“Mortal Kombat X” brings the long-running franchise to kurrent konsoles and manages to make a 10-game franchise feel fresh, but fails to live up in some ways to its immediate predecessor.
Taking place over 20 years after the 2011 version of “Mortal Kombat” the story revolves around a new generation of fighters saving Earthrealm from otherworldly forces. While long-time favorites like Liu Kang, Scorpion and Sub-Zero return, the game is focused on new characters. Some are related to previous kharacters such as Cassie Cage, the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, others are kompletely new like the insect-like D’Vorah or the Mayan Sun God Kotal Kahn.
Each character now has three variations to choose from with small differences in each. For example, Ninjitsu Scorpion can use a sword, while Inferno Scorpion can summon hellfire to attack. The differences appear small on paper, but during gameplay can lead to one variation playing kompletely differently than another. These changes let the two-dimensional fighting feel new while still feeling familiar to fans of previous entries in the series.
The story revolves around these new fighters trying to prevent the resurrection of an evil god. While the story itself is entertaining, the story mode is both a step forward and a step backward for the series. In the 2011 game, the story mode was significantly longer, around six to seven hours to komplete, kompared to “Mortal Kombat X” where I was able to komplete the story mode in about three hours. However, the story mode was much more forgiving in MKX, in previous games it was very possible to get stuck fighting a particularly tough opponent, in this game you are able to skip a fight you find too hard.
For single player kontent there is the story mode, and a series of towers players can go through. Some are similar to arcade mode in previous games where you fight through a legion of enemies to unlock a kharacter specific ending, some give you random challenges based on a series of modifiers.
The 2011 “Mortal Kombat” challenge towers had more variety to them in terms of what the challenges were. But, the online-konnected living towers are konstantly updating with new challenges to komplete everyday.
The game is however, focused on multiplayer. There is the classic one-on-one multiplayer mode as well as a variety of online modes including ranked battles, freeplay and rooms, where players wait in queue to play the winner of the most recent match. The online can be a hit and miss, the matching system could use some work as it’s not unusual to play someone with a record of 83-4 and then against a player with a 2-57 record. After a recent update, the online is relatively smooth and komparable to offline, assuming your opponent isn’t halfway across the county or the world. Players will find plenty of depth in these modes as having a potentially infinite amount of opponents who will keep the game interesting for months and years to kome.
Ultimately, “Mortal Kombat X” is an entry in the series that plays great and manages to make multiplayer feel more interesting than ever. It doesn’t succeed at living up to the single player experience of previous games, but overall the game provides plenty of kontent to keep players koming back.
4/5
