Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

The best out of the bunch.   August 8, 2008
I know its been awhile since MKDA been out, but I'm making a review anyway.
This game was well thought out and the story was well planned. It actually had a plot to it.
The combo moves were great in it, the weapons were a good idea, all the characters had a background story to it, the fatalities were good, But the best part was this new idea of Shoving, Power-ups, Escaping, and the best part Reversals. Doing reversals was so much fun, and so beautifully timed to.
I also like the idea of training mode, all the previous games never had that, so that too was a good idea.
They also put in the good ole Test Your Might game in it, so that was a plus. "They don't put that in there games as often as they should."
The only pet peeves that I saw were... Sonja wasn't able to do her leg grab flip move, her bicycle kick, and her arm ring move. Nor did they make Shang Tsung morph, and he can't siphon souls out of the soul-nato in the background, but that was forgivable.
And thats it, all in all they did a pretty good job on this. It just had a few bugs in it.

P.S. Its better to own this game on X-Box cause the affects are better. Example; Sub-Zero's freeze move has a lot more detail. Game Cube doesn't have that.

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Average Arcade Fighter (3 of 3 Found this Helpful)   July 31, 2008
Mortal Kombat- Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance is the fifth installment in the main Mortal Kombat series. This would be the first game to appear on the PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube so they needed a bang to ensure the continued success of the series. The game is made as if it was an arcade game, but has so many extras it will blow your mind. I want to say there are over 800 extras to unlock. Still, the game doesn't impress me enough to give it anything but a little above average.

Graphics- 8/10
This was the first Generation of Mortal Kombat to be on the new line of video game systems. Graphics had to be top notch if they wanted to make a good impression. They did deliver on graphics for the most part. All characters in the game look very good and are nicely designed. Each character has three different facial characteristics that change as you are brutalized during a fight. All of this looks exceptionally well done.

Arenas are all well designed. They all have similar boundaries and sizes, but overall they are nice looking. Some levels have traps set up; this is a new feature to the Mortal Kombat series. There are statues that spit acid, or ice sickles that get in your way of battle. These usually don't have any major effect on battles, but are better than a flat landscape.

Blood has always been a huge factor in Mortal Kombat. Often times this was the only thing that made Mortal Kombat different than other fighting systems. This game however features way too much blood. It flows like a fountain as you hit your opponent. It is far too unrealistic since the only visible place that the characters have cuts on is their face. The blood is too thick and almost looks cartoony.

Story- 5/10
Liu Kang, the winner of the original Mortal Kombat and Earth's best fighter, has been killed. Shang Tsung and Quan Chi have teamed up and overthrown Shao Kahn, leader of Outworld. After this they quickly assaulted Liu Kang and violently killed him. They have discovered an undead army and are taking souls rise the army. Raiden has established a team of warriors to stop this evil plot. This is all explained in an opening sequence.

Honestly, this games story doesn't even matter. The game is an arcade fighter and it just doesn't matter. Once you beat Arcade mode with a character, you will get an ending for them. For the most part, this is a fairly lack luster reward for beating the game.

Sound- 7/10
The character's grunts and yells all sound fairly well. It is just what you would expect from an arcade fighting game. The music is a low tone background sound. The music never really adds to the gameplay like it should. Also, the music is fairly repetitious.

There is however a added music video on the game by Adema. The song is called "Immortal" and was designed especially for this game. If you like Metal then you are going to love this song. If you don't then odds are you are going to not care for this song. I wish the song were implemented into the actual gameplay of the game and not just as a bonus.

Gameplay- 6/10
The game is designed almost exactly like the previous titles. You pick a fighter, and then you fight a bunch of random fights until you reach the boss. The difficulty steadily climbs as you defeat opponents. Overall this is a poor gameplay mode and any fun from it wears off quickly.

They have added a Konquest Mode, which is basically just a tutorial mode. This is nice for anyone that doesn't know how to button mash. You can learn the special moves of the characters and some good combos. It's not really fun to play through and only serves as a tutorial on how to do moves.

