The introduction of a stamina bar limits your ability to spam dashing maneuvers, which makes it more difficult for you to rely on spacing alone to win a fight. The meter you charge by taking hits and doling out special moves returns from the last game, allowing you to power-up special attacks, break enemy combos, and perform an x-ray attack, which reveals the insides of one opponent while the attacker breaks them into pieces in slow motion, accompanied by excruciating moans of pain. It's not a sea change from the last game, but you quickly appreciate that combos are more fluid and that animations are more nuanced.
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Good luck, Takeda!Įven if you don't care about the made-for-fans story, it's hard not to appreciate the new fighting engine, which is the smoothest the series has ever seen. Cassie Cage may be a boring character, but she provides the necessary motivations for Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade to explore their feelings, and ultimately, grow as people by the time the credits roll. It's not a story that everyone will relate to, sadly, with only a couple of scenes that deliver emotional moments. If you care about Mortal Kombat lore, you will get a lot out of the story mode, which has excellent voice acting and a handful of unpredictable developments that affect long-standing relationships. The new characters on each side of the battle fit into their respective factions, but it's the bad guys that are most notable, largely because they are original creations, rather than derivations from pre-existing characters. D'vorah strikes with spider-like arms that spring from her back, Erron Black uses firearms, and the fighting duo called Ferra Torr is comprised of a little girl who commands a hulking brute from atop his back. Characters such as the insect like D'vorah and the gunslinger Erron Black inject new personalities into the series' aging roster and introduce new fighting styles. There are also a handful of new bad guys, though "fresh" may not be the best word to describe their grotesque visages. Now Playing: Mortal Kombat X - Review What are you looking at?! The inclusion of the offspring of legacy characters, like Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade's daughter, Cassie, may prove to be intriguing for die-hard fans of Mortal Kombat's lore, but with the exception of Takashi Takeda (Kenshi's son) and Kung Jin (the younger cousin of Kung Lao), most of them are too similar to their relatives and ultimately fail to stand out in a meaningful way.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's The introduction of a few new faces on the side of Earthrealm, the good guys, freshens things up, although not as much as you would hope. Once again, the focus is on the battle between realms, elder gods, and humanity. Mortal Kombat X upholds the series' legacy, which is evident in the story mode and the return of a dozen classic characters. Fatalities and other gruesome attacks are the series' goriest yet, and while not all of them fall into the slapstick category, there are plenty that make you laugh due to the absurdity on display.
As much headway as Mortal Kombat X has made in regards to the fighting system, the series' other mainstay trait has grown in step. New features such as fighting-style variations and a stamina meter enhance the chaos, giving you more to consider before and during a fight. With the reboot in 2011, Mortal Kombat matured from a curious fighting game series to one that's worthy of tournament-level competition, and with Mortal Kombat X, we get the next step in the evolution of its fighting system.