It’s been twenty-three years now since Mortal Kombat first shook up arcades with its dark and ultra violent gameplay. In my own collection, I have nearly every Mortal Kombat game from MK Gold on Sega CD, MK II on 32X, MK4 on PSX, sealed copies of Deadly Alliance and Deception on Gamecube, and most recently MK9 Komplete Kollection on PS3. I’m clearly a fan of the series, but do not claim to be an expert or someone deeply familiar with the the universe Ed Boon and crew have created over the years.
MKX offers lots of new gameplay elements yet still remains familiar and welcoming for those who haven’t played the series in any number of years. The return of a unified Story mode takes the place of an ‘arcade’ mode, so each character does not have a unique ending, which I’ll admit is one of my few disappointments with MKX. The story takes place twenty-five years after the events of MK9, and stars some familiar faces and several new ones. The gist of it is that Shinnok is being freed by Quan Chi and his revenant followers, including Kung Lao, Kitana, Liu Kang, Jax, and Sindel. Shinnok was first seen in MK4 if memory serves, and he has been trapped by Raiden and the other Elder Gods for eons. His thirst for revenge and power is boundless, and he intends to take over not just Earthrealm, but Outworld as well, and destroy the Elder Gods, too.
Enter Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, both of which look much different and older than you’re used to seeing. They’re spear-heading an earthrealm effort to stop this, with help from Raiden. A special forces team consisting of new characters, namely, Cassie Cage, Jacqui Briggs, Takeda, and Kung Jin are tasked with meeting with Outworld to forge an alliance. Needless to say there are some complications in the process, and more importantly, dozens of interesting fights. Similar to MK9, the cutscenes seamlessly merge into fighting. There are lots of cutscenes, which you can skip, but as a fan of the franchise I enjoyed the actual story being told. Is it the best part about the game, or am I likely to remember all of its details in a couple of weeks? Well, no, but, it does flow well and it did hold my interest. It only took about four hours to clear, but along the way I got introduced to about a dozen characters, some of which I probably would not have otherwise tried, perhaps ever, or at least in a long time.
In playing through the story and other modes, I realized that this thirty-plus character roster was chock full of well-balanced, interesting, and fun-to-use characters. This is one of the few fighting games in my experience in which I can confidently select the ‘random’ option on the choose your fighter screen and be happy with the outcome. It takes very little effort to jump into a new character and become not just comfortable, but competent. Complete move lists are available in the pause menu that show the full gamut of standard moves, kombos, special moves, even finishers (if you have unlocked them). And as was first started with MK Vs DC Universe from several years back, all special moves can be executed with just a few d-pad directions and a face button, although you do have the option to enable “Alternate Control” which requires diagonal motions for special moves instead of just individual d-pad directions. Regardless of how you play, being able to switch between and quickly appreciate the numerous characters is a game design approach I really appreciate and value.
Being able to comfortably switch between characters adds a lot more replay value and depth, as do the three Variations included with every character. These variations are chosen at the fighter select screen, or in the case of the story mode, are chosen for you. The variations are significant; they’re kind of like the different styles that Deadly Alliance and Deception had, in which every fighter had two “empty hand” styles and a weapon style. With MKX, you cannot switch between variations during a fight, which is actually somewhat surprising. The variations do provide each fighter with alternate special moves, as well as different Brutalities, too. Brutalities, by the way, are intricate; each fighter has five that can be unlocked, but their requirements are pretty complicated (viewable from the Moves List). Anyway, the different Variations carry over the same base attacks but mix-up the specials. Reptile’s invisibility moves are in one variation, Liu Kang uses Fists of Fire in another, Kitana busts out Jade’s glaive and staff in her “Mournful” Variation, and so on. Suffice it to say that the Variations add a lot of depth and, well, variety to the mix.
Speaking of variety, Test Your Luck mode, available in single and multiplayer, is pretty crazy. You can have up to five modifiers effect an upcoming match. These modifiers include persistent poison damage to one or both players, speed boosts, falling heads that do damage to the fighters, and all kinds of other creative ‘things’ to shake up a match. Test Your Luck can be played within the Towers too, which is another core mode MKX offers. Living Towers include Daily and Weekly challenges with Leaderboards in which you must take on some number of AI opponents with certain specified conditions. The first of these was to use Goro to clear through six enemies, now the current one requires using Kano and his laser shot move. Scores are based on Bronze/Silver/Gold rankings. Other tower modes including Klassic, in which there are no modifiers and you just battle through ten foes. Test Your Luck mode as mentioned earlier pits you against seven fighters, Test Your Might has ten stages, Endless (fight until you lose), and Survivor (maintain one health bar that carries over between fights). Oh, there are also Tower Challenges in which you can create your own Tower and share it with Friends to see how they fare.
