Mortal Kombat X Review – Does it live up to the hype?

Is it just me, or is this the Mortal Kombat that we’ve all been waiting for? After Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3; even the most dedicated Mortal Kombat fan has to admit that there were very dark years for the franchise. In 2011, the makers of Mortal Kombat, NetherRealm Studios successfully rebooted the franchise with the 9th major console entry simply named “Mortal Kombat”(hereafter referred to as MK9). MK9 did an excellent job covering the iconic storylines from the original 3 games with new and improved mechanics, gameplay and graphics. NetherRealm built on this fondation with the super hero slugfest Injustice adding highly interactive arenas that added another layer of mobility and combat strategy. With Mortal Kombat X, they took what they have learned from these two games and added a ton of content to flesh out a very compelling fighting game.

Gore and Lore have been at the foundation of the series since its arcade roots and Mortal Kombat X gives us more than we asked for from both in this installment. As soon as you turn on the game you are greeted with the lore 1st with the introduction of Factions. The 1st thing you do is join one of the 5 groups battling for supremacy. Named after organizations in the Mortal Kombat universe, the Black Dragon, Lin Kuei, Special Forces, White Lotus or Brother Hood of Shadows are all potential flags to wave during this multi-realm war. Everything you do contributes points towards your chosen faction and every week a faction winner is chosen based on which faction had the most total points across all platforms. Members of the faction earn rewards like special, faction unique fatalities that are a really cool addition. Don’t worry about what fighter you choose as you can use any character in any faction. Also you can switch factions as much as you want. There is even an achievement for reaching max rank (50) in all 5 factions.

After selecting your faction you are let loose into the world of Mortal Kombat X to get lost in it’s many options of play. For the solo player you can check out the story, towers, vs cpu, test your luck or training. The action-movie style story mode returns and is bigger and better in Mortal Kombat X. Spanning a time period of the 25 years following the events in MK9’s story; NetherRealm introduces an impressive new generation of warriors (some children of old favorites) that successfully position themselves to lead Mortal Kombat into the future. The iconic Towers return in a mode where you play a series of computer opponents. The Towers are the meat of the single player experience as they are extremely varied and entertaining. You can play a short tower of 5 opponents or a never ending survival tower depending on the time you are trying to kill. The new Test Your Luck mode is best described as chaotic hilarity. It seems like your standard vs mode with modifiers until you actually play it and experience the glorious insanity for yourself. You choose up to 7 randomly chosen modifiers that can affect player 1, player 2 or both. From random portals to fall through, Grenades flying across the screen, lightning bolts striking, spontaneous fatalities mid match, and decapitated heads raining from the sky, Test Your Luck is the “I’m just trying to have a laugh” game mode.  Wrapping up the offline single player game offerings, Mortal Kombat X delivers a fully fleshed out Training mode with everything you need to sharpen your kombat skills. It’s great that the training mode is so in-depth because you’ll spend quite some time here learning, the next big addition to the franchise, all the different character variations.

At 1st look Mortal Kombat X brings only a 25 fighter roster and that’s including the pre-order bonus Goro. Once you dive in you then realize each fighter has 3 unique versions of themselves. All 3 versions of each fighter actually change up your potential match strategy so it’s definitely not a gimmick. Each fighter has a standard few special moves and basic combos but each variation brings its own special moves and ways to extend combos for high damage. A Variation change can mean keeping your favorite character and one match being a total offensive rush down power house and the next a top tier zoner. This is creating quite the buzz in the Fighting Game Community where mind games and competitive edge is everything. Variations add depth and value to the game taking that 25 man roster and essentially making it 75 different fighters to choose from. This is all before the 1st DLC, The Kombat Pack, promises to deliver Jason Voorhees, Predator, Tanya and, fan petition entry, Tremor all with their own 3 variations.

L-R: Tremor, Tanya, Predator, Jason

Two player local options are classic vs mode, test your luck, kustom kombat and test your might. Kustom Kombat is basically Test Your Luck where you get to manually choose the modifiers that you want on in the match. The Extras menu option feature Match replays and The Kollection – character bios, concept art, fan art, unlocked finishing moves and even level music. some unlocked in the krypt some unlocked through game play. The Match replays are a neat little addition that automatically records your last few matches for review. This allows you to save your favorites or study a loss to figure out what you could have done better. As an added bonus the replay has the option to view your inputs so you realize you were hitting the wrong button all along.

The Krypt Map

The Krypt returns and is now a complete game all itself. The majority of the game’s unlockables, including extra finishing moves and costumes, can only be found by searching the Krypt and finding them in this massive graveyard filled with surprised. You enter a full-blown first-person dungeon to explore for unlockables, which looks like classic PC RPGs. Yes, it still takes way too long to earn everything the Krypt has to offer, and you’ll have seen all the unlocks long before you’ve saved up enough Koins to afford them. But exploring the giant map, collecting iconic MK items to solve simple puzzles, and fending off monsters (which attack you via heart-stopping QTE jump scares) is surprisingly fun, making this new Krypt a minor stroke of genius. It’s truly a shame that NetherRealm even gave the option to skip this experience with an in-game purchase of $20 that unlocks the entire Krypt for those either too lazy or too scared to search the entire thing themselves. Every time I here anyone say there isn’t much to do in this game I assume they completely disregarded the Krypt or paid the extra $20 to skip hours of game play.

