The reviewers at GameSpot have finally got around to giving the recently released Mortal Kombat: Unchained a rather thorough review. Mortal Kombat's debut on the Sony PSP is a rather disappointing one, only managing to score a 6.4/10 (which translates to the term "Fair" by GameSpot's standards). The review cites numerous problems in the game, mainly the lack of change from MK: Deception, increased loading times and lack of online play. Some excerpts from the article:
Though it features an all-new subtitle, Mortal Kombat: Unchained for the PlayStation Portable is basically a straight port of 2004's Mortal Kombat: Deception for the PlayStation 2, with longer loading times and without the online play. Contrary to what you might expect, it's not based on this fall's Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, though it does throw in a few of that installment's added characters. Seeing as there's so little new content in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, it's difficult to recommend to Mortal Kombat fans, unless they really want a version of Deception to have on the go.
Given that Unchained is based on Deception, it includes most of the same relative strengths and weaknesses of that game. So, in addition to the one-on-one fighting game at the heart of the experience, you get a couple of quirky extras in the form of chess kombat and puzzle kombat. The former adds a basic strategic layer on top of the one-on-one fighting, in a nod to the classic computer game Archon. The latter is a competitive puzzle game inspired by the great Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. These were exciting extras in 2004, but their novelty outweighed their quality or lasting appeal, and by now, the appeal will be long gone for anyone who's played these modes before. Unchained also packs in a story-driven mode called "konquest," which gets into a lot of the elaborate, long-winded fiction of the Mortal Kombat universe, with numbingly bad pacing and voice acting, plus tons of pedantic tutorials. Noticeably long loading times bog down these extras as well as the one-on-one fighting, in which you're stuck waiting about 20 seconds in between a typical bout. Thankfully, there's a new endurance mode that lets you take on successive opponents without much interruption, and that about does it for this game's new content.
Mortal Kombat: Unchained is based on a game that was great for its time, and a lot of those great qualities are still in here virtually untouched, though weathered by the passing of time. However, by taking the online mode out of the original version and saddling this port with longer loading times, the result is a handheld fighting game that isn't nearly as appealing as the game it's based on, especially since you can still get the original for bargain-basement prices.
To read the review in full on GameSpot's website, click here.
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