Ok, before moving on, a bit more on the available modes. So Test Your Might, which is available as a Tower mode or anytime in two player is pretty cool. It’s a button-masher, in which players have to break through tougher and tougher material, just like the the Test Your Might modes from previous MK games. You have ten seconds to button mash your meter into the green zone, at which point you have to quickly press L2+R2 — easier said than done as you get further along. Getting through teak wood is one thing, even a golden statue wasn’t bad, but the “copper head vise” (think dude’s head trapped in a box) was as far as I could get. The character who fails the Test Your Might challenge dies in a creative way, be it from a swarm of bugs that fly at their skull, or fire, or a variety of other violent ways.
The fun of Test Your Might doesn’t last too long though because the button-mashing can really only go so far. Training mode is similarly worth a look, but not likely something you’ll go back to much. Within training, you can go through tutorials to learn the basics and combos, as well as go into a fatality mode to practice these, although this is not as interesting as it might sound. A colored box appears on the floor to help you get the proper distance but there’s not much point to this otherwise; still, cool that it’s included for completeness.
I have yet to mention two other major areas of the game, which would be the Krypt and Factions. The Krypt was started in MK: Deadly Alliance. Back then, it was a simple, yet large, 26×26 grid. Players spent Koins to unlock graves to reveal all sorts of goodies, from extra costumes to concept art, etc. The Krypt is more involved this time around; you still earn koins (although just gold ones now, not ruby, sapphire, jade, etc) and you still choose which headstones and markers you want to unlock. However, this is navigated in a first person perspective, complete with a mini-map and even locked areas that require you find items within the Krypt to open them. I thought it a much more personal and interesting experience, yet it maintains the numerous minor thrills of unlocking lots of content, including more Brutalities, Fatalities, music, art, costumes, and so forth. I’m really glad the Krypt is here and is as interesting as ever.
Factions is an online-integrated feature. When you first launch the game you can view a video explaining what the five different factions are. After you make your choice as to which one you will join — Special Forces, White Lotus, etc — the Faction Points you earn from playing through the Story or other modes gets dumped into your Faction’s total pool. So it’s basically a collective worldwide leaderboard, and you can also jump into online Faction Wars in which you take on other Factions for supremacy. It’s pretty cool, but not something I’ll personally spend much time with. Also of note, during the last five days that I have had MKX, I had several times in which all online functionality did not work. It was not my connection or a PSN issue, so it looks to be a problem with the game. There has already been a 3+ GB patch, too. It’s unfortunate, but hardly surprising to see a AAA game, or pretty much any game for that matter, launch without some early issues and patches.
Ok, so lots of modes, lots of kontent, and excellent fighting control, mechanics, and balance. From the new characters to everyone’s Variations to all new X-ray moves and stage interactions, there’s a hell of a lot to like about MKX. As I pour over my notes and memos taken during this past week, I don’t have a lot bad to say about my experience thus far. A few issues with the online modes, the inability to speed up X-ray attacks, and the lack of an arcade mode (to give each character a brief ending like the old MK games, I miss that) are noted here. I will say the amount of ‘push’ for paid DLC is also concerning. From the main menu, you can press Triangle to launch the PS Store. There are notifications on the main menu about new content that is available, be it Goro as a playable character (he’s also a lot of fun to use), Sub-Zero’s new costume, the upcoming release of Tanya, etc., there is already a lot of paid DLC in the works. Heck you can drop $30 on a pack right now if you want. Here’s hoping WBIE never make this some kind of F2P game or ruin the series like EA has done with Command & Conquer (making it online-only). Anyway, the list of negatives for MKX are not very long and none are deal-breakers.
In terms of presentation, MKX is solid. I had no framerate troubles whatsoever, even when Ermac was teleporting constantly around a stage and Test Your Luck modifiers were raining down various power-ups and things from above. In all seriousness, it felt like 60fps and looked fantastic throughout. From the new stages and their interesting animated background details to the flashy animations of the characters, MKX is beautiful. High end PC gamers can play in 4K too, which is surely an awesome thing to behold. Smooth graphics, great effects and music, and snappy load times make for a pleasantly efficient experience every time you fire it up.
With that, let’s head to the summary…
