As a Fan, with faults aside, MKD is my favourate to date, until MK9.

Going back to MKDA, the team had a great idea and direction. MKDA was a huge jump from MK4/MKG. Graphics were amazing, replay ability with the Krypt. Konquest mode to teach the canon story to newcomers to the franchise. In essence, MKDA and MKD were 2 of the best games for Plot and story. Killing Liu Kang and bringing in the Dragon King's background was genius.

In a nutshell, MKDA, MKD, MKSM and MKA werent given enough time in development t become great games.

-No wake up atacks until MKA and it was very badly executed.
-Broken combo detection and reaction allowing infinate's to be executed.
-Dial-a-combo, slower battles and only pre-programmed methods of attack. Where as games like SF and MvC allow much personalization to the combos.
-Fighting styles, interesting in theory, but poorly executed.
-Unfinished Secrets and sections of the game that should have been given light.(the noob saibot fight in MKSM)
-Lack of good secrets, everybody had prettymuch everything within one week. No real big secrets that took months to uncover completely liek Reptile in MK1 and noob in MK2.

MKDA till now. I would still play. Maybe not as many hours since they are not considered NEW anymore. I would defiantly spend my time online in MKA. With all those characters. It's ashame it's not as populated anymore.

PenguinIceNinja Posted:
"Or am I just reading a few people here. I very much enjoyed Deception and Armageddon. Why are these games not looked at fondly with the fanbase? Surely the 3D fighting and new generation ps2 gave the game added depth, so why all the hate? Was it the ability to have infinites and stuff like that?"

I agree 100%

I don't think it was the infinites issue. I mean Trilogy is one of the most broken and unbalanced games I ever played and many still consider it the best MK ever. Other people bring up some of the PS2 games having lame Fatalities (Deadly Alliance and Armageddon), but 90% of the Fatalities in Trilogy sucked too. So I don't know. :p

Maybe some people just didn't like the 3D game play and arenas? I personally enjoyed them. Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon all have amazing arenas and when they became interactive with the last two (Death Traps and multi-tiered arenas) they were even better.

The only thing that I personally hated about the 2002-2006 era games was that the game play got worse with each game. I mean Deadly Alliance plays better than Deception and Deception plays better than Armageddon. I mean just play DA for an hour or so and than try to play the other two. The other two have more characters, more content, the side games (like Motor Kombat and Chess Kombat), online modes, fully realized Konquest modes, the interactive arenas, and multiple Fatalities, yet Deadly Alliance is still funner to play. It kinda makes you think maybe the MK team shouldn't have focused on all that other crap while making Deception and Armageddon. I mean DCU went straight back to the fighting mode only (that's all the story mode was) and it played better than any of the PS2/Xbox games...

I'm of the opinion that each game in the PS2/Xbox era got worse (DA>Deception>Armageddon) so maybe that's why. But Deadly Alliance and Deception were both highly praised and generally liked with the fans. I know that Armageddon was viewed as a rushed game that was nowhere near being ready for release.

I still think all three games were enjoyable games though (if I was grading them I'd give DA an A, Deception a B+, and Armageddon a B-/C+). All three games were commercially successful (DA sold 3 million and the other two sold 2 million) so it's not like no one bought them.

Still if I had to pick out a single thing, it was probably that everything looked too cartoony or fake. MK 1-3 all used digitized characters so they had a very realistic took to them. The last generation of hardware wasn't strong enough to that sense of realism back (but than again games liked Metal Gear Solid 3 looked highly detailed...). Shaolin Monks succeed to being generally gruesome with the finishers, something none of the other games of that era did.

I agree with a lot of what is written above. I don't "hate" those games. It's just some of them, mostly Armageddon, leave a negative impression when I think about them.

The lack of secrets, and the new fighting styles changed the feel. It sucked when there was a fighting style you liked but you couldn't use it with your favorite fighter. I guess we got greedy and didn't like when things were taken away (secrets, FMV endings, etc.)

The one thing I did hate, and still do, was the whole Khameleon fiasco. Not to beat a dead horse, but if you say everyone from previous games is going to be in it, then include everyone. Not having her was a slap in the face, especially with the limited extra content in the game. Then they turn around and slap us again by including her on the Wii version. I hate console specific extras. They're not fair, and that wasn't the first time they pulled that crap. It was the principle of the thing really and is why I may be a renter instead of a buyer.

I have enjoyed all the games released in this era . The fans hate em because Midway was just too bad for a company to publish and fund the series . The amount of glitches here and there is just too much .

Fighting engines were rushed too . MKDA started as a good fighting engine that could have been made perfect by now had Midway given the team more time to spend on the games.

The games aren't bad by any means . It was a fun experience that could have been perfect if Midway was a good company for the MK team's ambitions .

When Midway died and WB took over the result ,in my opinion , is the perfect looking MK game to date a game that could have never been developed under Midway's name .