Mortal Kombat X would seem to be pretty straightforward as a game. You pick a fighter, you pick an environment, and you start trying to kill each other. That is, in fact, the game! But there are also a bunch of other games, plus a pay-to-win system, plus a first-person RPG, plus there’s probably Pac-Man in there for all I know. Point is, though, Mortal Kombat X wants to be all things to all people and that muddles what makes it fun.
Mortal Kombat X (PC, Xbox One, and PS4; last-gen versions arrive this summer)
Artistic Achievement
One could forgive the MK series for deciding its cheap Hong Kong action vibe and hair metal stylings were out of date, but credit where it’s due: They don’t pretend for a minute that you should take this seriously. The character designs are elaborate and packed with lighthearted gags and shout-outs; this is a game where you can finally settle the argument over whether Solid Snake could beat Master Blaster in a fight.
It also looks incredibly pretty; environments are detailed and the environmental attacks are easy to read in the heat of battle. There’s gore, of course, and lots of it: The X-ray attacks make a return, the fatalities are just jaw-droppingly ridiculous this time around, and even standard attacks have a nice, satisfying crunch to them.
That said, the in-ring banter and voice acting is… variable, to put it kindly. Some characters are at least amusing; others, like Kung Jin, are just straight-up annoying. Just like the fantasy action flicks it’s inspired by, you’re not showing up for the performances.
Innovation
This isn’t reinventing the wheel to any extreme degree; if you played through Injustice: Gods Among Us or the previous Mortal Kombat, you’ve got this game, right down to the control scheme. They have varied up the strategies by giving each fighter three different styles that give you different equipment and special moves, and that does make it feel fresh, but that’s about where it stops.
Execution
In the playing, this game is pretty fun! Really, Netherrealm’s been doing this for years, that’s not a surprise. When you’re fighting, the controls are polished and tuned, although the analog stick feels a little squishy in places and executing some of the combos can be a little too fussy. But fighting is easy, intuitive, and the game is well-designed. If you want to dig into the nitty-gritty details and refine your skills, you can get detailed data about movesets and frame rates. But if you just want to hit things, the systems are easy enough to grasp with a quick visit to the tutorial that you can have a good time.
Similarly, the difficulties feel fair and it’s easy to match a difficulty to your skill level; even at the hardest modes, the computer never pulls out some BS no human being can achieve. It feels, quite a bit, like you’re getting your ass handed to you by a human, which is no mean feat and something Netherrealm deserves some kudos for.
What is a surprise is how much of a mess the game is outside of actually playing it. I got a review copy for PS4 the day before release, and like a good critic started the download early in the morning. They even sent me a full and detailed manual for the game. So, I boot it up about an hour before the stream to get familiar with the controls, open the game… and almost everything is locked, including the Story mode. Why?
The Steam install problem is one thing, but this was another problem altogether. In the two hours I spent playing the game, a majority of questions I fielded asked for help; one commenter on the stream had the game on the same system, but had a completely different menu layout. The manual doesn’t bother to explain why certain modes are locked when you start or how to unlock them. I didn’t unlock the story mode until well after my stream had ended, and I’m still unsure what I did to make that happen.
Is it tied to the game’s two RPG-like progression systems, one for factions and the other for the player? Do you have to finish a game in certain modes to unlock more of them? Do you need to smack yourself in the junk to hit a high-pitched “TOASTY!!!” and scream that into the microphone? Who knows! Could be all of these! Could be none!
Staying Power
The story mode is meaty enough, but really, the value in this game comes with having a second player. If you’ve got friends over on a regular basis, this game will be in heavy rotation on your console for a long, long time, especially the Test Your Luck mode, which might as well just be called “Playing While Drunk”. As a single-player experience… eh, it’s fun, and you might dip in from time to time after you finish the story mode as a palate cleanser from a heavier game, but it’s not going to eat your life like, say, Bloodborne.
Bullsh*t Factor
The good news is that this ships as a full, complete game; you’ve got a huge roster of fighters, a big ol’ pile of modes for both single and two players, and hours of fun without spending a dime more than the price on the box. The bad news is that in DLC terms, this game has more cow manure than a dairy farm.
Would you like the $30 Kombat Pack, which gets you four new characters and skins for other characters? Would you like the $5 discount pack for Easy Fatality tokens or the ability to skip a match in any mode? How about shelling out $5 just for Goro? $2 for Sub-Zero’s “Blue Steel” costume? Oh, and save a few dollars for the upcoming Samurai Pack! This is just the crap I found on Sony’s online store; trust me, the game’s got plenty more where that came from.
Hell, you can’t even just unlock the various extras, like new costumes and fatalities, the normal way anymore. The previous game’s Krypt has gone from zooming from tombstone to tombstone and spending the in-game currency you earn, to a full-on first person game where you explore a cemetery while fighting off monsters with QTE events to earn more Koins. Yes, you not only have to play the game and rack up a huge number of Koins to unlock everything, you have to actually find everything first.
Just as a reminder, there was no reason for this; the game has a full RPG progression system and could easily tie unlocks to that, instead of making you collect Koins for playing the game and then playing another game. It’s not that the Krypt isn’t a fun idea; it is, and it kind of makes you nostalgic for first-person RPGs. But it’s still a really convoluted method to get new stuff from the game.
But don’t worry, if that’s not your bag, you can skip it. By paying $20 to unlock the entire Krypt.
Final Thoughts
Mortal Kombat X is, at its root, a fun game with broad appeal. Anybody can pick it up and have some fun with it, although whether it’s $60 worth of fun will depend on how much you love fighting games and how many fighting game fans you’ve got coming over or in your console’s friend list. That said, the attempt to squeeze another game’s worth of money out of you in DLC form may be too much for some gamers.