Review ‘Mortal Kombat X’ From The Editor

Mortal Kombat X has 24 fighters, nearly half of which are brand new to the Mortal Kombat universe. The cast strikes a nice balance. While franchise staples like Scorpion, Johnny Cage, Raiden, and Quan Chi are here for the ride, a band of new characters aspire to bring new blood to the admittedly aged series. You’re sure to find a favorite.

The new characters are hit or miss. Characters such as Ferra/Torr can be divisive, Takeda fails to substantiate his existence, while Cassie Cage and Kotal Kahn are an absolute joy to play and watch. Some of these new characters have already proven that they should be incorporated into future releases, and that’s just about the best thing you can say about any new character in an established franchise.

Where Mortal Kombat X makes a huge leap forward for the franchise is with its Variations system. For every character there are three options to specialize how you play. For example, Scorpion has the choice between Ninjitsu, which tosses a pair of swords on his back, Hellfire, equipping him with fireballs and a fiery aura, as well as Inferno, allowing him to summon a demonic beast. Unlike previous Mortal Kombat games, and virtually any other fighting game in history, you aren’t forced to play any character in one defined way. If you desire to play Sub-Zero, you will find that at least one of the Variations suits your play style. Or, you can look at it as allowing you to play your favorite character in multiple ways.

This cast of characters meets in barbaric fashion for a ton of battles throughout Mortal Kombat X‘s roughly five hour Story Mode laden with dense cutscenes. As a whole it’s serviceable, much like in previous games. For all but the most hardcore of Mortal Kombat fans it does a poor job of capturing interest, mostly serving as another forgettable continuation of the battle between Earthrealm, Netherrealm, and all their martial arts capable inhabitants.

Story Mode falters most in its presentation. Cutscenes can look downright awful at times. Thankfully, this isn’t an issue that affects the rest of the game. Characters models and battle arenas are spectacular, backed by well-designed menus.

It could be argued that Mortal Kombat X is the most feature-rich of the franchise, with so many options in how to enjoy the combat that the menus can be a bit overwhelming at first.

There’s the Story Mode as previously detailed, as well as Towers which are where you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time unless you prefer competing online. There are a plethora of Tower types that range from Klassic where you battle through ten fighters including Goro and Shinnok, to Test Your Luck where you engage in battles with an assortment of random modifiers. The variety is here in full-force.

Online play is similarly rich with options. You can play in one versus one battles that are Ranked or Unranked, engage in Team Battle, and more. To supplement this is a new system called Factions where you can join one of five teams and contribute your participation to their advancement. Each week there are Faction specific challenges that reward you with things like unique Fatalities and regalia to show off on your player card. If nothing else, it’s a reason to log in on a regular basis.

Lastly, the Krypt is back. It is relatively similar to what was in Mortal Kombat 9, but you’re asked to traverse in the first-person viewpoint while spending earned currency to unlock rewards. It has some RPG elements that can make it a place where you end up spending a lot more time than you anticipate.

The culmination of all these features and game modes is a fighting game that goes to great lengths to keep you entertained. If you enjoy fighting games, and more importantly favor Mortal Kombat‘s style, you might just stick around for the foreseeable future.

Mortal Kombat X is by far the most accomplished entry in the series to date with NetherRealm trimming almost all of the novelty fat to create a seriously lean, mean and competitive fighting machine. Small niggles and questionable micro transaction approach aside, MKX is a hell of a lot of fun to play with incredibly satisfying combat, deeper and more rewarding mechanics with the new variation system, a great line up of characters both old and new, there’s plenty of content to get stuck into, an interesting persistent online community and even a cool story mode to top it all off. Best of all though is MKX is accessible, engaging and fun for everyone, new players and old alike, you can dip into it and have fun immediately and you can stick with it and keep having fun as you delve into its systems and get sucked into the ongoing Faction War. There currently aren’t that many fighting games available on the newer consoles but Mortal Kombat X has spilled blood to assert itself at the top.