Seeing the success of Deadly Alliance, Midway quickly released an online-enabled follow-up called Mortal Kombat: Deception. This middle chapter did a good job of keeping interest in the franchise by receiving high praise from critics and gamers alike. While the game was financially successful, I can't help but be incredibly bored by this ho-hum cover art. There's almost nothing to it. Just the Mortal Kombat emblem and some guy, the whole thing makes me want to talk about something else. But I have vowed not to go off topic; I need to start taking this job seriously. I mean, the moment I stop caring about my job the whole thing falls apart. That happened to a friend of mine. He stopped caring about his job and suddenly people start dying all around him. Now he's on trial for malpractice, just because he stopped caring. I don't want to be like that guy.

See, I did it right there. I took my eyes off of this boring cover art and went off on a tangent. I promise it won't happen again. This Mortal Kombat: Deception box art deserves to be reviewed. Somebody spent a lot of placing the character and getting the lighting just right. I wonder how much work? Do you think this is the kind of thing somebody busted out in a weekend? And when putting the artwork together, do you think the artist knew that the "PlayStation Online" logo would take up that much real estate? Man, that really is an ugly online logo, I sure am glad Sony ditched that design. Or did they? Maybe I need to go check; it's been awhile since I looked at a PlayStation 3 box. Nope, it's a different logo, I checked. Wait ... what were we talking about?

Here we have an example of Midway slipping back into old habits. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is the final act in the PlayStation 2/Xbox trilogy, so it needed powerful box art to get the point across. Instead what we got was a weak drawing of a chance encounter. Boring! I want to see explosions, bodies falling from the sky and the rivers flowing with blood. I want to see Liu Kang have to fight through a field of human remains. This is the final act, it's time to go out in style. But that's not what happened. Instead of giving us something truly epic, we're left with one of the worst covers in Mortal Kombat history.

It's as if we walked in on an old married couple fighting. He's about to walk away while she nags him, both knowing that it will ultimately lead to passionate make-up sex (or the cops being called, the night's still young). She complains that he never listens, he sends passive aggressive insults back her way. I've seen this movie before; it's the second act of every chick flick your girlfriend dragged you to. The only difference here is that Meg Ryan is floating and Tom Hanks is wearing a skull mask. Oh, and there's a village on fire in the background. Outside of that we're about thirty seconds away from a Burt Bacharach song. The fact that Mortal Kombat makes me yearn for the sweet sounds of Michael McDonald is reason enough to hate this box art!

As silly as it sounds at first, this Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe cover art goes a long way to sell the admittedly cheesy crossover concept. The idea of Superman fighting Sub-Zero seems crazy, yet I'm completely convinced it could happen when I look at this incredible artwork. It also lets me know that the ultra-violence of Mortal Kombat isn't going anywhere. The T-rating at the bottom of the box reminds me that I won't be decapitating Batman, but I can tell from this cover that something dark is about to take place. I sure am glad I'm not the guy who has to mop up afterwards.

This box seems designed specifically to slap down any worries about Mortal Kombat selling out. And rightfully so, the game, while tamer than past Mortal Kombat incarnations, was still a brutal slugfest that both sides could feel good about. It turns out that some of the DC Universe is just as dark as Scorpion and Shang Tsung. Best of all, this is Midway finally understanding what made the first few games so memorable. Give me goofy storytelling, over-the-top characters and brutal one-on-one battles and I'm good to go. This 2009 crossover does all that and more, proving my skepticism pointless. And for once, a great game is matched with great cover art.

Eighteen years later we come full circle, with a brand new game simply titled Moral Kombat. This cover looks exactly like what you would expect from 2011 box art, giving us a brief look at the kind of brutal action you can expect from this M-rated fighting game. We get two the franchise's two biggest stars both performing their signature moves, making the player want to see how it ends. In the background we're given an artistic re-imagining of the classic Mortal Kombat emblem, a perfect way to show long time players that this taking everything that you love about the game and making it better. This box art checks off all the important boxes. It's the kind of cover art that new publishers Warner Bros. can be proud of. So why don't I like it more?

Going into this refresh I was hoping this artwork would mirror the original Mortal Kombat. Instead of cluttering up the box with an unnecessary battle, I would have opted for something simple. I like the simplicity of the first two boxes; they didn't require fancy drawings and explosive action to attract attention. As bad as it is, at least the Mortal Kombat 3 box art doesn't feature Kratos cutting off the top of the artwork. Even with the slightly disappointing artwork, I still can't wait for Mortal Kombat to hit the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 next week. Fatality!