Nintendo Consoles

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Posted by binarymessiah on 09/22/2019
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Uncategorized, Xbox One, Xbox360. Leave a comment

cq5dam.thumbnail.319.319Publisher: Ubisoft8

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Release Date: 03/04/2014 (PS3, PC, X360) 03/13/2018 (PS4, XONE), 09/25/2018 (NS)

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $59.99

Also Available On

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windows

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Good ‘ol South Park. One of the granddaddies of television backlash. Before Family Guy was South Park. An adult cartoon featuring four children living in a rural town of South Park, Colorado who run into various antics and adventures. The series is still ongoing and started in 1997. I remember fondly as a kid not being allowed to watch the show unless my parents watched it first, and if it wasn’t too graphic, we could watch a re-run. The Stick of Truth is a turn-based RPG with roots from the show and features the same humor as well.

You play as The New Kid, or Sir Douchebag despite Cartman ignoring whatever you name your character, which is hilarious. You’re a voiceless protagonist that is swept into the children’s D&D game of The Stick of Truth. There are two factions fighting over it, the Elves and the Knights. Your goal is to continuously get the Stick back from the various people who steal it and it leads to one crazy adventure. Throughout the game, you also have to recruit two factions that are the girls and Goths. This leads to various interesting areas like a UFO where everyone is getting anally probed, to shrinking down to a gnome and battling on the bed your parents are having sex on to crawling into Mr. Slave’s anus and fighting through his intestines. Yeah, it has over the top humor that will offend most and is one of the most graphic games I have ever played, but that’s not a bad thing.

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Outside of wandering around the town of South Park discovering the few side quests there are,  you can shoot things down and bash open things to find a hidden treasure. Just like any RPG, you have armor, weapons, consumables, and cosmetic items. The weapons and armor come in steadily and I was always happy to have a new weapon that let me hit harder. Depending on the class you choose it will affect what weapons are available in the game as you can only find weapons for that class. There are fast travel points, which are a lifesaver. You have four different abilities you acquire throughout the game such as shoot, buddy commands, shrinking, and using your anal probe to teleport. These are all context-sensitive so you can only use them when you’re allowed, but they give a sense of discovery as you can access parts of the game later on that were blocked before. Your magic consists of…farting. Yes, you fart for magic and you have four magic attacks you learn. Dragonshout, Cup-a-Spell, Nagasaki, and the Sneaky Squeaker. These sound downright hilarious and absurd, but who still don’t laugh at fart jokes?

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Combat is where the meat of the game is and it’s flawed for sure, but works. You can only have one other person in your party, but the enemies can come at you as large as groups of six. A strategy is key here, especially during boss fights, as you need to balance consumables, magic, power attacks, abilities, and what your partner is capable of. It’s good to know that the Nazi Zombies can’t be grossed out, but are only weak to bleeding. You can hit them all you want, but you will only do 1 point of damage until their bleeding effects stack up. It’s not too hard to figure out and I only died a couple of times through the whole game. Any RPG fan will be able to dive in and understand right away. The combat is surprisingly deep, but these mystery buffs can frustrate some.

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The game is also not particularly long-running at 8 hours if you just finish the main quests. It’s a fun story with awesome humor and tons of references to South Park episodes and geek culture. South Park isn’t afraid to be bold and do what it does best. The jabs at right-wing politics are especially funny as well as name brand references and various other things. South Park’s characters have always been memorable and stand the test of time. This is by far the best South Park game ever made and it captures the show perfectly. Of course, the game isn’t for everyone as some of the humor may come off as childish, crude, brash, or just downright offensive, which is fine. Everyone’s sense of humor is different, but that doesn’t stop this from being a bad game. It may be too simple at times, with combat that can drag on too long, but a lot of love and effort was put into this by the guys who made Fallout 2, New Vegas, and Divinity: Original Sin. I can’t complain there.

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Punch-Out!!

