Holy shit Mortal Kombat X is so good y'all

If this were a GameFAQs board the entirety of this post would just be the word "topic"

I spent entirely too long, longer than I'm proud of, trying to come up with a fun Mortal Kombat headline. I spelled a lot of words with a K, Fun times. But in the end, I figured I'd just open with my overall opinion of the game. Follow after the jump for a quick review, a longer bit about the shitty DLC, and a few personal observations.

It really is great. Easily the best entry in the series, hands down, and I will entertain no further arguments from friends with 16-bit nostalgia goggles crying "no way, MK 2 bro." 2011's Mortal Kombat was a solid reboot and and a great game on its own, but it also provided a great foundation to build on, And while MKX may only improve in small increments in some areas, it does improve to some degree in every last one. Animations are better across the board, there's less of that slow plodding feel to character walking speeds, and many of the improvements Injustice brought to the MK formula have stuck around for this game. The most obvious will be the stage interactions, which work better here than they did in NetherRealm's DC-branded outing. Thankfully they didn't follow the Injustice example of "hold away" blocking, however, and the always superior designated block button is here as it should be. And with 24 characters, each with 3 variations that offer differing combos and altered or entirely replaced special moves, the roster is much deeper than it first appears. Plus 8 of the 24 are entirely new characters. Not tweaked alternate versions or palette swaps, but actual newcomers. It's a pleasant surprise given Mortal Kombat's rather extensive list of fighters. So many were missing from the reboot that I half expected the next game's roster to just be the rest of the bunch.

Following 2011's example of having an actual story mode, X's single player campaign continues the new timeline from the reboot, and it does so quite well while also being ridiculously, entertainingly dumb- the future of the Mortal Kombat world seen through John Hughes coming of age glasses, with just the right amount of cheese and self-awareness to make it endearing. Although it is a little odd watching Jax worry about his daughter Jacqui in the story, and then see him put out his cigar on the lower half of her split-open head in multiplayer.

The standout mode of MKX, however, is the single player Living Towers. Despite being a single player mode, Living Towers does still require an Internet connection, as it presents three towers to fight through, each with its own special modifiers, switched for new ones hourly, daily, and a Premier tower that changes about every 6 days. The Living Towers fights may have missiles constantly rain down from the sky, give fighters quicker recovery from using certain moves, or have both characters start every match at 10% health, among other modifiers. The Premier tower can offer slightly different options, like The Lost Shokan, a tower played as Goro, allowing anyone to play as the KLASSIC KOMBATANT (I'm sorry I had to do it at least once) whether they downloaded him or not. Upcoming Premier towers will reportedly do the same with each DLC character.

Speaking of DLC characters, let's talk a little bit about the way the DLC ball has been dropped with MKX, shall we? I will say, before anything, that I honestly think this is probably a problem we have courtesy of publisher WB Games and not from NetherRealm itself. I could be totally wrong, but honestly it feels like a WB move and I'm going with my gut here unless we learn otherwise. WB Games fucked NetherRealm's all around great game with publisher-mandated DLC shit that does the game, the developer, and the fans a disservice because WB gonna WB.

Issue number one, of course, is the pre-order bonus of Goro, which is what, in polite company, I would call utter horseshit. Motherfucking Goro, one of if not the most iconic characters for the entire MK series, and you can have him if you pre-ordered. Otherwise? $5. On top of your $60 game. For a character that, given when he was announced and WB's habit of gating off already completed on-disc content, is probably actually already present in the game. (And also given that, surprise surprise, the Goro download looks like one of those kb unlock patches, not the mb or gb size of content that actually needs to be downloaded and installed).

Moving to the next bit of "sold at the GameStop counter when you pick up the game" DLC, we have the $30 Kombat Pack (season pass). The season pass is a pre-purchase of 4 DLC characters, who will each release alongside a skin pack, and the available at launch samurai skin pack. I don't have much of a problem with the season pass, aside from my growing dissatisfaction with pre-order bonuses and what is essentially pre-ordering DLC, and how often it seems like on-disc stuff gated off or extra stuff purposely held back for DLC. And, unlike some other season passes, we know going in exactly what it includes: the samurai pack, Jason Voorhees and the horror pack. Tanya and a klassic skins pack, Predator and a Predator-themed skin pack (that includes altering Jax to be Carl Weathers), Tremor with a second klassic pack. Also, season pass holders get each character and pack a week before they're released for individual sale.

However, I want to know, why the hell did we all just agree that jumping the cost of season passes from (usually) $20 to $30 was totally fine by us and our wallets? If new gen entire games can stay at $60, why does the equivalent level of DLC need to jump by 50%? I'd be happy to pay more for content that was more "expansion" and less "DLC," but that's not what the price jump represents, is it?

There's a second complaint going around about the season pass as well, with the inclusion of Tanya, who is present in the game as a story mode opponent. I'm not sure how I feel about that one, though. Story mode is broken up by character, and so I'm willing to accept that maybe Tanya isn't balanced against the full roster yet, and she only has one variation. The same goes for a few other characters who haven't been announced (hinted, but not confirmed) as DLC after release, like Baraka, Sindel, and Rain. Perhaps this partial form was already in the game, but fans asked for her and they decided to make a full version of the character? Baraka and Sindel are pretty much just lifted from MK 2011 with a new skin, clearly just meant to mix up the story mode a bit. When PC players started messing with the games assets, they found these characters in the game, and they are in fact partially finished, just for story mode characters. So does it look a little sketchy? Sure. But I'm willing to entertain the idea that it's not in this case.

