Mortal Kombat X

I hadn't gotten into fighting games in any "serious" capacity until a week or two before this review. But I had played Mortal Kombat games growing up. I loved them. Brutal, gorey, and over the top. Even when the games aren't good, they are always those things. It's kind of a comfortable campy feeling for me. Oh your favorite character died? Don't worry they'll be back and they'll get torn apart again. I can't take the stories seriously. There are so little consequences to whatever the story says happened and they will make fan favorite characters show up again despite any story beats that happen. It's kind of like Gwar, you ever listened to a few Gwar albums? If you remember the song Gor-Gor it's about a dinosaur they kill and then that dinosaur gets resurrected as a cyborg by a different enemy on a later album and they kill it again. Then they go to hell in another album, find Gor-Gor in hell, and kill Gor-Gor again. It's like that (I like Gwar's antics for similar reasons. Over the top, campy, unserious and fun). So anything good or bad I say is just not related to the story. If you care about that more than anything, my review isn't really going to appease that part of your curiosity.

I was a young adult when this game came out. I just moved out, I was still in college, but I worked full time and made my own money for bills, food, and whatever commodities I could afford. Back in 2011 when Mortal Kombat 9 had released, I had completely forgotten about the series and fighting games. Sometime in 2012, I come home from work and my little brother and our neighbor are inside playing Mortal Kombat 9. My brother hears me come home and comes to the door and goes "Bro, you gotta come here." Which always meant this is something stupid he's going to do or show me to impress me since he's younger. So I follow him and he goes over to his Xbox and grabs his controller and says, "Remember this?" And they start playing again. I was immediately entranced. It wasn't something crazy I was seeing but it was unlocking memories I had tucked away from various arcade versions of MK and playing MK4 on a friend's N64. They finish their match and I'm immediately ready to get in there and play myself. They both take turns kicking my ass since they've been playing it all evening and have memorized their characters' special moves and I have zero clue what I'm doing.
As a few weeks went by, I'm playing this game a good bit to the point my brother is like "I know you'd be excited, but I didn't think you'd be this excited." I learn some strings and special moves and how to piece them together and can execute them on my noob friends and brother now. Nothing crazy. But I loved this game. It has a story mode, it has tag team, it has arcade ladder, online play, practice mode, a krypt, and one of the best rosters ever for a MK game.
Don't get me wrong, I now know MK9 has some issues. But the amount of content here? Great.

So finally, a few years later MKX gets announced and I'm ready to play it. Still being a young adult, I preorder the game. They'll give me Goro for free and I'll probably buy this game on day one or two anyway. I even ask to be scheduled off that day at work so I could play the story and figure out who I want to play and had a few friends doing the same.
So launch day happens, I've preloaded the game or at least queued to start downloading as I'm sleeping. I wake up fairly early compared to when I normally do and see the game isn't fully downloaded yet but it says it's playable. Okay, I'll go see what I can mess with while it finishes, that's fine. I launch the game and get to the main menu. I see some things are not going to be available until the game is fully done installing, cool that makes sense. I try to go to options make sure there's nothing wild here. It crashes. It doesn't freeze, it doesn't throw me an error, MKX just disappears. Weird. I go back in, try to go to practice mode then, it disappears again. Okay maybe the game really isn't set up to work with this new half-installed feature. Whatever, I'll wait for it to finish. It finishes within an hour. I boot the game up, ready to dive in to story mode. I click on Story. It disappears. What the **** is going on? I try again, it disappears. I try going to different modes, it disappears.

Well, I'm not working today, it's early and I'm tired, and the game I just paid 60 bucks for isn't working. Guess I'll go back to sleep. I wake up about 5 hours later and check if there's any fix and luckily there is now. What an inconvenience. I'm really unhappy about this but I'm also glad I can finally just play the game.

And I do play the game, I beat the story, I try out things in practice mode, I do some online modes, I get into online lobbies to spar and try things out with my friends. And I do this for a few weeks. Then I just stopped playing for a bit. I feel a bit disappointed. The launch not working for me at all left quite a sour taste and the online is super laggy and janky. But there's also just a feeling of disappointment that this game didn't have what MK9 had content wise. It felt lacking.

But I do eventually get back into playing it. Not seriously trying to improve just trying to land my cool looking combos and thinking that's all it takes. But then one day, NRS announces an update that we will be getting a second round of DLC characters (Kombat Pack 2) alongside an XL version (a complete edition) which includes an update to improve online play!
Okay that's great! But there's something strange about this announcement. They said Xbox One and Playstation 4. They specifically didn't say PC. And people start asking, does this mean it's not for PC? They get a confirmation that yes, Kombat Pack 2 and XL will only be for Xbox One and Playstation 4.
Okay, so this is probably the first time I had preordered a game and felt burned by it (and it took a couple more preordering games that failed or didn't respect me to learn my lesson). I paid for this game, in full. I bought the DLCs that were currently out. And what does NRS and Warner Bros. think about that? Well, they think I'm a sucker. And they're right. I was a sucker.

They were willing to abandon a game they released for one platform while still updating it for two others. They showed their colors. That whole controversy reminded me of when Cliff Bleszinski said he didn't want to release games on PC anymore because everyone just pirates it. Not only is that said with a weird distasteful jab, it's also just wrong.

I think the way MKX plays is akin to like how Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 plays (the first one, not the other new MW2). Everything is really powerful and while some characters are still better it feels like you're playing with fire constantly. Everything feels overpowered and therefore nothing is really that overpowered. Game was good in this sense. But where it failed was in its content, in its monetization, in its roster (not failed but it was kinda mid), and in how they were completely fine with abandoning paying customers on a platform they sold it to those customers on.

