if you love fighting games and are looking for something different this suits you well
Well, to be true not much! The engine fueling the game is the same, a lot of old characters are gone, and it takes some risk only by adding new characters in order to revitalize MK's roster. But since the gameplay was fun in Deadly Alliance that's not bad at all, and the classic MK trilogy (not the trilogy game but the first 3 games) also didn't evolve that much to begin with.
As I previously mentioned all characters feature 3 fighting styles that you change with the press of a button during "Kombat", and it fits nice cause it keeps the whole thing fresh in the long run. All characters can also pull the MK signature special moves and two fatalities plus the Hara Kiri also introduced in Deadly Alliance which allows you to finish yourself after the old school Shao Kahn shout "FINISH HIM" thus sparing the "humiliation" provided by an adversary executed Fatality. The old characters have their usual special moves such as Scorpion's spear, Sub Zero's freeze ball and Ermac's green ray ball.
Also the games is filled with many modes:
Arcade/Versus/Practice
Konquest
Puzzle Kombat
Chess Kombat
Krypt
-Arcade needs no explanation so let's clear whats all the new stuff about.
Konquest mode is a third person adventure which serves as a mean to carry the story in this chapter, you roam the realms with a young new character, and all the while you unlock new characters, arenas and costumes finding treasure chests scattered throughout the substantially large maps, and training your character which is also an excuse to make the player familliar with all the characters. While this adventure has a lot of leashed potential, it is kind of fun to see all the hidden references and characters from the past, and it's only a shame that you fight against some which you cannot unlock, though they are fully playable as AI enemies.
-Puzzle Kombat is a collumns/puyo pop/super puzzle fighter kind of game that is really fun. the gameplay consists of groups of two blocks (they can be blue, yellow, red, and greed) and by joining them you can then destroy them connecting a MK logo brick of the same color, filling up a special attack bar that enables your character to pull a special ability that can be either benefitial for your game or damage the opponent's game. each "fight" is won by the best of 3 rounds, and this mode features arcade and versus play.
-Chess Kombat is an adulterated chess game, where you pick up characters for your chess pieces and the final goal is to kill the enemy leader. there's CPU vs or Human vs and as usual it's a different challenge aganst a human player. As you begin playing you can set a trap and a fake trap on the board (to distract the human players) and each board has two power cells (two squares that give your characters extra life), and the sorcerer characters have special abilities that allow you to kill, ressurect, heal, imprision and more to yours or your opponent's characters. It works as a regular chess games, except the movements are more liberal than the chess pieces. When one of your "chess pieces" tries to take over a square it's not as the regular chess for your opponent has a chance to keep it since the take over is settled with a Kombat.
-The Krypt is a graveyard full with...graves, and you can buy the "Kontent" (I know what you are thinking but hey, I'm writing on the Kontext of the...okay sorry about this) of each grave with coins you earn beating arcade fights, puzzle kombat, chess kombat and by picking or earning them on Konquest mode. The unlockables range from arenas and characters to making of videos, ads, bloopers from MK mythologies, concept sketches, drawings, motion capture clips, soundtrack, character bios...lots and lots of stuff. AND, the krypt is huge, the graves are numbered from A to T on the horizontal and the vertical, so there's 256 graves with unlockable content!
The sound in the game is great, if you are a MK fan it's even better. The screams, the shouts, the music tracks...everything sound related transpires the mk feel, some tracks from the old arenas that made a return are the exact same from mk2 and you can't help but feel as if you are a veteran mk player or wonder if you are really playing a 3d fighing game or an old school 2d mk game.
So you might be wondering, why am I writing this review as of 2009??
because I played it on the ps2 when it came out, but I got it for the xbox a few days ago and I'm enjoying as much or more (nostalgic value) as I did back then, so I think that says something about replayability.
To conclude, this game should appeal to MK veterans a lot, but if you love fighting games and are looking for something different this suits you well too. Pick it up if you got a chance