Posted by binarymessiah on 08/16/2019
Posted in: Nintendo Consoles, Wii. Leave a comment

35591-punch-outPublisher: Nintendo7.0

Developer: Next Level Games

Release Date: 05/18/2009

Rating: Everyone 10+

MSRP: $49.99

Available Exclusively On

wii

 

 

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Punch-Out!! is a Nintendo staple as it was one of the first established exclusives of the NES. Playing as Little Mac, you run through a gauntlet of characatures with varying difficulty to put your reflexes to the test. Punch-Out!! is a remake of that game and utilizes the Wii motion controls.

Let’s get down to the dirty business of this game. In essence, this is an arcade game you must perfect to the T without missing a beat. Your reflexes are required to be lightning-fast to get very far in this game. Each character has a unique set of 5 moves that require memorization and pattern recognition or you will simply never get past the Title Bout of the Minor Circuit which is when the game gets really hard. The first three characters aren’t very difficult and are just warm-ups for what’s to come. You can duck, dodge left or right, and block, but blocking is rarely used as most attacks can’t be blocked. You can then jab and hook left or right. The controls are the same as the NES version, and this makes the game overly simple for some or just enough for others. Newcomers may find this game too shallow while veterans will feel right at home.

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That’s where the motion controls come in. For a game that requires response time in the milliseconds’ motion controls just don’t cut it. I got through the first two circuits with them, but after so long I had to switch to the buttons on the Wii remote as I need to be that much quicker. Using the nunchuk and remote you can jab left or right and then dodge with the C-stick. I found this to be more complicated than it needed to me and punching with the motion controls just doesn’t feel like punching but more mindless shaking. The Wii remote on its side is the best way to go here or even the classic controller.

That’s the essence of Punch-Out!!. Soda Popinski took me 90 minutes to beat and maybe two dozen restarts as you have to learn his patterns and when to dodge his moves. He also drinks soda to refill his health and you only get a split second to knock it out of his hand. There are also taunts that some characters do that can earn you stars for Star punches that do extra damage, but these are rare and hard to get. Outside of the main career mode, there is Exhibition and a two-player mode so it’s definitely light on modes and things to do. This game is not for casual players despite seeming like it is. This is for hardcore arcade goers or veterans of the original. I thought I was going to blow through this game in a couple of hours, but I spent that one a few characters alone.

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It does get incredibly frustrating needing to have such perfect timing and reflexes and almost seems unnecessary. Sadly, there are no difficulty changes, but there are a few hidden secrets that can give you an edge. When the ref is counting down you can rapidly tap 1 and 2 to regain health. At the end of each round, you can press – and hear a chime and you will refill your health. This only works twice though. This leads to my biggest complaint of the game: You never do more than a smidge of damage to each character and there’s no way to level up and get more powerful. I had to widdle away at the health when a character could knock me out in two hits. I found this heavily unbalanced and unfair. Shouldn’t Little Mac get stronger as he fights and shouldn’t there be a training mode with mini-games to level up? It just makes sense. This game is too similar to the NES version and carries over all of its flaws.

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As it stands, Punch-Out!! is a really fun game of reflexes and timing with interesting and funny characters, but it lacks modes, a way to get stronger, and restarting matches two to three dozen times just isn’t fun after a while. The motion controls also just don’t work for this kind of game that requires precise movements and response times. I also wish there were some original characters and maybe not rely on this being a remake of a 25-year-old game. At the end of the day, this would have been a good rental, but for $50 there’s just not enough meat here to justify that cost.

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Excite Truck

Posted by binarymessiah on 08/15/2019
Posted in: Nintendo Consoles, Wii. Leave a comment

76080_frontPublisher: Nintendo6.0

Developer: Monster Games, Inc.

Release Date: 11/19/2006

Rating: Everyone

MSRP: $49.99

Available Exclusively On

wii

 

 

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Most people think of Excite Bike on the NES when they were the word Excite with Nintendo, but a truck series? It intrigued people and had the potential to be as addictive as Excite Bike all those years ago. Being a launch title on the Wii, just like Excite Bike was for NES, it had a lot of hardcore Nintendo fans excited. Insane speeds, jumps, stunts, smashing? Was this Excite Bike evolved for the next generation?

