Burton's Bytes: A bloody start and a bloody ending

AS E-MAILS go, this one was intriguing: "We've had a few postal problems with review copies of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. We'd like to reassure you that the packaging will not stain your clothes. Please advise us when yours arrives."

What could this be? Had anticipation for the latest version of the long-running MK franchise seen posties across the country ripping open padded envelopes and making off with pre-production review copies?

And what part of the packaging was it that looked as though it would stain my clothes?

The next day all was revealed. Mortal Kombat arrived all right but the ubiquitous brown padded envelope had been replaced by something altogether more, ah, inventive.

The envelope was covered in what looked like bloody handprints (and, yes, the red dye did rub off) and someone had stuck a great big sticker across the top which read: Caution: Body Parts Inside. Then, in smaller letters, Contents: One ripped-out spinal cord.

I opened it up half expecting to find the aforesaid spinal column rattling about in the bottom. Thankfully, all that dropped out was a copy of the PS2 game and a natty T-shirt (albeit suitably "distressed" with blood and gore).

All of which goes to show that good old-fashioned huckstering isn't dead and buried even in the 21st century. So top marks for the inventive packaging, but what of the game?

It depends on what you are expecting. The actual game mechanics haven't changed that much since the original Mortal Kombat caused such a stir when it arrived (to howls of anger from self-appointed moral guardians) on the Sega Mega Drive.

Deadly Alliance allows players to switch between different fighting styles mid-bout but, otherwise, it's just a prettier version of the original bloody beat 'em up.

The switchable fighting styles do add a much-needed strategic element. Depending on your selection, a character can launch long-range attacks, move faster and defend better.

Another addition is the Konquest mode, a mission-based game that also serves as a training arena for Mortal newbies. Midway has tried this before (remember the terrible MK Mythologies game on the N64?) with disastrous results.

Here the quest is fun, but some of the opponents are distressingly easy to beat, making for a mode that becomes tedious if you play in anything longer than short bursts.

So the mainstay of MK: Deadly Alliance remains the one-on-one fighting arenas where you pit your character against the computer or a pal.

You'll breeze through the early bouts - where random button bashing brings its own rewards - but progression through to the higher levels requires patience and dedication to learning the best moves.

Those ludicrous fatality moves are back once again. When your opponent is beaten, pressing a button combination sees your character execute the coup de grace in a spectacularly gory manner. Although now they are done using polygonal models - rather than the old digitised photos - these over-the-top endings seem to lack their old power to shock.

It's all good clean fun, of course, and, provided you are old enough to buy it, fans of the previous games will find themselves well provided for here.

LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, Publisher: Vivendi Universal. Format: Xbox. Price: £44.99.

YOU know a franchise is big when two heavy- weights like Universal and Electronic Arts squabble over who owns what. Such was the case with Lord of the Rings.

When the box office receipts began rolling in from Peter Jackson's first movie, EA knew it was on to a good thing and promptly snapped up the film rights. Unfortunately, it found out too late that the book rights were also available. Universal got there first.

The result? Two completely different games by totally different companies with the same name based around the same book. Confused? Me too.

Lotr: Fellowship Of The Ring is an action/adventure game based on Tolkien's massive literary work, rather than the movies.

If you haven't read the books, but you have seen the films, don't worry. This game is all about Frodo, Gandalf and the other pals taking on their quest to protect the One Ring from dark lord Sauron.

If you haven't read either the books or seen the films, then a trip to the library or your local Blockbuster store would seem to be in order.

The game is all about karma. You start with a full quota but should you do anything wrong (like trying on that dratted ring too often) your stock falls. Let it drop too far and the quest is over.

But wearing the ring has two benefits - it makes you invisible to your enemies and helps you seek out previously hidden levels of the game.

The only way to replenish your karma is to do some good deeds (like rounding up the farmer's pigs) - and you have to be very good indeed as the game progresses and ring wearing becomes pretty much de rigueur.

Although the game begins with you as Frodo, as the quest progresses you get to play as all the other major characters, including grand wizard Gandalf.

So far, so good, but what of the combat system, a key ingredient of any action adventure? There lies the biggest problem. To select your weapons and spell power you have to click through an interminable menu system, often while your character is getting beaten to a pulp. It's slow, repetitive and not a little frustrating.

As with all things, practice makes (nearly) perfect but that darn menu system is always a problem no matter how many times you have to fight.

The quest itself is fun but just a little bit on the linear side; venture off the trail and you'll find your character unable to enter other parts of the map. This is not quite the free-roaming adventure Universal would like us to believe.

This is, of course, only the first in a trilogy of games and it ends on the usual cliff-hanger. The fact that the quest is set to continue also gives Universal time to perfect the game mechanics ready for the next Lotr adventure. Here's looking forward to The Two Towers.

VIRUS WATCH

Fortnight is a new mass mail virus which spreads in HTML formatted e-mail messages. The virus comes in two main variants:

Fortnight.A: This arrives in an email containing the link to an infected web-page. When the user opens the email, the malicious web page is activated automatically. Once the web page is opened and the virus activated, it changes the browser's start-up page to an adult website.

Next, it alters Outlook Express 5.0 to a file containing a hidden frame which activates the link to the infected web page silently. After this, all messages sent by Outlook Express contain the hidden link to the malicious webpage. It also adds the following three links to the Favourites folder:

SEXXX. Totally Teen

Make BIG Money

6544 Search Engines Submission

Fortnight B: Similar to Fortnight.A, this variant contains hidden code that opens a web page which automatically redirects to an infected link. Again, this variant alters the Outlook Express 5.0 signature settings so that every email sent by the user will contain the infected link. Fortnight.B also creates file "hosts" that will cause connections to certain websites to be redirected to the porn site.

For more information, updates and downloads, visit www.f-secure.com