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»Mortal Kombat: Unchained
"PORT-ALITY!"
Years ago, I backed Midway’s pony in the early fighter race. Back then,
the depth of fighters wasn’t quite up to today’s standards. Over the
years, I’ve seen Street Fighter develop into an amazing series while
Mortal Kombat only matured to a certain point before they attempted to
tango with Virtua Fighter and Tekken in the realm of 3D. We all know
how Mortal Kombat 4 turned out.
Not content with failure, Ed Boon attempted again with Mortal Kombat
Deadly Alliance. This was a much better game as a whole, but lacked any
sort of real depth. Even the fans who were easily satisfied with
fatalities and such found it to be less than what they had hoped as
each character had only one finisher each. Shortly after that, Midway
brought fighting fans a sort of new hope for the Mortal Kombat line
with the sequel/update to MK: DA with Mortal Kombat Deception.
Deception added a bunch of characters and continued the storyline of
Deadly Alliance. What’s more, they added a bit more depth to the game
by adding “Breakers” which will break those pesky canned combo strings
the last game forced you to learn in order to get anywhere in the game.
What we have here is Mortal Kombat Unchained, also known as Mortal
Kombat Deception Unchained. This portable rendition features most of
what its console counterparts have with a few added extras as well.
What many people have wondered is, why they didn’t release a portable
version of MK Armageddon. Many believe it to be due to the amount of
characters, but the real reason is that this just is more suitable as a
portable game with its extra modes like Puzzle and Chess Kombat. Both
of these modes are great extras that help break up the fighting and
offer you something else without changing discs.
Puzzle Kombat is a much better game/extra than its chess counterpart.
The puzzle game is much like Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. In it, you
are dealing with multi-colored pieces that you want to gather into
like-color cubes before breaking them with a breaker piece. All the
while, you’re competing against an opponent who, when you’re
successful, is punished with extra falling pieces that land according
to your chosen character’s pattern. You also get specials that can turn
the tides greatly.
In Chess Kombat, you will select your leader, champion, shifter,
sorcerer, and grunts which all move similarly to different pieces in a
real game of chess. You are also allotted various spells that you can
use only once. These can be as minor as healing one of your pieces that
may not have performed as well as you had hoped all the way to outright
killing an enemy piece that you don’t feel like dealing with. This mode
would be quite good were it not for the battles that break up the
chess-like strategy. When one of your pieces attacks or is attacked by
an opponent, you go into a match of Mortal Kombat. This proves to
vastly unbalance an otherwise strategic game by allowing the defender
to defend himself and his square. It’s a cool idea, but only for those
who want to wade through a sluggish chess game only to wait for each
battle.
With the extras aside, I can get into the meat and potatoes of the game
– the fighting. MK Unchained is in no way a balanced game. Certain
characters are just ridiculously high-tiered while others are absolute
trash. The measure of unbalance isn’t even a slight one either. As
such, I suggest that you delve into this game with that in mind and
don’t take losing too seriously.
Just because the game isn’t balanced doesn’t mean that there is no
level of skill involved. In fact, there’s quite a bit of strategic
might packed within the game beyond the basics. For one, you have the
high/low game, but unlike Tekken, there are little to no mid-ranged
hits. Even with a few mid-ranged attacks at your hand, there are no
string attacks that mix up lows and highs. The high/low game is pretty
decent when playing with people who like poking (which is just about
anyone who hasn’t figured out how to do string attacks).
Also, as I stated above, Deception added an extra element in the
Breakers which halt any string attack in its tracks. This makes it so
you’re not entirely defenseless against an assault of multi-style
string attacks.
For those who believe the best defense is a great offense, MKU caters
to your desires. Just under every character’s life meter is another
meter that lights up when an opponent is about to attack. Using a
faster character, you can theoretically destroy anyone without even
looking at the action in great detail if you focus on these lights.
This is where a good amount of unbalance in the game comes from.
A gripe I take up with this may only be familiar to Tekken and Virtua
Fighter fans. What I’m talking about, of course, is frames. Just about
every attack you make leaves you vulnerable for far too long a time.
There’s virtually no way to attack without doing string attacks and
remain safe at the same time. Another thing that I feel is missing
because of this is the ability to immediately finish a combo with a
special move such as a fireball.