The short answer is no, and the long answer is God, no, but it does have some good merits. While not really resembling anything Excite Bike related, not even a track editor, it has its name and name only. Excite Truck pits generic monster trucks against each other and equally generic tracks turboing and drifting around corners to rack up as many stars as you can. This includes jumping through rings, morphing terrain, and getting invincibility power-ups. Sounds exciting, and it is quite thrilling, but it’s all flash and no substance.

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The entire game is controlled with just the Wii remote on its side and you steer by turning the remote. The controls right off the bat are way too sensitive and this is especially noticeable once you are going at mach speeds and on cars that don’t have a high grip rating. I crashed into trees and went off course numerous times, but thankfully if you mash the 2 button fast enough you can hop back on track with a boost. Another underlying issue is the track design isn’t built for these insane speeds. It’s like they finished building the tracks and then decided to make the cars faster. A lot of times I would be a top speed-boosting through jumps only to jump farther than the turn or overshoot things. When you’re going this fast you shouldn’t have to hold back on the boost, it defeats the purpose. I’m not going to strategically manage my boost as most arcade games don’t do this. It feels like they were trying to make the player compensate for their mistake by letting you go too fast.

The speed and squirreliness of the cars lead to missed pick up items such as the terrain morphs (they add a jump in front of your or lower you down to the water to cool your boost meter) or the invincibility pick up are too small to hit when going at insane speeds. It just feels so unbalanced and not playtested enough. I constantly missed these things unless I slowed down to a crawl, and thankfully the AI is brain dead and incredibly easy as even in my worst races I still made first. There’s just too much to do in this game on the track at these speeds. I don’t want to do 360s in the air, I don’t want to morph the terrain. I want well built, memorable tracks with insane jumps and better physics.

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This leads me to more problems. The lack of content and just the overall meh feeling of everything. The tracks are some of the most generic I have ever seen. Just random turns and jumps with dirt and trees splattered around. I can’t tell one track from the next, and the visuals are so bad (even for Wii standards) that you won’t care. Awful aliasing and flat textures are just everywhere. Outside of the 25 races in the main event, there are challenging that have you racing through gates or flying through rings. Not very exciting honestly. After the first cup was finished I saw all there was that this game offered and it wasn’t much. This is one of the most generic and plain racers on the Wii and it shouldn’t carry the Excite name at all.

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Overall, Excite Truck is a game with an awesome sense of speed, and after about 10 races it all wears off. Horrible track design, generic presentation, lack of content, and just too much speed for tracks not designed for it. I never felt completely in control of a race or my car no matter how good I was at it. A track editor would have been nice to make better ones than the developers provided, and there’s no online play. At best, it’s a filler launch title that I would have been mad to pay $50 for. It’s just like eating a small bag of potato chips. It’s fun during the 10 minutes it takes to eat them then you toss the bag and forget all about it.

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Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

Posted by binarymessiah on 08/15/2019
Posted in: Nintendo Consoles, PlayStation 3, Sony Consoles, Wii. Leave a comment

220px-Resident_evil_the_umbrella_chronicles_uscoverPublisher: Capcom7.0

Developer: Cavia, Inc.

Release Date: 11/13/2007

MSRP: $49.99

Rating: Mature

Also Available On

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Resident Evil is less known for their light-gun arcade games as these are held in public places that are niche hang out spots. The Wii with its remote and Zapper attachment is just begging to be used as a light-gun and many of these games followed and Capcom jumped on the bandwagon. Umbrella Chronicles is one of the more solid light-gun games on Wii, but it must be played co-op or you’re not going to have a good time.

The game has four chapters with each one following bits and pieces from Resident Evil 0, 1, and 3: Nemesis respectively with the final chapter being an exclusively unique section just for this game. Each chapter has three or four sub-chapters and a few side chapters that are shorter and feature an alternate perspective featuring Ada Wong, Albert Wesker, and one Umbrella operative Hunk. Story-wise, don’t expect to get a comprehensive telling of the Resident Evil series as pre-rendered cut-scenes are chopped up and it’s not very cohesive or easy to understand. This is more for people who played the older games before.

