Mortal Kombat: Deception for XBox (PAL)

The sixth episode of the violent and visceral fighting series from Midway pounces on the success of Deadly Alliance with Mortal Kombat: Deception — the first online game in the history of the franchise. Destructible environments and breakthrough walls hearken back to the days of MK3’s surprise smash-through stages, while favorite returning characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Mileena and Baraka join all-new fighters Darrius, Dairou, and Kobra in a battle to save the realms. In all, the game boasts more than 24 different kombatants, in addition to an enormous Konquest adventure mode, a Kombat Chess mini-game, and an homage to Capcom’s Puzzle Fighter series as extras.

Mortal Kombat: Deception, picks up where 2002’s Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance left off by featuring lots of new and returning fighters, a variety of surprising new modes of play, and, perhaps best of all, the ability to play online. The strangest part about Deception is how it includes several completely off-the-wall modes, the likes of which you’d never expect from a fighting game. These include the single-player konquest mode, which is a story-driven adventure; puzzle kombat, a competitive Tetris-style puzzle game that’s an unabashed homage to Capcom’s Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo; and chess kombat, which is inspired by the classic computer game Archon. The konquest mode is disappointingly bland, while these other two modes are at least amusing. However, the core one-on-one fighting action–whether you play it offline or online–is easily the best part of the game. Like its predecessor, the fighting in Mortal Kombat: Deception is gory, intense, and quite complex, meaning it captures much of what’s made MK an institution among fighting games.

For PAL XBox only. NOT Xbox 360.