Don't ever trust any game made by WB. While I don't think NRS is necessarily innocent either., WB has a track record of many/most of their games being treated like this. Monetize it to hell and back and if the PC ports are too difficult kindly just ask for the money anyway and then tell them that it's too much work.
Do what you will or won't with your money, spend it how you want and make yourself feel a little better in this crazy world. But just keep in mind of who has burned you in the past and how you approach anything they do going forward until they establish a better track record in your eyes.

The gameplay is something I'd give a 80 to a 85
Everything else? It's like a 35, maybe a 40 or 45 if I felt generous enough to say they eventually caved in and fixed things that shouldn't need fixing.

I'm leaving my original review at the bottom to show you how the devs initially released this game, because I feel that their attitude has changed very little throughout the time since this game's release.

Mortal Kombat X is a fun game if it runs efficiently on your computer. The fighting is as satisfying as ever and the graphics revamp is nice. However, I take serious issue with Neverrealm on a number of things about this game, this one game being the sole reason I will never, ever buy a game Netherrealm had a hand in making again.

I am not the type who is normally upset about microtransactions in games. I don't like when they lock you out of content, but if it's either non-essential content or reasonably accessible through free means I say that you just shouldn't buy them. However, Netherrealm has possibly taken the most annoying strategy to releasing DLC that I have ever personally experienced, by breaking things up into multiple seasons passes without telling anyone what the ♥♥♥♥ was going on.

After the release of the game, after I eventually got my game working, and all the players finally figured out that this "Kombat Pack" people were talking about was a season's pass, I felt a little tempted to buy it. 30 dollars for all the DLC (even the DLC that was out a few weeks after launch) seemed like a steal, so I eventually bought the Kombat Pack. I quickly noticed that I got a DLC or two, and maybe five dollars extra DLC a few updates later. There was a good amount of paid DLC being released, typically costumes, that I had no access to. Trust me, I researched my purchase before buying, but Netherrealm gave us no information. I was a sucker, I ♥♥♥♥ed up, and sure enough, only a short while later was Kombat Pack 2 out, ready to sucker some more people into buying into their scam. Honestly, I felt like I had bought into a pyramid scheme. Like I had wired money to a Nigerian prince and only just realized it was a scam. I feel bad for people who bought Kombat Pack 2, because they got fooled twice. Netherrealm legitimately sold an incomplete game and then began milking their customers for DLC money once they realized that nobody was buying their game, presumably after hearing about the initial 19 GB patch that didn't do anything but erase everyone's saves.

I hate very few companies, because I feel like it's a thing a lot of people do because they're petty or trying to be edgy. No, I hate Netherrealm because they did the shadiest♥♥♥♥♥♥by launching this game and they never even acknowledged it.

Netherrealm ♥♥♥♥ed us in the♥♥♥♥♥and didn't even have the ♥♥♥♥ing courtesy to acknowledge our presence the next day.

_______________________

I still can't even launch the game I've paid $60 for, and all Netherrealm wants to do is celebrate a successful CONSOLE release, where the game actually works. Yeah, it says I've played 8 minutes. Every time I launch the game, it runs for three seconds. You can figure out how many fixes I've tried from that.

EDIT: Support never even responded to my ticket, but I managed to get the game to launch by running it with admin rights, in compatibility mode, and telling my computer to duplicate the image as if I were projecting to another screen (after which it promptly changes back to single monitor and then launches).

After launching the game I found that the gameplay is still awesome, as one can expect from a Mortal Kombat game. However, it's terribly optimized to the point where I don't use random stage because of the chance I'll land on an unplayable one. Also, the game is still glitched so you can't access certain parts of the Krypt. PC players are literally locked out of portions of the game because this huge lump of♥♥♥♥♥♥♥is so buggy.

The character roster is just fine bar some sub-bosses who should really just be playable anyway, but the amount of single player content has taken a hit, with random challenges where the inspired challenge ladder should be. The story is arguably better than in 9, but once you're done with that and cleared out the Krypt, you've seen everything. As standards for single player content in fighting games has evolved, it was a shame to see MKX fall back a bit, but as a fighter, it's still pretty neat.

Having missed the last couple of entries in the Mortal Kombat series (9 & Injustice) I was very excited about jumping back in with Mortal Kombat X. This game has just about everything I would want out of a good fighting game! First off; the combat is very deep and tons of fun! I really like how they added move set variations to each fighter allowing for more fighters to adapt to my play style (which is up close and offensive of course ;p ). The fighting mechanics also allow for very strategic play what with the constant balance act between the energy and stamina bars, adding to this is the interesting use of interactive environments like hazards or wall jumping. The graphics in this game are fantastic, however as a result the X-Ray attacks/fatalities/brutalities are all freaking gross... But still, I won't lie about how clever some of them are ("HERE'S JOHNNY!!!"). I thought that they did a good job with the new fighters as well, with characters like the gunslinger Erron Black and the tag-team Ferra/Torr being the stand outs for me.

The story mode was a bit lazily written and all over the map. But the character dialogue and cut scene animations were top notch! Thing is, I'd get pretty salty whenever they'd introduce characters who aren't yet playable - but likely will be via DLC! >:( - The tower modes were also a nice way to kill time, and the Krypt layout was pretty fun to explore (like exploring the world of a horror game with jump scares taboot!). Sadly I wasn't a fan of the character DLC/easy fatality/20 dollar krypt unlock cash grabbing bull! It's a very shameless means of try'in to earn an extra buck, however this seems to be the way of games now a days :(. Overall I liked Mortal Kombat X, it doesn't re-invent the wheel but it's pretty darn polished compared to past titles.

*I'd originally wrote this review last year shortly after the game's launch, I will say that some of the DLC has been pretty dope, adding the friggin Predator and Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy was a pretty sweet move I ain't gonna front Mortal Kombat! ;D