One thing they did right in this game is adding a surplus of extras. As you play through arcade mode you will earns Koins, which you can use to purchase extras from the Crypt. You do not get to choose what extra it is, it is all concealed from you until you purchase something. The more expensive ones are usually things like characters and arenas. Cheaper ones are usually concept art or concept videos. Some of these are nice and some are just plain filler. Overall it makes you want to play through the game to at least to get the more expensive extras.

Gameplay itself is broken up by mini-games every three fights you do. One mini-game consists of you watching cups shift around and you try to guess the one that the Mortal Kombat symbol was under. Another has you button mashing to try to raise a bar so you can break something. These are both fairly fun and help break up the tedious gameplay.

At the end of the day this is just a fighting game. The engine itself isn't exactly the quality of Soul Calibur. The characters moves aren't fluid enough and are often robotic. All the characters have three different fighting styles, which helps change up the gameplay. Still, the game is just a average fighter and you won't play it for more than a few hours before becoming bored.

Difficulty- 10/10 (Note- This is how much I like the difficulty)
The games progression of difficulty is pretty well done. If the game is too easy for you, you can always choose a higher difficulty. If it is too hard, you can choose an easier difficulty. As you play arcade mode, the game will get harder and harder as you beat more people. If you lose enough though, the game will get easier.

Even the mini-games have progression. If you lose one, you will get an easier version next time. If you win the mini-game you will get a harder version. This is all a very nice touch. Anyone can play through the game with whatever type of difficulty suits him or her.

Overall- 6/10
Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance is just not that impressive of a game. The simply arcade type gameplay just is not fun in this day and age. Even the insane extras cannot save this one. The fifth game in this series is just too much of the same old stuff we've been playing for years. Now you have much better graphics, but at the end of the day that doesn't make any difference to a real gamer.

If you are looking for a strong fighting game, then just keep on looking. Combat is robotic and just not fun. The gore is fairly bad. The arenas, despite looking different, all have the same layout as far as spacing goes. The story is not important at all. With a game with very little story and bad gameplay, you are basically left with nothing good in a game at all.

I cannot recommend this game for anyone. There are too many fighting games that are much better. If you have to buy this game, I will say that the difficulty progression is very well done. Unless you are a truly horrible gamer though, this won't affect you though. I would suggest checking out Soul Calibur, Tekken, or Virtua Fighter before even considering this game.

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A+ Experience   April 6, 2008
i don't have a consol test it. If the guys say there is a problem with it when it gets to Afghanistan, I will let you know :)

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Ehh--   December 28, 2007
I thought that this game would be like the original Mortal Combat, but i was disappointed. The graphics are good, but it is really boring on career mode, and very difficult to unlock new characters.

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Shows where the first installment is always the best   April 1, 2007
Deadly Alliance was the first new outing for Midway with sixth generation systems PS2 and Xbox. The game adds new features to the Mortal Kombat franchise and has a ton of replay value with loads of extras including unlockable secret characters, bonus art, and the groundbreaking Konquest mode. In comparison to Deception and Armageddon, Deadly Alliance just seems better and more original. It doesn't suffer from badly implemented new features present in Deception and contrived storylines present in Armageddon. In addition, Deception axed a number of characters from Deadly Alliance's roster just like the Mortal Kombat 2 did for the original MK1. Whereas this first tactic worked in the 90's, it just failed to deliver this time around.

The new mixed weapons combat system that Deadly Alliance uses works most of the time. The weapons system seems to have been copped from the Soul Calibur series. Once the player learns the various nuances of each character's fighting styles they can incorporate counter moves accordingly in the heat of battle. In arcade mode, I found myself rapidly switching between styles to counter my opponent's assault. This is the key to achieving success in Deadly Alliance. One gripe though is that the fighting style would always reset to default at the end of the round. The player has to quickly switch back or get caught off guard. Costing precious seconds and giving the opponent the upper hand to pull of a fast series combos for quick damage.

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