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Outside of that the shooting itself is rather solid. There are over a dozen weapons in the game with your side pistol having unlimited ammo and various other guns like sub-machine, shotgun, rocket launchers, and hand-cannons making up the majority of the arsenal, but the ammo for these guns is extremely limited, and that’s the first downfall of this game. Why make an action game from survival horror and keep the ammo count low? The pistol does very little damage and just forget about beating a boss with it. Ammo is incredibly scarce and requires you to have a partner as some scenarios and waves just can’t be defeated with only the pistol. Hordes of enemies sometimes over a dozen will spawn in front of you and popping them with 8-10 shots each with a pistol is just not feasible. With a second player, it’s possible, but solo is not. After chapter 3 I had to resort to a partner because it just gets too hard and too demanding for one player.

There are a good variety of enemies in the game with some not appearing until the final chapter, and the bosses are all unique and incredibly challenging and require great reflexes and aim and actual skill. Bosses are recycled from previous games, but fighting them in a 3D environment is pretty awesome. Some bosses have multiple stages, but these repeat in a cycle and can even include quick time events that require button presses or a quick waggle. Quick time events are peppered throughout the game, and thankfully not abused, but they don’t appear on-screen long enough and the waggle ones won’t trigger unless you start waggling the second it appears on the screen. This can lead to frustrating deaths.

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Speaking of deaths, if you find a health spray this acts as an extra life and can resurrect you on the spot, but without one, you start at the last checkpoint. There are herbs lying around for health, ammo, grenades, and barrels just begging to be blown up to take out large groups. This is one of the most difficult light-gun games I have ever played, and sadly it’s impossible to finish solo without having unlocked the infinite ammo. The first two chapters have a nice difficulty scale and it just ramps up way too hard on chapter 3 and 4. There’s also an issue with the game feeling too repetitive and not having enough variety like vehicle scenes similar to other light-gun games. It relies too much on just shooting the same enemies ad nauseum.

Let’s talk about production values. Capcom is never one to skimp on a Resident Evil game, usually, and while Umbrella Chronicles looks fine it shows it doesn’t push the Wii in the right direction. It looks like a GameCube game at best with muddy low-resolution textures, but somehow there’s still slowdown when too much is going on. It really could have looked better, even on the Wii as there are better-looking games on the system, but what’s here is fine. The menus are pretty ugly with not much going on and everything looks so blurry and low-res. I need to redact my GameCube comparison from earlier, it’s more like a Dreamcast port, to be honest.

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Overall, Umbrella Chronicles is a decent light-gun game that requires a second player or you won’t get very far. The boss fights are bombastic and fun and each is unique, but the same enemies repeat over and over and the scenarios don’t change. You’re just running down hallways or open areas blasting enemies. The game goes on way longer than it needs to with each chapter taking about 30-45 minutes to complete if you include the bonus missions. There is a lack in variety when it comes to other stuff to do to make this game just more exciting to play. The extras aren’t worth unlocking as they require S ranks in each chapter, most of the time, and after finishing this game once there’s no real reason to go back.

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Super Mario Odyssey

Posted by binarymessiah on 07/16/2019
Posted in: Editor's Choice, Nintendo Consoles, Switch. Leave a comment

141694bPublisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 10/27/2017

Rating: Everyone 10+

MSRP: $59.99

Available Exclusively On

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Nintendo always has a knack for making one huge innovation to their franchises per console cycle and the Switch is no exception. Odyssey is a well-crafted game taking many years of experience and gameplay honing and creating one of the best video game experiences in the last decade. Odyssey is massive with dozens of hours of content and a variety of things to do.