Mortal Kombat X online

Most of Mortal Kombat X’s offline game modes and features are duplicated online. You can even send a game invite to a friend and enter the practice mode. The Kyrpt and Kustom Kombat are the only offline modes I noticed that were missing an online version. The ever present Faction War presents plenty of daily challenges to complete. The online Towers change by the hour, day or weekly. You can even create your own custom tower and challenge your friends to beat them. MKX Online features a seriously robust and diverse selection of options. The standard ranked and unranked 1 v 1 battles and King of the Hill modes stand out as favorites and have fairly quick matchmaking. Less frequented modes like Faction Battle (5v5 from different factions) take forever to find 9 other fighters for the match. In addition to global matchmaking, MKX also features custom rooms were you can have localized matchmaking or even a chat room. The Mortal Kombat X online rabbit hole really goes deep and I appreciate all the options. Hopefully as more players explore the game the matchmaking in all modes will be as quick as standard 1 v 1.

GAMEPLAY: The game isn’t as stiff as it predecessors, making it one of the better if not the best game in the franchise. Combos are fluid and varied. The variation system is well done and outside of the few possibly over powered characters there is a really nice balance across the board. Getting caught in the corner is a bit out of control and a few hit boxes need to be adjusted. Nothing really takes away from the overall fun that MKX provides.

GRAPHICS: From now on, fighters should only be played in 60 frames per second. Mortal Kombat X is one of best looking games I’ve seen this gen, and that’s a lot coming from a fighting game. The only dip in the graphics you get is when you use an “X-Ray” move but even then they are beautiful to look at even at a lower frame rate. The stages are flat out beautiful and extremely detailed. Fighters get bruised and dirtied throughout matches that linger from round to round. Even in practice this level of detail carries over. Spend extended time in practice beating up the cpu and you’ll be fighting across a battlefield covered in blood.

ONLINE: The WGL review team has recorded over 2000 online matches at the time of this review (including a Launch Tournament) and overall the experience has been pleasant. The wealth of quality gameplay options provide endless hours of intense entertainment. The only real online complaint has been the painfully noticeable input lag online. Even with smooth gameplay it can seem like the game takes an additional half second to register button presses in comparison to playing offline. Turning off the negative edge option in the controller settings menu significantly reduces this issue it seems.

REPLAY VALUE: From the new Faction Wars and character variations to the plethora of game modes (online and offline) Mortal Kombat X delivers a moderately high replay value for fans of the genre. If you’re not that devoted to fighting games there’s still plenty of fun to be had with Test your Luck and exploring the Krypt.

The Verdict

(at least our opinions)

@shaggyblack : It’s no secret that I’ve poured countless hours into MKX like my fellow WGL brethren, and I am a huge fan of the Mortal Kombat franchise. When I first heard the game was introducing variations into the game, I was skeptical. Very skeptical. I was not a fan of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance’s 3 different fighting styles and I was hoping that they wouldn’t return.

Thankfully, they didn’t and they gave us something new entirely.  That being said it isn’t a “Flawless Victory”. I’m not a fan of the micro-transactions, and the main storyline, while great, feels shorter than Mortal Kombat 9’s lengthy campaign. Nitpicking aside, if your a fan of fighters this one is a “Must Own“.

Lets hear from a traditional Street Fighter fan who has never liked Mortal Kombat as a franchise.

@juice : Mortal Kombat has always been the bottom of the barrel when it comes to fighters. I’ve never gone out of my way to buy one of their games because I hated how stiff the characters move and the move sets.

With that being said, I am honestly having fun with Mortal Kombat X. Test your luck and living towers bring a fun and fresh feel to matches. Plus having friends to play with can make any experience more enjoyable. I definitely say it’s worth playing.

Welp, there you have it. Even anti-MK fans are enjoying this game. In my opinion Mortal Kombat X is a Mortal Kombat fan’s dream and an instant must buy for those individuals. More importantly it is just a really solid video game with tons of gameplay. I have logged over 50 hrs into the game since launch and I still have lots to do. In the age of big games having terrible releases, we have to give NetherRealm credit for a near perfect console launch. The only real issue I have experienced is the noticable input lag during online play. However, after going through the controller settings and turning off the “Release Check” option that lag is now barely noticeable to me. With any fighting game there will always be a need for balancing tweaks. So, a few fighters will get toned down and others will get a boost as per normal. Unless you are easily grossed out by someone getting their own intestines ripped out through their mouth, there really is no reason not to buy this game.