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Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Xbox)
by Thebaker50
Hey all
This is my review of MK, deadly alliance. THis is a platform style fighting game, similar to tekken, and soul calibre on original xbox.
To begin with, its probably worth mentioning historically MK has suceeded simply by making its game controversially gorey. The phase FINISH HIM orignates from this game, where ... you would kill your oponent in some grutesque way, such as chopping there head off, and so on.
So, the good:
First thing up is that this game has a nice number of characters that are unlockable, which feels great. From a robotic ninja, to a thunder god, its all there. My personally favourite is scorpion, the undead ninja!
Secondly, as each character has 2 different martial art skill sets and a weapon, each character feels vastly different. Furthermore, it gets even more awesome when you realise most of the moves are based on real life moves! So it does add that little something that most other games do not have.
Thirdly, the guts. Oh yes this is a game not for the faint hearted. It just feels so awesome to cut up your oponenet with a sword, or whack them with a pair of nunchucks! There are a variety of finish him moves (but see later on) which when excuted, can play some pretty cool cut scenes.
So im summary of the good stuff, its a good game, feels authentic, and is a good one to sort of laugh at the finishing moves.
The bad:
Gameplay dynamics: Unlike DOA, or tekken, this game feels very "chunky", and the characters do not interact naturally. It feels like they are pre-programmed to do a certain move once your press the button, and thats the end of it. This sorta makes the game feel unnatural, and its a bit unerving.
The combos:
This game has STUPID combos. For example, what is kick on one character, is punch on the other. And you can't simply aim with the cursor arrows, no, pressing down square with one fighter might do an uppercut, but on another hero does a low kick? This makes playing the game really annoying, as you need to put in a silly amount of time learning combos. Which is not easy. And once you do, you need to learn them again... for each character... 3 times! It just isn't very approachable for a new player at all! This is made worse by the finish him combos. It takes ages to find out what they are, and even when you do, it doesn't always work, and are tricky to do. So one of the best features of the game is so hard to access, to this day I do not know why they didnt just make it more natural. Especially when games like DOA do it so well... This really ruins any notion of playing the game 2p.
The loading times: For some reason, for me this game was very prone to freeze and take ages to load. Considering it didn't really have amazing graphics, it just doesn't feel worth a 2 minute wait for a 2 minute round.
Ridiculously overpowered computer? Because of all the combos, the computer just automatically shoots them all off, making the game feel ridiculously in the computers favour.
In summary, this game could of been awesome, well and truely. Sadly the makers made the game just too hard for a casual player. Which is a shame because in this day and age, platform fighters need to be casual, as one of the best games for multiplayer games are platform fighters. No new players will want to play vs seasoned pros at a game where you win by just pressing silly combos. I mean, why did they swap square ot be kick on some heroes, but punch on others? And its just really silly coding in the combos that seriously ruins this game. This is made worse by the clunky nature of the way people move, and it just doesn't flow properly. It feels more like a game of who can press combos... which as I hate learning combos, I just kept losing. Its really sad that so much effort went into making the weapons, styles, maps etc, to be ruined by the gameplay.
In summary, I would go DOA or tekken instead.
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Dead or Alive 3 (Xbox)
by Thebaker50
Dead or alive is a beat them up game that can be played with up to 4 players (although I do not recommend playing anymore than 2 personally).
The game is similar to games like mortal kombat, tekken, and soul calibre, but there are a few differences.
THe plot is basically an evil ninja (genra) puts another ninja prince ... (kayate) into a coma, and he loses his memory. Hayates sister (Kasumi), abandons her village (becoming a runaway shinobi) in order to try and avenge her brother. Meanwhile 2 other ninjas are sent to kill her because she is a run away shinobi (note on of the ninjas is Hayates best friend, and will actually protect kasumi, and the other is Kasumis step sister). Basically the evil ninja is the "boss" at the end, and you must defeat all the other fighters in a tournament to get to him.
Other fighters include a druken master, who has heard a legend of drinking of the drink of genra will make you strong. Also there is the typical mix of people doing it for money, wealth, health, and the sort of thing. In total there are around a dozen or so fighters to choose from (not as much as tekken, but then tekken can sometimes feel like there are simply too many fighters to choose from).
