Mortal Kombat X Review

A few years ago, NetherRealm Studios rebooted the iconic Mortal Kombat franchise bringing the series to new heights. The new X-Ray system along with some of the most violent and gory fatalities in the series’ history made the Mortal Kombat reboot a thing of beauty and disgust.

Now with Mortal Kombat X, NetherRealm is looking to push the innovation and brutality even further. Mortal Kombat X takes place 20 years after the ending of the 2011 reboot, bringing with it some familiar faces and some fresh ones. Fan favorites Scorpion and Sub Zero will of course still be in fighting shape but now have new competition from a younger generation of Earth and NetherRealm fighters like Cassie cage, Johnny and Sonya’s daughter, and Kenshi’s son Takeda to name a few.

There’s a wide variety of different style fighters available to you so that any player should be able to find someone who works well with their style of play.

The different fighters this time around also have three different styles to choose from pre-fight that change the way characters work. One style may be more of a in-your-face fast punching type of play while another could be more of a keep the enemy at a distance with projectiles sort of style. This makes finding a character you like a little bit easier by giving you options as to how each fighter will act.

For instance I personally like Sonya’s Covert Ops style for its countering and fast movements. but I hate her Special Forces variation which calls in a drone to drop bombs. One style has you right in the opponents face while the other tries to make you keep your distance. These kinds of options make it so any character could potentially have the fighting style you’re looking for.The online component of Mortal Kombat X is a bit of a mixed bag.

There’s some great stuff in there but it’s being held back by some problems. Once you start MKX for the first time you’ll be asked to choose your clan from a group of five different clans. Everything you do online or off will earn your clan reputation until one clan is the decided winner for the week. After that it all resets and you start fresh. I love the idea that everything I do is working to push my clan ahead especially in single player.

This allows people who aren’t very fond of multiplayer to still contribute to their clan of choice. I know I’m not always in the mood to play other people so knowing I’m still helping out my clan and hopefully earning some cool rewards for being on the winning clan is great.

If you played the 2011 reboot of Mortal Kombat I’m sure you remember the challenge towers. MKX has taken that idea and given it new life in the form of online living towers. There is now hourly, daily and weekly towers to take part in that are constantly changing not just the enemies you fight but also the modifiers in the fight.

There are a ton of modifiers like losing health whenever you jump, gaining health from doing damage, random portals to fall through and so much more I couldn’t fit even a forth of it all here. Connecting online can also be an annoying experience full of wait times and loading screens. Just connecting to the online portion can take upwards of 30 seconds. After connecting you can search for a 1 on 1 VS battle (Ranked), a player battle (Unranked) or team battle.

There are a few more types of fights like king of the hill or clan battles but those are the main things. Once you choose to search for any of these fights a screen pops up saying its searching for a player. This part can sometimes work kinda fast but once the fight is finished you need to reconnect to the online portion again for about another 30 to 45 seconds before you can search for another opponent.

Between each fight you could spend 2 to 4 minutes just trying to get another fight which is a little ridiculous. I suggest going into chat rooms and challenging people from there that way you can just rematch people to keep the action going strong and avoid the long connecting to online wait times.

My biggest disappointment with MKX though has to be the exclusion of the tag team matches from the 2011 reboot. In all my time with 2011’s Mortal Kombat I only played about 75 1 VS 1 fights compared to the hundreds of tag team fights I played. This was by far my favorite addition to the reboot and its exclusion in MKX is surprising.

Overall Mortal Kombat X is a great fighting game full of everything you’ve come to expect from the series and its developer NetherRealm studios. The story line along with its cast of characters and their over the top brutality and fatalities are fantastic and somewhat unsettling.

Mortal Kombat X’s one major flaw is the time it takes between each online fight but using the chat rooms makes this much less of an issue. If you enjoyed Mortal Kombat’s 2011 reboot or you just love killing people in the most sadistic ways possible then this is the Mortal Kombat game you’ve been waiting for.