Mortal Kombat X (PS4) Review

Mortal Kombat X is a good addition to the franchise that has been going strong for two decades

I've been a fan of the Mortal Kombat series for as long as I remember. 

Growing up in the late 90's and early 00's, I was able to play MK 1, 2 and UMK on console and MK 4 on PC. Then came Deadly Alliance, Deception, Shaolin Monks and Armageddon, all titles that I've played on the PS2. Things were going a bit tough financially for Midway, the original developers of the series, so the series was kept on ice for a couple of years. I resorted to replaying all the classics all over again. 

Come 2011, I started seeing trailers of a new Mortal Kombat, you can imagine how excited I was when I heard the news. I finally got a chance to play it with my brothers on the 360, how fun was it to see a reboot of the classic Scorpion v Sub Zero match in Shang Tsung's arena. I loved the move Netherrealm studios made by redoing the story in an alternate manner, rather than just releasing remastered versions of the older games. The storyline was very good as well. 

Come 2015, 4 years after MK 9 (as it was abbreviated). At first I was a bit skeptic at the content of the game, it seemed like the roster of characters was changed entirely with the addition of new characters like Takeda, Cassie Cage and others. The game also seemed to have a very, very dark visual theme to it, which also wasn't very convincing. The whole reason why I love the newer releases is the fact that they depict the original sequence of events in an alternate manner, while retaining core characters. After watching a couple gameplay videos, I was satisfied to see that people like Raiden, Jax, Quan Chi and others were still in the mix. 

I was lucky to get a copy of MKX along with my PS4, with a code to download Goro as well. So let's start off with my review:

Visuals

The game is running at 60fps and looks so beautiful. The level of detail in the environments and characters are insane, which shows why it was not possible to port this to the 360 and PS3. 

The fatalities, X-ray attacks and brutalities are done with attention to detail. For example, doing an X-ray on Kano will show a human skeleton suffering a lot of damage, while using it on a character such as Reptiel, will show a green skeleton suffering at the hands of Sub Zero's ice spike. 

Gameplay

The execution of moves and combos are complemented by the higher framerate, resulting in a buttery smooth experience. Sometimes a little button mashing is done, with the end result of performing some kind of brutal beatdown coupled with using an innocent monk or old lady as an object to throw at your opponent. The use of the environment in the various combat areas are very cool. 

There is also the addition of the various towers, including the Test Your Might, Test Your Luck and Towers that are updated frequently with contextual real-time events like St Patrick's Day, where the fights in these towers have random match boosts which is an advantage or a disadvantage. 

The roster of characters is a hit and a miss. It's a hit with the new variation system which splits one character's moveset into 3 different variations, each combined with the character's general moveset and a special moveset especially for that variation. The amount of alternate costumes available also provide for a cosmetically refreshing experience. 

The game is a semi-miss with its roster: While I do enjoy the presence of characters like Takeda, Shinnok, and others, I do miss the characters that were present in the MK4 era, such as Reiko, Kai and Fujin. Luckily there are some pretty sweet characters available as DLC (or in the new Mortal Kombat: XL) in the form of Leatherface, Tanya, Triborg (a combination of the cyber-ninjas), Alien, Jason and a couple of others. 

The Krypt has gotten a pretty big revamp, with a couple scary moments every now and then, but again, I enjoy wandering around in there. 

The absence of tag team combat is something which I miss. The game has also gotten a new Factions feature, where the player joins one of five factions in the MK lore, and by completing various objectives within the game, the player accrues points for his/her specific faction, contributing to a global score which determines which faction is the winner at the end of a certain time period. 

Playing the Android/IOS version of MKX also unlocks additional content for the console version, which is pretty nice. 

Story

The storyline starts off with the aftermath of the events of MK9, which would be somewhere between MK3 and MK4, with MKX ending basically where Deadly Alliance started. It is a very interesting storyline, but can be completed in a couple of hours. I'm not leaving any spoilers, all that I can say the story is of good quality.

Online

I have had this game for four months and I'm still not able to play any online. So due to the unavailability of online gameplay, I won't be reviewing any of this.  

Conclusion

So I've dealt with three aspects, visuals, gameplay and story. The visuals of MKX is very appealing and is a showcase of what can be done on the newer generation of consoles. Gameplay is very smooth, with a few bugs here and there, with a good-but-not-perfect roster, various alternate costumes and character variations. The story brings in new characters, yet also shows other sides of original characters that you would not have expected to see, yet very short in terms of gameplay. 

Mortal Kombat X is a strong to the franchise that has been going strong for more than two decades. What makes it so cool is that you can pick it up after not playing it for a while and still enjoy it, you can challenge your friends in a match or ten or just play it to unwind a bit. As my first game on the PS4, this gave me a pretty good first impression of what gaming on the PS4 is like.  

Well, there's my first review done and dusted. Hope you enjoyed it! 

Have a nice day!

Cheers

Fred