I don’t know if it was their intention or maybe it was just a funny coincidence, but dropping a video game with a rich history during tax season is pretty smart. Everyone has their tax returns and are looking to spend it, and with all the free advertisement that games get from peoples streams and Youtube videos, there’s no way that the numbers would get a slight boost. So with that, I’d like to toss my name into the list of people who went out and bought Mortal Kombat X for my Xbox One.
I enjoy some fighting games, but for the most part I’m not that good. I’m good with basic kick and punch variations, but when it comes to combos and air juggling I’m pretty horrible. So, when this game came out and I bought it I was a little worried. I was afraid I would take it home and realize that I’m not getting the controls and can’t remember the moves, so I could never pass the game. This has actually been the fact in some previous fighting games and I could only beat them on an easier difficulty. I was decent at Killer Instinct on the Xbox One and went on some winning streaks, but never got past level 2 because I couldn’t remember all of the combos. I remember going through the training session and seeing pages of things to learn, it was very overwhelming. So with that kind of skill in my fighting history, I started the game with a pile of self doubts.
I booted up the game and went through the different options seeing what was available and found the tutorial section so I decided to give it a try. I felt a little better knowing that I would only have to learn Basics, Kombos, Special Moves and Advanced. I went through and realized that theses were all pretty easy, and the objective they give you to do all seem to bring back old muscle memory of past Mortal Kombat games. After going through the tutorials I did some practice with characters that I was good with from Mortal Kombat 2 and then jumped into the story mode.
When it said story, I thought that you would have to pick a person and go through the game, but it takes you through a pretty interesting story that allows you to play with mostly everyone on the roster. Just to give a little context, at the time of me writing this I’m on chapter 9. I’ve been given the chance to play with some new characters and some of the old school ones as well and I’m loving how they’re doing the story. Each chapter you get to play as a character and during that chapter 4 fights will take place. Each fight is two rounds, but fatalities aren’t allowed because the story has to progress. This is a great move, because it allows you to get a taste of different characters and you get at least 8 rounds to practice their moves. The battles have a degree of difficulty, but not enough that you can’t pass them. There isn’t a difficulty chooser for story mode, so I’m assuming the game is programmed to normal with a hint of easy. I also like that you get to see the different alliances and the family tie ins. Those of us who haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game in years may have thought that some of these characters were evil, but it turns out that people like Sub Zero are actually good.
The Krypt returns as a place to spend the money you accumulate during your matches. The krypt is it’s own little mini game, because you walk around in first person mode looking for tombstones to purchase to get new extras. During the hunt you get attacked by different animals that trigger a quick time event. Whether you press the button on time or not doesn’t seem to matter, but the game gives you enough time to press any of the face buttons it prompts you with.
I haven’t touched the towers or the online play yet, I’m going to wait until I get a little more comfortable with some characters before I attempt that. Other than that I’m really having a lot of fun with the game so far. Nothing seems to be too repetitive and any achievements that aren’t online match based I can work on without having to worry about a win loss record.