Mortal Kombat: Deception Official Strategy Guide (Brady Games Signature)

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, Innacurate, and hard to read
Review: BradyGames strategy guides...always a hit or miss endeavor. Unfortunately in the case of Mortal Kombat: Deception, this strategy guide soars far and wide into the 'miss' category.

For starters, the movement commands are tiny...so tiny in fact that you have to strain your eyes and hold the book close up to your face just to interpret the commands! A good portion of the character's special moves are dead wrong, with either incorrect button or directional presses. The combos listed are done very half-heartedly...instead of laying out the combo button by button, which is what strategy guides normally do, they opted to use only the name of the combo moves, which, if you bother using the guide, would result in you constantly consulting each of those moves to see what their button combinations are.

Fatality fans be warned...the guide barely has any of the character's finishing moves. Most of the chracters who are listed have only one of their fatalities listed, and in some rare cases their 'hara kiri' move as well. However, more than half of the 24 playable characters don't have any of their finishing moves listed, period. And a few of the finishing moves listed are completely incorrect!

The strategies given for the characters are rather uninspired and half-hearted. The authors have included a 'Kodex' in the back of the book as an excuse for not having more than half of the character's moves, stating that there are a series of codes on the BradyGames website that you use the Kodex to decpiher. There happen to be no such codes on the website, further demonstrating the overall useless quality of this strategy guide.

I'm sorry to say that you are far better off just getting a strategy off the internet...this guide is ultimately unfinished and uninspired, and I was rather angry to have wasted my money on it.

Rating:
Summary: Save the money...get your tips online!
Review: I rarely write reviews, especially for strategy guides, but once I got my hands on Mortal Kombat: Deception's strategy guide, I was spurred on by a suddenly active sense of decency and concern for the well-being of MK fans the world over. Simply put: do NOT spend $15, or $10, or even tree-fiddy for this guide. No amount of financial savings will make up for the fact that this guide is useless.

The first thing I realized was that the fatalities were missing for nearly all of the characters. Only a few random fatalities were shown, I'm guessing because they needed to fill a blank space on a page with a screenshot of some sort. Same goes for the hara-kiri moves. Everything was incomplete, except for the voluminous move lists. Like players would rather have access to all 400 moves for every player, but not the fatalities. They're called priorities, people!

The Konquest mode walkthrough (or should I say, stumblethrough) is also poorly designed and confusing in its own way. I found myself wondering where the hell I was and looking for an Outworld gas station. (At this point, I'm above any potential humiliation from asking directions to a hidden character.)

Lastly, and this may be geek me talking, but the guide was littered with an ungodly amount of grammatical and spelling errors on every page. A couple of random ones I can understand, but honestly, I think this was either poorly translated from another language, or the editing department wasn't paid enough to care if it looked any good.

So long story short, get the moves/fatalities/hara-kiris/whatever from a reputable gaming site. You'll save money, and you'll get what you were looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Great for knowing moves, not much for fatalities
Review: I recently got this guide a couple of days ago thinking I was gonna be able to learn all the moves and secret characters and fatalities. Well to my surprise, this strategy guide doesnt have all that. Only a few of the characters fatalities are given, hardly any of the new "Hara-Kiri" fatalities are given and the walkthrough that is given only covers the obvius missions, none one the secret ones. If you wanna get all the info on the secret characters and all the fatalities, mind you that each character has 2 fatalities and a Hara-Kiri, the guide tells you to check out their website. Now I know what everybody who bought the Final Fantasy 9 guide must have gone through. So if your expect to learn all the fatalities and finding all the hidden stuff with this guide, your gonna be dissapointed.

Rating:
Summary: FATALITY!!
Review: I wish i would have consulted this review board before spending 14.95 + tax on this stragety guide, which contains no information relevant to any MK fan. Do not waste your money on this it is completely useless. Never read anything again by Joey Cuellar who writes like a 3rd grader (no offense to 3rd graders) I hope he does not participate on the Comic.

Rating:
Summary: Komplete krap
Review: I've never written a review before, because I've never been impressed enough or upset enough to do so. Believe me, I'm very much the latter right now.

Everyone that has played Mortal Kombat knows that the main thing that sets apart MK from every other fighting game on the market are the fatalities. So I bought the guide hoping to learn how to do these finishers... Boy, was I wrong! Not only is the print so small and the colors so similar that I could barely read them (and even then I still can't make out some of the directional arrows), but more than half of them aren't even listed! Sure, it lists every single move possible during kombat, but I could have checked the move list to learn them.

Next, Konquest Mode. Ugh, what an utter waste this "guide" is. The only quests it walks you through a blind hamster with a learning disability could have figured out on its own! And what about the subquests? If it wasn't for the tiny printing at the top of each map (which, by the way, are useless as well as you can check the map in-game anytime you wish) stating how many sub-quests exist in that world, I wouldn't believe that the author even knew they existed.