So, moving past the point of sale DLC options, let's visit the PlayStation store! We have the Blue Steel Sub-Zero skin, for $2. That one...eh. It's $2, and a portion of the proceeds helps build the prize pool for an MKX tournament. It's also a compliment to the Gold Scorpion skin, which you can currently only get in the Coarse special edition- annoying, but it at least makes sense as the skin is based on Coarse's take on Scorpion for their statue.

There's also the ridiculous microtransaction packs, 5 or 30 "Easy Fatalities" for $1 or $5 dollars. These let you perform the series' signature finishing moves with a simple 2 button press instead having to enter a special move command. These are fuckin' silly. There was a time when fatality inputs were entirely too complex, yes. At one point, Jax had a fatality that required holding down a button for longer than the fatality time would allow. You had to actually play the last bit of the final round already holding down the button. It was Not Cool. Those days are over, however. Fatalities now are no more complex than Sub-Zero's Ice Ball or Liu Kang's Flying Kick. When I first saw "Easy Fatalities," I was concerned that they may have gone back the needlessly complex route in order to make the microtransactions viable. But no. If you're too young to master fatality inputs now, you're too young to play Mortal Kombat. The only other way I can think of these being useful is that people with disabilities may have difficulty entering the command for a fatality in the short time allowed. And in that case, it's kinda super shitty not to just have "Easy Fatalities" be an option those who need it can toggle on at will.

And finally (for now) we have the $20 Unlock All Krypt Items pack. The Krypt, as in the previous game, is where you can spend Koins earned through the other game modes to unlock concept art, character skins, additional fatalities, etc. And taken on its own, this would be a totally optional thing for people with more money than time who don't give a shit. But we can't do that, because we have to take it as something they're selling after implementing a Day 1 patch that nerfed the amount of Koins you earn for anything you may do, with multiple people reporting that parts of the story mode were rewarding 2,500 Koins unpatched, which dropped to 200 Koins after letting the patch install as a major example. Typical free-to-play style bullshit.

That long bit about the DLC practices consists of basically my only problems with Mortal Kombat X. Like I said, I'm betting that means my call is a "good show NetherRealm old chum" and "fuck right off WB Games"
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KOMBO. (Shut up, it's fun.)

I do have one other thing with Mortal Kombat X that kinda surprises me, though. Not really a negative on the game, but...y'all I'm not really into fatalities anymore. I used to love fatalities. They were completely absurd, a level of violence that flew right past being upsetting directly to "well I have to chuckle at that." Johnny Cage uppercutting a guy's head off with such force that he also removes previously invisible second and third heads. Cyrax doing the Predator self-destruct only to put himself back together after he kills a guy. Liu Kang dropping an arcade cabinet of the game he's in and crushing his foe. HA!

But now? For one thing, it's gotten too realistic in the graphics department. The old days of Mortal Kombat, with digitized actors and bouncy sprites and gigantic splashes of blood the color and apparent consistency of ketchup, are a far cry from watching someone get cut in half and the halves fall apart and you watch strings of blood and muscle hold together for a second before snapping and then the halves land on the ground and sure, it's not one-to-one, but there's the identifiable stomach, intestines, lungs, heart, brain. Ugh. I can't do it. On top of that, the humor element is almost entirely gone from fatalities. I got a chuckle out of Johnny Cage doing his best Jack Nicholson through the hole he just made in Goro's chest, or Jax lighting a cigar just so he could put it out on Shinnok's head, but it's mostly all just realistic, hyper violent limb severing and decapitation anymore. Almost every fatality seems like it was designed by one guy who really, really liked the 2010 Splatterhouse reboot.

Here's the weird thing, though: I LOVE the X-ray attacks. They're just as violent as fatalities, with the added feature of a zoomed-in x-ray view of the worst trauma inflicted. But man, watching Kung Jin fire an arrow into each eye, grab the arrows and swing his opponent down into the ground to break their neck, and then that other guy just gets up and taunts you to keep fighting? The "nope, I'm totally fine, let's do this" John Cena selling makes them just ridiculous enough that to me they're goddamn hilarious.

The whole realism thing is an extra bit in that it makes me feel like a hypocrite. When I was a kid and everyone insisted that MK was awful for children, I thought they were idiots. Like I was gonna have any real issues because of this cheesy B-movie kung fu game with condiment blood and four-armed giants? I showed my mom Mortal Kombat, I was fairly quickly allowed to continue playing Mortal Kombat. But if I had a 10-year old right now? They would NOT be playing Mortal Kombat X. And I would judge other parents that DO allow it. Even without my own kid, I DO judge parents for it! I saw a lady in GameStop buying MKX for her son, the kid had to be only 9 or 10. I didn't even realize I was shaking my head at her until she left and the clerk looked over and said "I know, man. Right? The hell." Adult life is so goddamn weird.