Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

"A slight turnaround in the history of Midway"

I used to be a hardcore Midway player. I started worth Mk 1 and that was one of the best in the entire series. Back then, I played it day and night. However, as Midway began to continue its efforts, their games began to decay. When MK 3 on SNES came out, I was eager to get it, but for some odd reason, it was lacking something. I played it a few times and from the start, I felt like I had thrown $59.99 into the trash. As the game progressed, it became worse. Then, it became worse and worse, and for some time, I began to believe that the company had just become one of those that have terminated their productivity. MK 4 on gameplay was awful, and the game on Gameboy advance was even worse.
Then Midway continued their spiral downward, but this time, they actually started to put effort in again. MK Deadly alliance is perhaps the best game Midway pumped out in at least 4 or 5 years, and though that still doesn’t mean a whole lot, they seem to be recovering from the poor games that constitute much of their history.
Seeing that I had wasted much on Midway games before, I was wary. I played this game at the start, and I anticipated, I mean, I played so many Midway games that I could already imagine how the game would suck. Instead, this time, it didn’t happen. I was surprised that I didn’t hate it, in fact this game kind of reversed my poor reputation for Midway games. It was fun, but the same thing happened, I stopped playing very soon because it just still didn’t have much lasting appeal.


Gameplay: 7/10
Pretty good. There are a lot more moves for this game, and the characters have diffident moves. That kind of spiced up the game, but it was still not very fun. The blood looks real, but they use it so often that it loses its sting. Some people play MK because it sheds much blood, but I began hating that idea. Buckets and buckets of blood make the whole thing kind of quaint. Nonetheless, the number of moves for this game is quite astounding, however, the number of characters doesn’t mean that much because too similarities exist between them.

Graphics:9/10
The graphics are very well done, contrary to the past. The characters look real, and they are equally real when injured. Before, fighting games neglected to make characters look any different even if they were on the verge of dying. Not so for this. The characters actually limp and look injured if they were about to die. Other aspects were also superb, including a vert detailed background. The only reason that this didn’t receive the best rating is that I have seen better graphics.


Sound:8/10
This aspect was also OK. The characters can make a lot more sounds. The background music was good, and everything else was appreciable. However, like before, the music got annoying. It wasn’t that the music was poor; it was just that it was kind of repetitious. Most other sound effects were good.


Value: 6/10 to 8/10
Depending if you want this for yourself or if you have plenty of friends or family to play. This game is usually better if you can play multiplayer, but this was not always the case. Some parts of this game is still plain annoying, such as the disgustingness of the scenes. A little gore might be good for a short time, but too much of it takes away the sting, as I mentioned before.

Tilt, Lasting Appeal:5/10
This game has just about the same pitfalls as the older MK. It gets annoying fast. It is advised that you rent this game because it is really fun in the beginning, but after a few days of mass playing, it gets humdrum and boring, (unless if your just cant get bored by endless bloodspilling and same moves and characters).

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/02, Updated 11/24/02