The Mortal Kombat series has been one of the most up and down in terms of popularity in the Game Industry, with massive successes and utter failures rounding out the various games. A few years ago Netherealm Studios with Mortal Kombat series’ co-creator Ed Boon revitalized the series with the amazing Mortal Kombat 9 and brought MK back to the public and competitive eye.
Since then, they took on the DC Universe with Injustice and have just released the tenth game in Mortal Kombat’s history. Featuring old and new design principles, this is an amazing game if you can overlook some annoying details.
Streamlined Specialty:
There are several big changes to the formula in Mortal Kombat X and we’ll start with the combat system. I complained about Mortal Kombat 9’s combat system in an earlier post saying that the button presses didn’t match the special abilities and made the whole thing feel extra cumbersome.
With Injustice, Netherealm did a massive streamlining of the button presses and special move designs: Keeping special commands to a standardized format across every character and getting rid of the light/heavy attack scheme. That design philosophy has found its way to Mortal Kombat X with some new touches.
Every character in Mortal Kombat X has three variations based on their personality. These variations affect how they play and even changes certain special move and combo usage during play. These are not simple alterations across the different characters but game changing affects that are sure to drive an interesting Meta game at the competitive level which I’m sure experts are going through every variation to find the best ones as we speak.
It’s a very intriguing system as it both limits and expands the functionality of each character. Each variation only has a few special moves and it’s going to be an interesting debate to see how the fans take to this system of multiplying every character by 3.
Streamlined special moves and combo inputs make an appearance from Injustice
Once you start fighting, Mortal Kombat X plays similarly to the previous Mortal Kombat and Injustice with the name of the game being combos and your special meter.
Like before, your meter fills up as you give or take damage and will allow you to augment special moves, break out of combos and perform a devastating X-Ray attack. Environmental items that both players can use have been toned down from Injustice and aren’t as powerful as before; also gone are clashes that recovered health during a match.
Another staple of the Mortal Kombat series is of course the fatalities and they are back and bloodier than ever. If you thought the last game went far with the damage done, Mortal Kombat X is definitely the goriest and most violent game in the series and you should keep that in mind if you have any kids nearby. Brutalities also are back and are now built around performing specific actions during a match to pull them off.
Besides straight up fighting, there are several other ways to play and enjoy Mortal Kombat X.
Juicy Bits:
As with previous games from Netherealm, Mortal Kombat X has more to it than just versus. The story mode is back and again frames a bunch of fights around the larger conflict. Taking place 25 years after MK 9 retcon a lot of the previous games; it’s a good introduction to the various characters and won’t take long to get through.
The Krypt makes a return as part adventure game part unlock system as you’ll spend koins to unlock a variety of content. Towers allow you to play special matches with unique modifiers such as less gravity, more damage and more. But in terms of brand new modes, that’s where playing online comes in.
The story is an interesting diversion but obviously not the real meat of the experience
First there is the faction war meta-game where players can join one of the major factions and compete with other players online.
Joining a faction will give you a faction specific fatality that you can perform and there are challenges and daily content surrounding playing online. The higher you go in a faction will unlock new fatalities and other basic stuff.
For groups of friends, the new king of the hill match type is a welcomed addition; allowing a room to chat and play each other while watching the current round and awarding points to the winner.
Obviously Netherealm is going for the monetization route with new characters, costumes, fatalities and shortcuts players can buy. I already talked about my thoughts on them in a previous post but to sum it up: While new content is always great, shortcuts devalue the game and aren’t helping lesser skilled players learn the game.
From a mechanic and design standpoint, Mortal Kombat X is an amazing game and easily one of the better fighting games to be released in terms of overall content. Yet for such a success, Netherealm made some really stupid mistakes in how they handled the release and support.
Lagality:
Despite the focus of online play, Mortal Kombat X’s netcode and online support was poor at launch on both the consoles and PC. Issues of game crashing, lag, connectivity issues and more were reported. While the console version has been improved, the same can’t be said of the PC.
Once again Netherealm has turned to third party developer and porter High Voltage to handle the PC version and the drop in quality is extreme. Memory leaks, game crashing, not optimize graphics and more plagued the PC version at the start. So much so, that the PC version was massively discounted for several days due to poor consumer reception.
Lag and poor patches plague the PC version and is just a poor experience from a AAA game
The customer support from both Netherealm and High Voltage has been horrible with no communication with the fans on Steam.
At this moment in time, the game has been patched a few times and the memory leaks are almost gone but the graphical optimization is still there and netcode issues are ruining online play for a lot of people.
Netcode is incredibly important considering the timing needed to perform combos and avoid attacks; without a stable connection it’s impossible to have any chance of winning online. It’s important to mention that there is always the possibility that High Voltage will come through to fix this, but Injustice was left in a poor position after they abandoned it.
I don’t know if its laziness, budget or simply a lack of understanding that is keeping Netherealm from dedicating their time to the PC version as well as the consoles but this needs to stop. There is an untapped market for PC fighting games that is going largely ignored and by not fully dedicating their time to it, Netherealm is throwing away money and fans who want to enjoy their latest game.
Kicking and Screaming:
As I said further up, from a mechanic standpoint I think Mortal Kombat X is a great game and one of the best titles in the series, but there are a lot of little details that undermine the game. There’s no excuse anymore for a AAA game to have poor porting issues and the nickel and dime microtransactions feel out of place.
If they can sort these issues out, Mortal Kombat X could be one of the better AAA games released this year. But it’s strange for a AAA title to have so many little issues; it’s like someone fumbling the football on purpose inches away from a touchdown.