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Like all Mario games, there’s not much of a story, just your typical Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach story again with no cut scenes or anything else, but that’s fine as Mario is all about the gameplay. The main gameplay hook in this Mario game is his hat. He can throw it to take control of enemies, for combat, and to get out of reach items. The hat works so naturally and feels great to use that I never had any issues. Once you arrive in the Cap Kingdom you will be leaping and bounding similarly to Super Mario Galaxy in the way Mario moves and jumps. Taking control of certain enemies give you special combat abilities or allows you to access certain areas Mario can’t. It’s so much fun and I always looked forward to the next thing I could control.

Another element is the new 2D levels. These are hidden throughout the game and give you moons which are needed to power up your Odyssey ship to get to Bowser. There are 880 moons in the world. I know it’s a monster of a task, but it’s so much fun. Your first playthrough allows you to get the first batch, then after you beat the game, there are meteor rocks that you can smash in each world and they send the rest of the moons flying. Anyways, these 2D levels are just like the 8-bit games with Mario wrapped around the 3D world jumping and hopping along.

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Mario can also swim, fly (with controller enemies), and pretty much do anything you can imagine as the game is so varied and there’s so much to see and do. Not one world is alike and each one has new things to do and discover. Mario can also change his hats and outfits this time around by buying them with coins or using special world-specific coins. Some outfits are needed to access bonus areas. These bonus areas are actually the most fun and challenging, but well worth it for the moons.

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There are boss fights with Bowsers minions the Boonals which are evil bunnies. The boss fights are really easy and so is Bowser at the end of the game. It’s clear that the game doesn’t rely on bosses for challenges as some bonus areas had me stuck for over an hour restarting until I got all the jumps right. Thankfully most of the game is a perfect challenge and some of the challenges are just figuring out how to get to the next moon or bonus area. Some are in plain sight while others require you to think a little bit and do certain things. There are music note challenges as well as scarecrow timer challenges. All of these things combined make for an exciting game that is incredibly hard to put down.

I really can’t find anything negative to say except that all you do is collect moons and there’s no other end goal. There are at least fast travel points in each world so even that isn’t a problem. The visuals are fantastic and the entire games just feel alive with character and personality. It’s hard to hate a game made this well, 30 years of perfection really shows with zero control issues, framerate problems, or anything else. No matter how you slice it this is essentially a perfect game. The amount of variety just boggles my mind and I don’t know how the developers managed to make every bonus area, challenge, and the world completely unique, especially to house 880 moons.

Overall, Super Mario Odyssey is a must-own for Switch fans and a good reason to buy one. There is no other platform that offers this kind of gaming perfection other than Nintendo. They are masters of video games and it shows in every one of their unique main title games.

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Rogue Trooper Redux

Posted by binarymessiah on 07/07/2019
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

91eicFlNDnL._AC_SX430_Publisher: Sold Out6.0

Developer: Rebellion

Release Date: 10/17/2017

Rating: Teen

MSRP: $19.99

Also Available On

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When playing Rogue Trooper I kept asking myself “Why?” to everything. Why is there no plot? Why was this game even considered good enough to remaster? Why did this game exist in the first place? It’s not all bad, definitely playable and has some challenging gameplay, but it could have been so much more, right? Well, meet Rebellion! Famous for some of the most mediocre games in the early to mid-2000’s that weren’t horrible, but barely passable and very forgettable. I played the original on PC back in 2009 and it wasn’t all that great back then either.

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You play as a GI named Rogue (how original) who is a blue alien dude stuck in the middle of a war with a race called the Norts. There’s your story, have a nice day! I’m not kidding at all. This game has more plot holes than a screen door and it boggles my mind as to why they even bothered. These GIs are immune to every poison known to exist, okay…but why? Then there is a single poison that was found to work and the Norts want to mass produce it to wipe out the GIs, again, why? There are no answers just lines of dialog that needs a lot of back story to explain what is even going on. The characters are paper thin, don’t have much screen time, and the voice acting is atrocious. So the only reason to play Rogue Trooper is for the shooting and that’s average at best.

