First off, I have to say MK Deception probably has the greatest opening sequence that I've ever seen in any game.
The core gameplay hasn't changed much from Deadly Alliance aside from combo breakers, and that's not such a good thing in my mind. Although the likeness of the Chess and Puzzle Kombat mini games (Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but with MK characters and Stage fatalities), and the increasingly boring and freaquently dry Konquest mode make a mountain out of the replay value, the core gameplay is just as hard to get used to as in the last game. I miss what MK used to be; a 2D slugfest with simple, responsive controls that made sense. Once you get past the returning, infuriatingly sluggish gameplay, you are brought back into the Krypt. For those of you unfamiliar with the Krypt from the last game, it is an annoying and tedious system of unlocking useless content, and requires you to actually go through the ever dragging Konquest mode mentioned above.
It basically takes you from the beginning of the Mortal Kombat universe to the current story of Deception as an unlikable character named Shujinko, and gives you more detail into the convoluted story of how Onaga, the Dragon King (Cheep Boss) was resurrected and then tricked the nutty old narrator (Shujinko) of the opening sequence (breathtaking), all just to collect stupid "Krypt keys" that unlock stages and characters, which by the way are awesome and make the nostalgia factor go through the roof, but the fact that you have to spend time in this infuriating mode to unlock your favorite characters is just....infuriating! I don't want to count how many times I've used the "infuriating". All in all, the obligation of Konquest mode makes unlocking the characters a chore than a fun and rewarding experience.
The core gameplay isn't what it's cracked up to be, as not very much has changed from Deadly Alliance. If you loved Deadly Alliance, though, you're in luck. They did add one more fatality per character, making 2 for each, plus probably the coolest addition to Mortal Kombat, Hara-Kiri's, make their debut. They're is basically a chance for you to kill yourself at the end of a lost match before your opponent can perform a fatality on you, making it sort-of a race to see who can do a fatality first, and still giving you a chance to make your opponent salty even though you lost. It seems kind of cool at first, but it actually becomes...you guessed it, infuriating. Most of the animations aren't clever or interesting, and if you win, you can bet your ass your opponent will Hara-Kiri themselves, almost guaranteeing you never perform a fatality.
Classic stages like the Pit 1, the Dead Pool and the Living Forest make a return and are looking prettier than ever. That's definitely an indisputable positive thing I can say about this game; it's gorgeous. The graphics are the best in the series and some of the best I've seen the PS2 put out, and immensly impressive when juxtaposed to the august visuals of Tekken 5 and VF4 Evolution.The characters have an almost un-precedented amount of detail, and the stages are vast and, surprisingly vibrant considering the dark moodiness that MK games have delivered since MK2, but it's not a bad thing. The soundtrack is actually great, but as long as they don't get rid of Dan "Toasty" Forden, nobody has anything to worry about.
The return of Ermak, Nightwolf, Baraka, Milleena, Sindel and others is welcome, but they did something weird to 2 of my favorite characters. Noob-Smoke is now the tag-team version of Noob-Siabot and Smoke, each of them seamlessly tag in and out like switching fighting styles, but they have no weapon. It's actually not that jarring of a gameplay mechanic and makes me wonder why Midway didn't just put a tag-team mode into this game and give each character one fighting style in the first place.
The Premium Packs for (Sub-Zero for PS2 and Mileena, Baraka, Scorpion and Raiden for XBOX), include a serialized metal trading card of the character on the cover and an extra disk with some behind-the-scenes-esque footage of most of the characters and an arcade-perfect port of The One that started it all, baby! Other fighting games take note.
Mortal Kombat Deception is fun for a little bit, but it's time for Midway to go back to the roots of the franchise. Get rid of the complicated gameplay, reboot the convoluted story, and make a return to glory!