shit...you'll feel less like a douchebag if you do. This took me all damn day too...my mind and my fingers were not in sync for a while. Some of those combos are like 10 fucking hits and my hands just wouldn't obey. This is where our relationship took a turn for the better.
The Love:
So i dealt with all the cheap ass AI shit made it thru the Konquest mode. Have all the char's unlocked, including Blaze (no weapon style, lame fiber upyerbutt special move) and Mokap (can't use him cuz for some goddamn reason i can't seem to choose him). Now, i see that you can beat the game and save the endings. Well i need more coins anyway for some more goodies from the Krypt! Playing past MK's and shit like Tekken where you wanna bump the difficulty down a bit so you can at least beat the game to save them endings, i decide to bump it down to easy from normal. Wrong...put that shit on novice if you wanna see endings. If you wanna play the game for the challenge then play on the harder difficulties. I really started to get into this game when i realized that the computer isn't as infuriatingly cheap as some of those Konquest battles. I also started to realize how good and bad some chars were. My personal favorites are Frost and Kitana, and before you fanboy chick fighting game nerds get your Batman Underoo's in a bunch, i will be the first to say i rarely like chick chars in fighting games. There's only a couple ones that are truly worthless *cough* Dhramin *cough*. It does seem to me that some chars development kinda ran into the "well we don't really have anything else cool to do so lets just wrap this char up with what we got".
The game flows and looks pretty well, i wasn't expecting anything this fun. While there are many graphical glitches, shit like falling thru the floor and reappearing and heads doing funny things like turning backwards, the char models and animation are pretty good. And of course the fatalities range from wtf was that dumb shit (Quan Chi) to wow that was just fuckin cool (Kitana and Hsu Hao). Overall i'd say i'm left fairly impressed with the char design, fatalities and fighting styles. Btw, where's the forward dash? If you can dash backwards (some chars can flip backwards by hitting a button), why can't you dash forward? Notice i said "dash" not run...as in run button... I don't really find the "sidestepping" useful either. Maybe it was my controller but it just didn't seem to happen when i really needed it to. Moves and combos were easy enuff to pull off on my Xbox S controller btw. I don't use that big piece of shit that came with the systems originally.
I really only have 1 other complaint about the game. The endings, i suppose after seeing different endings from MK1 to 3, i should've expected the types of endings in MK:DA. Still pictures with a narator telling the story. Kind of a shame really when Tekken has really nice CG endings. Just seems to me at some point in the production they felt the need to "wrap" this game up to ship it without any further delays. Which is probably why (this isn't confirmed, so don't hold me to this) there are only 1 fatality per main char and no stage/pit fatalities. But gotta give it up to Midway, they didn't screw this up like i thought they would.
This review was for the Xbox version, in case your a retard and you didn't see that in the title. Haven't even wanted to try the Gamecube version because that controller is ass for fighting games. And from what i've heard the PS2 version has a bit longer load times. S controller worked really well for this game, its a keeper i'd say.
P.S. Gamefaqs message board trolls need to stop with the retarded hidden char hoaxes.
P.P.S. Bring back the nutcracker and pit fatalities kthxbye
-FuckAss!
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Screens courtesy GameSpot
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