The Backlog: Mortal Kombat X

 

Having played through Mortal Kombat X, Mortal Kombat 11, and Mortal Kombat 1 recently I figured I might as well share my thoughts on each. At least what thoughts I have to share. Didn't play them in this specific order but let's go with Mortal Kombat X first. The game that was their second try with the series after KM9 and Nether Realm brought the series back from the brink of death.This is a weird one to try and talk about because like 9, outside of it's story mode it does not do a whole lot beyond being an arcade fighter with online versus modes. A lot of fighting games try to provide more content than that now. As for what I'm talking about, outside of Arcade and Versus/Online the main things to do in this game are living towers and Factions content.

Living towers are essentially another variation of arcade towers. They don't have the arcade/story boss at the top but they have modifiers applied to the fights. There are premier towers that change once a week, daily towers that change once a day, and hourly towers that changed... you guessed it once an hour. The modifiers can range from having the camera flipped upside down, having a hazard that fires off and can hit either opponent, having a handicap that damages you for jumping or blocking, or something like juggle combat that weakens gravity so much that once you launch someone you can essentially just keep hitting them so they don't land until they're KOed.

The modifiers in living towers however are not all balanced equally. While most of the ones that have a stage hazard can hit either opponent there are plenty where the handicap only applies to you and not your opponents. Likely because they wouldn't figure out how to program the AI to know not to jump when jumping will kill them. Also these can be aggravating because of the finisher system. Brutalities which grant the most XP and Koins for unlocks require the last hit to be from a specific attack and you can be cheated of this by a stage hazard randomly KOing your opponent when you're going in for the kill.

The Factions stuff however is a bit weird. It provides another leveling system beyond your account level that provides extra finishers depending on your faction level and how well your faction is currently doing in the faction wars leaderboards. But the faction level really just adds another annoying grind, especially if you're an achievement hunter since you have to join and max out all 5 different factions if you want 100%.

The actual modes related to Factions are Invasion Towers and an Invasion Boss that are only available one day a week at seeming random. There is also a War Tower that I have never seen active once, maybe it saw more use when the game was still the currently supported newest MK game.

Invasion Towers are basically just another form of living towers. The Invasions Boss however is a powered up version of one of the characters who has 10 hits of Super Armor you have to break before you can do real damage against them and even than it's a team effort to beat them. You just get in as much damage as you can before you get KOed to help your faction eventually beat them in a war of attrition. Personally find this highly annoying because the armor they have and how aggressive they are basically means they tend to just run through your attacks and pummel you senseless unless you know a specific way to cheese each boss.

The story itself is fairly forgettable oddly after how memorable the first one was. It was only about a month ago and it was the second time I played through it but still the only thing I really remember is Johnny Cage and his daughter Cassie Cage getting a Deus Ex Machina boost saying their green energy can hurt Shinnok for some reason. That an revenants, revenants everywhere because they killed so many characters in the previous game.

New characters to this game are kind of hit or miss. I don't like D'Vorah at all. Ferra/Torr is amusing but a mess to actually play as. I know a lot of people like Takeda from the Kombat Kids but Cassie is the only one that really grew on me as she is now my favorite Mortal Kombat character. Kotal Kahn was meant to be a kinder Outworld ruler but he's a paranoid asshole most of the game and even in the next game too. Erron Black is for me the other truly stand out aside from Cassie out of the new characters. Some reason an Outworld Cowboy just looks cool.

With all that said how do I feel about the game overall? I actually think the biggest saving grace of this game and why so many consider it their favorite is that IMO it does have the best actual gameplay in the series. It has stage interactables and still has X-Ray moves before they turned them into Fatal Blows which are restricted to you needing to be almost dead to activate. The gameplay and moves just feel smooth. The biggest problem is just lack of interesting modes to interact with if you're not big into competitive online play.

Also while a lot of people will disagree with me, I actually prefer Cassie Cage's look in this game. She looks distinctly her own person here and changing her hair to a ponytail next game makes her feel more like she's just Sonya jr. since they both have the same hair now.

At the end of the day can I recommend this game? Considering how cheap it tends to go on sale with all DCL included? Absolutely.