Mortal Kombat - Tournament Edition Review by: SuperCrash64 - 8.9/10
mk deadly alliance gba reviewintroduction: Time to review another Mk game, this game is for the Game Boy Advance, It's called mortal kombat tournament editon, but it's actually more true to the so called Mortal kombat Deadly Alliance, this game is defeintly one of the better Mortal Kombat games to play on the gba. This game is a much better developed and played game, then The port of Ulimate Mortal Kombat three on the Game boy advance which was just awful and that was mainly due to crippled button config, no combo's or special moves being able to work, and a very crippled and unfair ai difficulty. I will explain why this game is so much better to play then mk advance or the gba port of umk3. Enter the review of Mortal kombat Deadly alliance for the Game boy Advance.
Gameplay: I would not say the gameplay is not too bad, It's just a slight struggle to work with due to the two button configuration.really Usually some special moves were a bit tedious to pull off, but at least the controls responded very well. One thing I will note is that certain characters have been removed, do to the main plot of this game, that was not no system limitations or anything, it's just that the developers of this game, just temporaily killed off some characters, so that explains why there are no classic characters such as liu kang and others etc. Anyway's the gameplay is not all that bad, it just takes a little bit of struggle for me to pull off special moves, as for combo's they basically work by juggling again, no more button squenece type combos like mk4 and mk3 had, in other words decent gameplay, and it's certainly better and easier to control then what one may find on Mortal Kombat advance.
Graphics: First off this game is lacking some things, but I think It's pretty common to happen, I am just gonna note that there are no ending pictures or intro animation etc, Just a background with text on it, but hey during the time of the gba and earlier handhelds, I would say that was a pretty common thing to happen.The natural sprites or characters as you call it, the characters look rather really nice and well detailed, I mean sure they have some pretty noticable pixelation on some parts, and they look some what resized, but still the sprites rather look breath taking for a gba game, just do to how crispy everything looks, images "aka" character portraits, the portraits I cannot really complain about them they rather look really colorful and well represented when compared to the other versions of deadly alliance. The stages also have a decent crispy look to them, but with some slight lot's of noticable pixelation on some parts, still I would say they aren't too bad, and they are well represented on in comparsion to the other versions of deadly alliance.again the stages have there natural dark twisted bloody and the neat classic style mk feel, In results to all of this I am gonna rate graphics a nine out of ten
Sound: Nothing too much, I would come to expect out of this game, The sound effects have a good vairety, but there is one thing I will note, and that is a number of sound effects were reused for many characters, during the game, They still have there classic grunts and have a nice amount of stuff, You still have certain sound effects like your classic( "Get over here") when using scorpions harpoon, and You still have certain effects while doing special moves, so the sound variety isn't bad, but certainly repeative at some points playing this game. soundtrack: very repeative, really there's only like three different themes during this game, and that's the characters select theme, and the battle theme's that happen during round one and round two of your basic fighting. The battle theme's rather sound alright, but Nothing too catchy, as I would say. Sound rating five out of ten, okay sound variety and an okay soundtrack.
Addictiveness: Really This game wasn't all that fun to me, regardless my addiction would be the main combo's and special moves that you can pull off during the game, but still this game wasn't really all that fun. Addictiveness rating six out of ten.This game was not all that fun to me.
Story mode: basically what happended this game took after the events of scorpion winning Mortal kombat 4, where Scorpion had sent quan chi into the neatherrealm, and now he had escaped, and fourmed an alliance with shang tsung, they killed liu kang and shao khan to impose their domiance as an alliance, So now raiden and others must stop Shang tsung and Quan chi. story rating eight out of 10 (by the way, if You want to know the rest of the story, You will have to play the game, I cannot reveal all of it)
Depth and modes: You have your basic modes such as one and two player mode, survival and training mode or whatever you call it, also this game includes a tag team mode which is basically like one player mode, but you get to use two players (something similar I've noticed that you can do in a game such as tekken advance) one player mode basically you go through a number of foes, and beat the bosses shang tsung and quan chi (generally known as the team deadly alliance) Survival mode: basically Like what it says, You beat much foes as you can, on a single life bar, only a certain amount of your health will be healed after you won the fight. Training mode: A pretty useful mode for figuring out character moves, and getting around to the basic's of this game. There are also certain things You can unlock with the coins you get from playing through certain modes and winning battles. Depth rating seven out of ten.
Difficulty: The game isn't too hard, when in general trying to work out with the two button config can be a struggle sometimes, but once you get around it, this game can be pretty easy to get through, really the two button config was a real pain in the butt for me to work with, because when I tried to use classic moves such as scorpion's teleport punch, it would not work right for me. sometimes I would just have to button mash to win against the foes, like other fighters again this game is pretty easy at the beginning, but then it gets harder later during you're winning streak. Difficulty rating six out of ten.
overall this is 1 of the better fighters to play on the gba, overall rating 8.9
Graphics
9 Sound
5 Addictive
6 Depth
7 Story
8 Difficulty
6