One thing that I believe should have been addressed is this ridiculous
style change issue. Why is it that a character who utilizes two styles
can’t manage to combine them in some way or another? I believe they
were looking for a way to keep the moves simple and to keep from using
common fighting game notations made popular by Street Fighter.
Personally, I find the stance switching to be more complicated than is
necessary.
Positively speaking, if a character you use uses a style that another
uses, you already know the majority of that stance’s moves. The
downside of this is that very few characters share any stances.
The controls (or should I say Kontrols?) are very tight. Even though
the game uses taps instead of rolling motions, performing Down, Forward
moves like a QCF works just fine. Forward, Forward taps tend to be a
bit less reliable though, but I believe this is due to the dashing
system. Side-stepping is performed by either holding Down or Up on the
controls.
Next, I’d like to address what I believe to be the most enthralling
mode. I didn’t mention it earlier because I don’t see it as a mini-game
or an extra. This is, of course, the Konquest mode. In it, you take the
role of Shujinko and guide him through his life. The Elder Gods granted
him a power similar to Shang Tsung’s. He is able to adapt his style to
anyone else’s after some training. This is a decent story with an all
but too predictable plot. What it does offer is a sensible reason to
fight through these battles in Mortal Kombat. There are also a fair
amount of quests to accomplish. One of the early ones gave me great
satisfaction when a guy was babbling on about his tooth and I punched
him. After that, he paid me for my “kind” service. That was just all
too good.
When held up to other PSP fighters, MKU is ok looking, but it doesn’t
hold a candle to a fighter like Tekken. The fatalities are generally
dumb and lack any amount of creativity. Things like Goro pulling out
his weapon and stabbing his opponent time and time again just doesn’t
“feel” right. The character portraits often don’t look anything like
their in-game counterparts. I am speaking mainly of the facial details
and such. I will say that the stages look really good and offer a
better variety of ways to end your opponent’s life.
What really irks me about this game is how poorly they ported the sound
over to the PSP. On average, the sound is higher quality than the
graphics, but there are a few instances where the sound utterly fails.
For starters, the voice acting is atrocious, awful, and cheesy. Part of
me believes its supposed to be like that, but even with that in mind, I
just can’t face it most of the time. I wish I could tell you that is
the worst part, but I’d be lying if I did. When you go against Onaga,
the sound often hiccups when he does select moves. Sometimes, it’s
random, but others always happen when he throws you. These noises are
harsh screeches, also known as errors or bad code. I wish this wasn’t
as bad as it sounds, but it really gets on my nerves.
As in the last game, you unlock extras and secret costumes via paying
for them in the exceptionally large krypt. You’ll unlock a bunch of
extras such as videos and concept artwork. Sometimes, you even come
across a bunch of koins to keep you there even longer. As a rule, the
higher-priced things usually wield the bigger rewards.
As a whole, Mortal Kombat Unchained is a very complete package that
offers a great puzzle game, a good adventure mode, and a competent
fighting engine in a uniform package that is presented well. Once more,
I would like to reiterate that this isn’t going to be your most
competitive fighter in your collection. I would recommend only to those
who are looking for a casual fighter or for those who don’t approach
fighters in a competitive way.
Article by: Bloodspoor
Posted on: Feb. 2nd, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| While entertaining, no matter how hard I tried to like the fighting engine, I just couldn’t get into the fighting side of it. Fighting against the computer is either too easy or too hard. There’s no real middle ground. The extra modes are what bring this game’s score up a great deal.
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Graphics |
| It’s not the prettiest fighter on the PSP, but it is ok. Ultimately, I was pleased with the way everything looked. |
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Sound |
| While I am pleased with most of the game’s sound, the flaws that it has are unforgivable ones and really make you want to avoid certain areas of the game altogether. The only reason this got a score at all is because the good music and sound effects are quite good. They don’t make up for the error noises I keep hearing throughout my play through. |
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Replay Value |
| Unlocking all the extras in the Krypt can be daunting, but once you have a good chunk of change to spend, it quickly becomes your driving ambition to continue playing. If you have a friend to play with, jack this game’s score up by 2. |
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