Mortal Kombat X
PS4, Xbox One and PC
Mortal Kombat X just hit the scene and it came in...wow, guys put down that stuff, 'Did you just shoot bug juice at me D'Vorah?! That's it, "Get over here!"
These rowdy fighters are back for blood with fatalities to flat-line you oh so severely. An easy to learn control scheme lets you learn moves to eviscerate your opponent or just break some balls. A story so action adventure oriented you'll be sure it was made in the 90's. Butt loads of extras for the fighter who want to pummel online with Faction War.
Why not go over some new recruits first though? We have Cassie Cage. The daughter of Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage. She looks pretty, packs a wallop and will shoot you in the face. The other new offspring is Jax's daughter and she has her own arm cannons that fire bullets into you. Rule 63 -dude becomes a lady- the girls name is Jacqui Briggs. Sonya Blade brings a drone to battle. I know she's not new, I just like she has some heavy ordnance now with missile payloads. You also have arrow/staff Kung Jin and Takeda, the son of the blind psychic Kenshi. Kung Jin is supposedly gay in the who cares department of I didn't pick that up until I read about it. Because if he were openly gay, there would be a lot more dark jokes about him using a staff from the game itself.
Adding to the mix: D'Vorah;creepy bug lady, Ferra & Torr; totally inspired from Master Blaster from Mad Max, Kotal Kahn; play on Aztec G-d and Erron Black; this guy brought six shooters to a fighter? This new blood has players learning new fighters to master.
I just killed my own son and I couldn't be happier! Old blood, the regular fighters return. If you remember their moves than you can instantly pick up the game and beat down any newbies with your mastery of Johnny Cage or Sonya Blade. Kenshi can take out his own son, Takeda, as I did just now while playing, raising questions about MORALITY!
On killing my own son, let's talk Kombat. Kombat has you mastering the moves of each fighter to perfectly deconstruct you opponent. Every fighter has an array of moves to master and special attacks that can have you laying a long time, bloody combo on your opponent. Moves can be martial arts, energy based, magic or people can just take out a gun a shoot you.
Players get even more choices on how to take down an enemy as every fighter has three "variations of themselves. So randomly pickin' Johnny Cage; he has: Fisticuffs, A-List and Stunt Double. Each variation of Cage gives him special abilities the other doesn't. Like A-list can charge attacks, while Stunt Double produces a doppelganger to help your attacks. Now when you master a character you have to do it three times. Some characters can even summon demons on their variations and your characters look differs so you can tell the difference.
Backgrounds resemble Injustice with elements you can rip out and throw at your opponent, like a little old lady. You can turn this feature off, but why would you want to? All throw as many old ladies as I want.
Your fighter also builds up energy for an X-ray attack from landing punches and taking hits. The X-ray is a devasting move by each character that turns your opponent into an x-ray scan of epic pain. Pain and guts being ripped out and teeth coming out. Many times when I played that energy would be eaten away to perform breakers which stopped and enemies assault on my person and let me get the upper hand.
Sometimes I felt responses were slow. I thought I taped out a combo or blocked in time. Yet, I didn't. Tighter controls may need to be tweeked with an update.
Fatalities, the games staples are back and as beautiful as ever. Making me ponder as usual as what those meetings and NetherRealm were like when they came up with cutting off opponents arms with lasers with a drone or having their faces melted off by acid as only the start of opponents humiliating deaths. Fatalities come in twos, so learn to kill people twice over. You also have Brutalities where some of your normal game moves are finished off by brutally ending the fight by lets say ripping off an opponents arm.
Did that women's face get eaten? Time for a love story? The story of Mortal Kombat is like a Mortal Kombat movie. It's like I'm watching something made in the 90's, because they're weren't nearly enough explosions. I'll just give you the bits and pieces because it doesn't matter and the story is just so you get fights. Shinnok, an elder G-d badddie, is back to take the Earth. Many of your favorite fighters are back from the dead as evil demon versions of themselves thanks to Quan Chi. EarthRealm is in danger. There was no actual Mortal Kombat Tournament per se. Outer World is in a power struggle. Raiden... Raiden is finally sick of it all. Johnny loves Sonya, not so much the other way around anymore.
The story was entertaining and did bring the whole cast together with of course some untimely deaths. Kombat is not going to get an award for its story.
Beyond versus and story we have some more options.
Towers are back to fight, now called Living Towers, go through them with special rules in place. Rules like freezing snow or health loss. It's not an easy trip up. Level your way up taking on fighter after fighter to be the king of the tower!
How about doing it for your faction? An added online element to get you pumped is Faction War. You choose a side and fight for your faction online, in special matches, really everything you do in game is to give a little more points to your side. Factions run weekly, so if Special Forces didn't win, perhaps join the Lin Kuei.There's five factions to choose from the Mortal Kombat universe. The side that wins gets a bunch more points for its players and bragging rights.
The Krypt is back and sort of an adventure on it's own. To unlock certain places in the new Krypt you'll have to transverse it and collect items that unlock special doors. They're all items from the game so it's best to call it a Mortal Komabt Krypt Quest. Watch out for spiders and dogs, no seriously. Mortal Komabt has you fight for it's prizes.
It's easy to complain about Goro being on the select screen as an extra purchase. So I will, it sucks. Should Predator and Jason Voorhees, he's from Friday the 13th, be free? Oh, yeah. And a bunch of costumes. Hell, you can buy the Krypt to unlock. Odd DLC choices that would have led Mortal Kombat to get the Krown of fighters at least until the first DLC packed version of Street Fighter V comes out. As always I remind companies to just sell the game fully when it comes out. If there's day one DLC, we know it could have been on the disc. Some have already hacked the PC version to unlock characters maybe released later. If I scored these games out of ten it would automatically lose a point for this grift. Yeah, there'll be an Ultimate edition, we all know that, it doesn't mean the game isn't fun to trounce friends in.
Mortal Kombat X is a great way to perform acts of homicidal rage on friends or perfect strangers. Learning complicated moves and then watching yourself brutally ravage your enemies on screen with more blood than the human body normally has is great to view. NetherRealm has made skeletons and guts for each fighter. There's an extra layer, an extra layer of pain you can see in each Fatality. Carnage will be waged in your dorm rooms, in your living rooms, at the office and at tournaments world wide and you'll laugh at all the pain.
Reviewer was given copy by publisher for review purposes on PS4
