Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

"First Impressions, and not good ones."

I can almost feel the anti-me flame war brewing from kombat-crazed fanboys. But, to give myself some fall-back, I'm saying that this is, in fact, my first impression of the game after playing it for about two hours.

Graphics - 10 : The graphics on the game are full of nice touches. However, nowadays, getting a 10 on a PS2 or an X-Box should be a standard. If you make a game on a system, especially with the power they have available, having crappy graphics is just inexcusable. The graphical touches like the backgrounds, and remaining damage, and the ridiculous amounts of blood are well done, and fun to watch. Definitely accomplishes some graphical superiority.

Sound - 6 : The voices are very mortal-kombaty. In other words, they all sound the same. The music is also nothing to rave about, but it's not bad at all.

Plot - 5 : Well, it's better than the last plots, being that there IS one. However it doesn't really develop, and fights are chosen seemingly at random. But it IS a fighting game after all.

Control - 3 : Now, granted, I've only played for a short time, but I'm already seriously disappointed. Yeah yeah, one button switches forms, but in all honesty, the weapons were one of the most retarded things I ever saw added into #4, and I wasn't at all impressed to see them again. This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a ''pick up and play'' fighter. You will likely need to spend a good amount of time in training mode to be anywhere near a match for the computer. Controls look simple, but the jerkiness mean you either combo with every hit, or you get creamed.
Another grossly disappointing control maneuver, is that you have to resort to basically randomly trying very button combination you can conceive of in order to pull off the extra long combos or fatalities (and I hope no animalities, because those were as stupid as the weapons in #4). No instructions come in the manual, and you get most of the moves from pausing in-game and looking at a move list. If you can't figure out the moves, they simply suggest you look on line for them. Gee, thanks. Midway couldn't take ten minutes to even put hints into figuring out what the moves are, and then simply wash themselves of any responsibility for it by saying ''Just go online!''. Can you find them? Probably. But it could have been handled better.
Switching forms is simple enough, but combo-ing them into one another (which so far I've only seen the computer do as it bent my roommate over and had it's way with him) seem to me to be obnoxiously difficult. Fights are, in general, suffering from the very stop-and-go sort of style that killed every kombat from #3 on. I get a very ''KillerInstinct'' feel from playing. Very stiff, blow-trading type of fighting. You can not hold back to block, you can only, ONLY use the block button, usually located on the right trigger. (I should mention that I absolutely hate using triggers in fighting games. They're awkward and difficult, which is why I hardly played any fighting game ever released on Dreamcast.) Blocking in whole is entirely worthless against the computer at later levels, when it will simply throw you instantly, or go the opposite way of the attack. Which brings me to another really weak point in the game...

AI - 1 : Absolutely abysmal, from what I've seen so far. It suffers from what every single predecessor has suffered from. It was so obvious to me watching, that I told my roomie ''Wait until the 4th fight when the computer decides to rape you'', and, like clockwork, it did. I watched my roommate try in vain to beat a level claiming to be at 45% difficulty while the computer gleefully pulled all kinds of insane combos and fatalities. The game suffers from a chronic AI disorder. One level, the computer is a pussycat. When you surpass that 1% margin, it moves from ''decent opponent'' to ''I'm-the-gamer-fanboy-who-spent-the-last-year-memorizing-every-move-and-infinite-combo-from-insider-game-info-and-will-now-violate-you-with-my-sneaker'' difficulty. I was unhappy with this sort of crap in Ultimate MK or whatever the hell they released a few years ago, and it's obvious they decided it didn't need changing. Yeah, big oops there.

Overall - 5 : This game barely pushes an average overall score from me in my initial impression from it. Horrible, trigger-reliant controls mixed with jerky, blow-trading combat worthy of that old school NES game that had you punch a guy till he fell backwards into a manhole. (Bonus points if you remember that game)

Alrighty guys, flame away. If I get another impression from the game (assuming I ever touch it again) I might revise this review, but for the time being, Deadly Alliance is a venture in mediocrity.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/02, Updated 11/30/02