The lead-up to the release of Mortal Kombat X demonstrated how a venerable gaming franchise relied – almost too much – on its trademark feature to the exclusion of all else.
Nearly everything we had seen from the trailers and previews over the past few months focused on the hallowed Fatality – the end-of-match flourishes that usually feature an eruption of gore and grisly dismemberments.
Defeat your opponent in one-on-one combat, and you’re allowed to put an exclamation mark on the victory with a final hit. Input the correct combination of buttons, and your character plays out a grisly execution designed for maximum humiliation.
NetherRealm Studios’ first foray into the current generation of consoles meant that they’ve been able to make their wildest and most disturbing dreams a reality, to the point where the gruesome violence has made even decades-old MK fans wince.
The first time I saw Scorpion use his sword to slice off a victim’s face, making it slide off and prompting the brain to flop out of a bisected skull, I had to take a deep breath and recollect my composure.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4faAvsMMpFg&w=640&h=390]
It makes sense from a marketing perspective – Mortal Kombat, after all, has been so known for its Mature-rated violence that the original in 1992 was actually one of the games that spurred horrified parents and lawmakers to demand a video games ratings system in North America.
But fighting games are about throwing down with another human opponent You choose your fighter, and face off in a battle of wits and psychology as much as button mashing and dexterity tests. What attack will your opponent use next? Can mix up your rush downs to confuse his or her defences? Are your nerves calm enough to chain together a series of moves to make the perfect combo the split-second he or she becomes open to attack?
At its highest level, MKX is an entrancing ballet of brutality. For all the pomp and circumstance of the Fatality, it’s almost a disservice to the rest of the game’s components, most of which have grown in complexity and intrigue that far outpaces the series’ trademark.
WB/NetherealmGoro was only available to players who preordered the game or payed $5.
Take the Story Mode, probably the first stop for new players. It’s a full narrative arc lasting about five to six hours, that lets you play from the perspective of several characters in the latest chapter of the ludicrous wars between Earth Realm (Earth), Outworld (where the weirdos live) and the NetherRealm (Hell).
It plays out like a truncated season of television, and is genuinely entertaining when it isn’t bogged down by its juvenile and stilted script. Characters’ deaths are surprisingly rare over the course of the story: most of the fighters who were murdered in MK 2011’s expansive story mode have been resurrected as zombies, and end-of-match Fatalities are disabled because naturally you’ll want (almost) everyone alive to reach the end of the plot.
Once we’ve seen the relationships between the characters, especially the hardened veterans and their now-grown-up children, I found it difficult to end a match with a Fatality when the characters involved would clearly never act that way.
Yet performing Fatalities is encouraged by the game’s systems. All of your matches are rated by a points system. Bonuses are awarded for things like how quickly you defeated the opponent, flawless victories (taking no damage in a round), and performing finishers.
It’s important because the more points you get, the more Koins you’re awarded. Koins are used in the Krypt, a giant Legend of Grimrock-like maze filled with unlockable items such as alternate costumes, concept art, and yes, more Fatalities.
Storywise, I could buy Sonya Blade using a weaponized drone on the criminal Kano, firing machine guns at his face until it’s been reduced to a pile of chewed-up Swedish Berries. But when the target is Cassie Cage, her vivacious daughter from her frayed marriage with Johnny Cage, it becomes far more uncomfortable.
This is a comic book, not a snuff film. The game’s systems are incentivizing me to ignore its lore — but the lore is centralized (well) across almost all aspects of the game — and that baked-in contradiction strikes me as a failure in design.
WB/NetherealmShinnok is the big evil in MKX.
It’s taken me far too long to get to the meat and potatoes of Mortal Kombat X – the fighting itself – because for a game like this, one week is an awfully difficult amount of time to properly judge it. Fighting games have an excruciatingly long life, as players create new combos or approaches with characters long “figured out,” and invert tier lists on a regular basis.
And MKX has a lot to unpack. Out of 25 characters, eight are new to the series. Most are of the “new generation” of fighters and so take inspiration from their parents or mentors, but their move sets are new and different enough to make them stand out in the crowd.
My favourite so far, though, is D’Vorah, an insectoid lady that looks like a mix between Black Arachnia from Transformers’ Beast Wars* and Thane from Mass Effect. Her insectoid appendages let her poke from afar and she has some interesting setup tools, including growing a giant ball of bug goop on the floor and setting it off like a bomb, launching the enemy into the air.
Every character now has three “Variations” that mix up the moves and attacks available to them. The changes are both cosmetic and tactical: perennial ice ninja Sub-Zero can wear his Lin Kuei Grandmaster seal allowing him to summon and throw clones of himself made of ice, or don a chilly white mask for the Unbreakable Variation that gives him a defensive bent, using shields and counter-attack moves.
I was worried that it would be a little gimmicky, but the Variations are surprisingly well-implemented. In the hands of experts, they can transform the character’s playstyles, effectively tripling the options available. You’ll see tournament players using them to shake up a match, without forcing them to use wholly unfamiliar characters, when put in a tight spot.
WB/NetherRealm
Even the gore and skull-crunching violence has progressed beyond Fatalities, and like a good fighting game they all happen during the match. X-Rays return from MK2011: super moves that can only be used sparingly, once you’ve filled out a meter from landing other attacks. The camera zooms in and shows bones crunching in slow motion with agonizing sound effects, that I feel straddle the line between delight and discomfort where most Fatalities sit squarely with the latter.
Thankfully the X-Ray bar also shares its use with Enhanced Special Moves and Kombo Breakers, meaning that a savvy player will likely use these in tight situations instead, saving the X-Rays for a last ditch desperation move rather than feel obligated to use them every match – like, say, a Fatality to earn more Koins.
New are Brutalities, context-specific finishers that take some effort to pull off but can end the match in a perfect flourish of skill and viscera. Defeat your opponent with Kitana’s Throat Slice move, where she slashes at you with her razor-sharp fans, and his or her head will be sliced off with a spurt of blood. It isn’t as over-the-top as a Fatality, rewards the in-game cunning to pull it off, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. As far as I’m concerned it’s the logical evolution of the Fatality.
Mortal Kombat’s Fatalities are baked into the series’ DNA, and I don’t expect (or want) them to ever disappear. But they’re an anachronism when the rest of the game has evolved so much. It’s a better fighter, with a richer cast of characters and an almost-bearable storyline.
If you’re a fan, the first few hours will be spent gawking at the new ways NetherRealm lets you decapitate and dismember your foes. But like any cheap date, the thrill will wear off. But if you’re willing to spend more time with it, and peel back its layers, you’ll find one of the most promising fighting games in years.
WB/NetherRealm
*Beasties in Canada