Rogue has a gun that is “smart” as well as his backpack and helmet. He installs chips that are cut out from dead comrades and it gives his equipment an AI. That’s a pretty neat idea and it’s the only thing in this game that seemed to have been fully fleshed out. Rogue gathers salvage from dead bodies and piles and uses these to craft ammo, new weapons, and upgrades. You don’t pick up any ammo in the game as you can only craft it. You do have a pistol on hand that has infinite ammo in case you run out, but there’s a constant challenge of keeping your supply up and looting dead bodies. There are a few on-rails levels to mix things up, so the game isn’t boring ever, and the challenge is quite nice as standing out in the open for too long will get you dead and there’s a halfway decent cover system in place.

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Rogue can also equip a silencer to his machine gun and sniper rifle as well as use a decoy and attraction tool, but I never actually used these. The game even has a stealth mechanic in place, but after I got the silencer I didn’t bother sneaking around as sniper shots are one hit kills. You can also place your Gunnar as a turret so it can cover doors that get unlocked, but again, this seemed like a wasted mechanic as the game isn’t quite sure if it wanted to be a tactical stealth game or a run and gun shooter. This game is a living breathing embodiment of early to mid-2000’s third-person shooters and it hasn’t aged very well. Extremely linear level design, awkward animations, barely manageable aiming, and lots of on rails and scripted events.

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At least the game had a marginal graphics update and looks decent enough but you can still see the age of the game behind the shiny new surface. There’s also a multiplayer mode that is basically pointless since no one is playing this online, and never really did, and the entire game can be beaten in just 4 hours. There’s absolutely no reason to go back either. So I go back to my original question, why? Why should you play a dated 15-year-old game in 2019? Maybe to experience a type of shooter that was incredibly popular at the height of the PS2 era? Maybe you have curious memories of this game and want to relive them? The answer is, you’re not missing out on anything if you skip this, and you don’t gain anything from playing it. Thankfully it’s dirt cheap, and I can only recommend this to the curious.

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Mortal Kombat: Deception

Posted by binarymessiah on 05/16/2019
Posted in: Gamecube, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PlayStation 2, Sony Consoles, Xbox. Leave a comment

37546-mortal-kombat-deception-premium-pack-xbox-front-coverPublisher: Midway

Developer: Midway

Release Date: 10/04/2004

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $49.99

Also Available On

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The very first game I ever pre-ordered. I have never been more excited for a game in my life. Watching gameplay trailers on a PC from 1997 on a 19″ CRT monitor while I stash away allowance bit by bit to get the Premium Pack for PS2. 2004 was an exciting year for gaming and for Mortal Kombat. With Deadly Alliance receiving mostly positive reviews, but a lot of criticism from reviewers, Deception turned everything to 11 and added interactive arenas, more game modes, online fighting. Yes, the online part was the biggest selling point of Deception.

This is the direct sequel to Deadly Alliance. Quan Chi and Shang Tsung have failed to take over and Onaga The Dragon King has decided to rise from Outworld and claim everything as his. A man named Shujinko is now the game’s lead (the first of many to come in later games) who must stop the Dragon King and reverse the actions he made during the Konquest mode that helped give Onaga his power.

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Let’s talk about Konquest mode first as most people will dive into it right away. It’s awful and should never have existed. It’s an expansion on Konquest from Deadly Alliance in which Raiden just walks along a path and each “level” is a training tutorial for all the characters. This is an adventure mode where you get quests, find the treasure for the Krypt, hidden secrets, and find out the back story to Deception, as well as meet many MK fighters and surprises. Sounds great on paper right? Well, it’s horribly executed as one of the worst attempts at a free-roaming RPG/adventure hybrid I’ve ever seen. Shujinko runs around in supersonic fast forward motion, the realms are void of any life, they are terribly laid out, and the worlds rely on a grid system to figure out where every secret and item is. The problem is that the map is useless with no actual grid on the map so you run around for 10 minutes trying to find D2 or H8 only to realize it’s locked away and you can’t go there until you complete the Konquest.