Third, the Krypt. I was not pleased when I plugged the game in to discover that I had to 'unlock' half of the playable characters. But hey, it gives inentive to play the Konquest Mode (which I likely wouldn't have touched otherwise). However, there is ~nothing~ in this guide that tells me which koffin contains which secret.

In short, this guide is hardly worth the pages it was printed on. Save your money, get your guide on-line. To those of you who I've saved $15 with this warning, you're welcome. To those who already bought it, my condolences.

Rating:
Summary: Contains... NO INFORMATION!
Review: Remember the days when you bought a video game and everything you needed to know about playing it was written in the instruction booklet that came with the game? You know, I really miss those days, an instruction booklet that actually told you how to perform the moves to be successful at the game you just purchased. Well, the instruction booklet that comes with the Mortal Kombat Deception game basically tells you what the buttons on the xbox controller do....and that's it. This is because video game manufacturers have developed deals with the fine (not greedy at all) folks at Brady Games to produce $15 to $20 "guides" that reveal how to play the game you just purchased. Now, I don't mind shelling out the $15 to $20 on top of the $50 I'm already out for a new game in order to be able to play it....but when I buy one of these so called "guides" it would be nice if it actually contained all the information about the game I just bought.
Now, before anyone starts in with "well, they need to keep secrets in the game", "they want to keep fans guessing", the whole point behind these guides is to avoid all that. Maybe I don't want to have to discover how to perform a fatality, maybe I would like to know how to do it once I've bought the game! Well, if you buy this guide, you'll only learn how to do a handful of fatalities, advanced moves and get to see a few maps here and there. Hardly any information that Mortal Kombat fans would expect to find in this guide is in here. The character move list is sketchy at best, and tips on how to unlock characters, alternate costumes and learn finishers....forget it! I made a HUGE mistake in buying this before thumbing thru it.... there's just NO INFORMATION here concerning this game. I found everything I need to know online...for FREE.
So, this is the last Brady Games book I'm buying. I was going to pick up the guide for the new GTA, but I'm sure all the info I'll need will be online the day after the game's released, and it will be there....for free.

Rating:
Summary: completely useless
Review: stupid. $14.99 for nothing. It has maybe 4 fatalities, and like 2 hara-kiris. And the konquest guide is no help. "Go to location A-8." Like I know where A-8 is! And there is no help for side missions. Only primary missions. And there are many grammar mistakes. And it doen't cover anything about the krypt! Of all things, this is one of the most important. Nobody cares about every single little move a character has. We want their fatalities! And some of the special moves are not even right. Don't get it look on the internet.

Rating:
Summary: In-komplete!
Review: This guide is missing secret character moves and how to unlock them. No other secrets or krypt info was listed either.

Rating:
Summary: STAY AWAY FROM THIS GUIDE, PLEASE!!!
Review: WHERE DO I START WITH THIS GUIDE,LOL. FIRST OF ALL, AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, IT DOESNT HAVE ALL THE MOVES/FATALITIES/HARI KARI'S, ECT. BUT DID YOU ALSO KNOW THAT IT IS ALSO MISSING A FEW HIDDEN CHARACTERS AS WELL, NAMELY LIU KANG, AND MOTARO?? ALSO FOR 14.95 I EXPECT A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN A SMALL SNEAK PEAK AT A COMIC BOOK THAT ISNT COMING OUT UNTIL MAY OR APRIL. FUTHERMORE, WHAT'S WITH THAT KODEX AND THE WHOLE SCHEME OF "GO TO OUR SITE TO FIND OUT THE INFORMATION."I MEAN IF I KNEW YOU HAD TO DO THAT, I WOULDNT HAVE BOUGHT THIS (...)OF A GUIDE. ASIDE FROM THIS, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH NO POSTERS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. IN THE END, WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO IS THE FOLLOWING: MORTAL KOMBAT DECEPTION IS A HELL OF A LOT BETTER THEN DEADLY ALLIANCE, HOWEVER WHEN THEY WERE GOING THROUGH THERE CHECKLIST OF WHAT TO IMPROVE, THEY LEFT THE STRATEGY GUIDE OFF, AND IN DOING SO ALIENATED NUMEROUS AMOUNTS OF THERE FANS, INCLUDING ME. MY FINAL SUGGESTION IS THIS, DO WHAT I DID, GO TO A SITE LIKE IGN.COM, SIGN UP FOR A MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION, AND GET REAL INFORMATION FOR YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY, YOU'LL BE GLAD YOU DID! PS; I ALMOST FORGOT TO REMIND YOU'S DON'T EVER BUY ANOTHER GUIDE FROM BRADY GAMES OR WITH Joey Cuellar as if they are going to publish that kind of work, they don't deserve our business!!!