Ok, so what about fighting styles. Fighting styles include ninjusity, thai boxing, iron fist, russian martial arts and so on. But to be honest, I doubt the moves are authetic, some of them don't look like in real life they would work, but that said they are very flashy.
Levels: THere are a variety of lefvels, and you can get "traps" on various levels. For example, you can throw your oponent out of a window, or smash them into a nuclear reactor! However I should note that some gameplay modes can only be played on certain levels, so sometimes its annoying that you can't have a team fight on one of the larger levels.
Gameplay:
There are a few basic principles to the game, and a few combos. However, what is nice about this game is the parry system. TO parry, you just press a button at the right height (high, medium or low), and the right time. This means if you are just playing vs someone who keeps pressing the same combos, sometimes you can easily win. SO there is an element of skill in the game (but there is also a lot of luck and stuff). Also you never feel like you have to know all the combos, most of them are pretty intuitive (with only one or two exceptions I can think of). Basically this game is more about reacting to your opponent, an blocking/parrying well, and using the level to your advantage. In other games (tekken and soul calibre), sometimes if feels like its just about who can combo or press the "x key" the most...
THe graphics however are more inferior than other counterparts (at least to my eye), and there feels like there is a lack of gameplay modes (single player, arcade, survival, vs, tag team and team battle, thats your lots). Also the team battle isn't as good as tekken in my opinion as there isnt a pause as the new fighter goes in. WIth tekken, you and your mates can team up, so you can have say 5 people on each team. You can't do this with DOA, as the game just carrying on, and in the time of swtiching controllers, the fighter would already be KO!
The gameplay is very fluid, and I really like the dramatic camera angles. In summary I would say this is a better fighting game than any of the others for just a "pick up and go game", no real need to learn combos. Also in my opinon its on the the best 1p or 2p fighting games out there. The problem is for more than 2 players, I think tekken is just better, due to the team fighting, and other play modes (bowling etc).
In summary, I give this game 4/5 stars, its fun, and easy, the only thing against it is multiplayer.
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Halo (Xbox)
by Thebaker50
Halo is a first person shoooter game set in space. The game starts off pretty cleverly. You see some scientists (or technicians, I am not totally sure) open a cyrogenic box of some sort, and pull you out. Then they say stuff like "sorry to wake you sir, but we need you", and "your reflexs may be a bit funny because of the ... sleep, can you just turn to the left and right for me" and then you practice all the controls. After this you then start to do various things like any bog standard introduction level, but around halfway through, aliens suddenly attack, and you have to run away, crouch under things, and make your way to the bridge (at this point you still have not been given a gun, so you can't just shoot them all).
Once you get to a bridge, you are given a gun, and are told to get off the ship with the ships AI system. You then fight your way through aliens (convenent), and take some allied soldiers with you as well. You must fight your way through to the dropships, and escape.
Once you escape, you get onto the alien world, and you must regather your troops, and find out whats going on. You eventually work out that there are an ancient weapon system, called a Halo Ring, with the power to destroy planets, and that you must know find their location (break into alien places, steal details, that sort of thing), go there, and win it. Then find the hidden entrance to the halo rings (this is where I have got to, once you get in, suddenly you must go find the general urgently, but I have no idea why, just had to turn it off and haven't played it since).
The game features a variety of guns (but not a huge variety, 1 missile launcher, 1 sniper, 1 assault rifle, and a few alien laser weapons). But to be honest, it doesn't feel lacking in that respect. The plot is very original, and awesome. The gameplay is a bit sort of "shoot your way through waves of aliens" but this games plot is so strong it makes up for it. The only bit I don't like are the "invisible aliens". I just hate invisible stuff on games, i find it very annoying.
There are also some vehicles that you can commandeer, from jeeps with machine guns, ghost riders, etc. Although I found that I haven't had a chance to drive some of them because aliens get in them before I have a chance to get in, which sometimes is a bit annoying.
One last annoying thing about this game is the multiplayer. For some reason you can't add bots onto multiplayer, so max you can have is 4 players on one system (which isn't that good, and if there is just two of you, it feels a bit boring). Also because of the stupid xbox live payment, if you do not have live, you cannot play online (I hate xbox live so much, its another game ruined by xbox live as there is little/no support for the older games).
So in summary, a very good game singleplayer, and a must play. But due to microsofts greed for stuff like xbox live, its truly ruined by not being able to play online.
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