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That’s the main downfall of Konquest. Quests aren’t logged and the entire game has to be played with a guide. It would take dozens and dozens of hours to figure everything out yourself as locations to solve quests and even chests are incredibly cryptic or specific. Some chests with Krypt keys only appear at certain days of the month and times and you would never know without a guide. You can meditate to make time move by faster, but this whole entire game mode is just frustrating, messy, and irritating. Doing the actual main quests are fine as there’s always a large green pillar of light pointing where to go, but talking to a random character and getting a one-sentence quest saying to find a gem is not how quests should be done.

On top of all this, the worlds are terribly laid out. They try to force a look onto each realm such as Chaosrealm having magic portals that project to you various little floating islands that are “chaotically” made up and don’t make sense. Orderrealm is just a giant circle floating in the sky with “order” to the layout and it looks nice and dystopian. It’s a little corny with the way the worlds are represented, but it’s kind of cool to finally explore these areas despite there being nothing to do in them. The visuals are also abysmal as this looks like an early PS2 game that launched, even a little worse than that. Horrendous textures and models, awful voice acting, and laughable animations. It looks like an amateur game developer made this in a weekend.

Outside of Konquest is when things are much better when you actually get to fighting. If any game were to use realistic martial arts it’s Mortal Kombat. This fighting system and this era of games aren’t most peoples’ favorite. The realism is nice with some good animations and each character having two martial arts and a weapon style. You can branch into these styles with long combo strings, but that’s where the issue lies. This realistic slower fighting style is in contrast to the fast-paced action of the 2D games. The characters look like stiff plastic dolls and the combat is all about memorized combos. It’s fun, and it works with Mortal Kombat, but it’s also not the best way to play these games. The slower fighting pace means more strategy is involved and a new Breaker system has been added to quickly get out of combos.

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The interactive environments are some of the coolest features of Deception as they are basically fatalities within a stage. There are yellow lines that indicate when a player can get knocked out and take damage to a new tier and red lines that will kill the player. The arenas are large enough to where a game of tug-of-war always ensues and it makes playing tenser, especially online. Do you just knock them into the trap or play with them so you can do a fatality? Speaking of fatalities, each character has two unique ones and some are great and some are lame. Li Mei, for example, has two fatalities that are just boring. Super punches to the chest and you explode? Yawn. Kick your head off? Seen it before. Some others are rather runny and unique, but there are also Hara Kiris that allow the loser to do a fatality on themselves taking the glory away from the opponent. Whoever inputs there code first gets to take the fun.

Outside of combat, you can play Puzzle Kombat which is just Street Fighter Puzzle with MK characters. At the end of each round there is a fatality unique to the player, but getting your power level up means you can perform a special move that each character has. It can be played online as well and is super addicting and can be a game on its own. The last mode is Chess Kombat which is one of the most unique modes to ever grace a fighting game. Just like a game of chess, you can pick which character is what piece and you play chess, but instead of just knocking a piece over you fight it out MK style. Each piece gets a certain amount of health so pawns of the least amount of health. It’s a great twist that adds more skill to the game and can also be played online. It’s a ton of fun and I hope this mode returns to future games.

Besides the Krypt where you can unlock various stuff for fans like promo videos, behind the scenes art, and various goodies, there’s not much else. Online play is incredibly smooth with a full lobby that you can talk to other players in, challenge players, and you have a win/loss ratio next to your name. I never had any connection drops and playing online extends the longevity of the game tenfold.

I also want to talk about the new characters. Since MK4, Midway has had trouble adding interesting new characters and that trend continues for the third time. Dairou and Havik are just boring awful characters that don’t have any personality or soul. They feel forced and I’d rather have a classic character put in than these two.

Overall, MK: Deception is a fantastic fighting game that is only hampered by slower combat, and a horrible Konquest mode that must be played to unlock half the game’s roster and extra costumes. Puzzle and Chess Kombat are excellent modes that add dozens of hours of fun, and online play is always welcome.

Note: As of May 31, 2014, you can no longer play Deception online due to GameSpy servers being shut down. Even then, not a single person played this online past 2006-2007. As Armageddon and other fighters came out Deception’s user base quickly fell after the first 18 months and never went back up. Get a buddy to play next to you instead.

mkd