the mortal kombat renaissance is here, all hail nrs for making a MK game with a story mode that isn't complete dogshit. i'm not gonna say it's outstanding, but for a fighting game? it's pretty good! i actually cared about most of the characters and it even had emotional beats that hooked me. sure, the hanzo and kuai lang conflict wasn't ever a central part of intrigue to me, but it is nice to see them have a dialogue together and finally resolve it. having only played MK9, i can only imagine how much more that worked for fans of the series.
i think my favorite part of the gameplay does have to be the variations. say what you want about some characters like reptile getting shafted in creativity, i still think the system bore plentiful fruit. some characters' variations are so wildly different it truly does feel like playing a different character entirely (i.e. shinnok - bone shaper, goro - dragon fangs, triborg as a whole, etc.). it adds so much depth and gives nrs a lot of wiggle room to reuse assets without making clones or making the player feel as though they're missing out. it's a brilliant move to make and i know it will have me wanting to revisit this game in the long-term.
only things i really have to dock this game for are that the music still unfortunately sucks. it's not like abrasively bad or anything, it just serves generic action movie score like MK9 did. music is such a huge thing for me in fighting games, so it's disappointing that we're still getting nothing memorable here. and while i do love this as a fighting game, i don't actually love playing it competitively because a lot of the meta seems to be more based around learning 30-40% combos rather than footsies and spacing. that's not to say that there's none of the latter (only a fool would claim that), i just find it less rewarding to play a game where you opponent can realistically get like 3 hits on you and take a round. but i have enjoyed watching top 8s of this game, so by no means am i slamming mkx. it's just not what i look for and value in a fighting game at that level.
overall, it's a very polished and fun game. i'm a little surprised the average rating on here is only a 3.3 at the time of writing. i would definitely recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in fighting games, and i'm definitely looking forward to when i jump into MK11 in the near future.
i think my favorite part of the gameplay does have to be the variations. say what you want about some characters like reptile getting shafted in creativity, i still think the system bore plentiful fruit. some characters' variations are so wildly different it truly does feel like playing a different character entirely (i.e. shinnok - bone shaper, goro - dragon fangs, triborg as a whole, etc.). it adds so much depth and gives nrs a lot of wiggle room to reuse assets without making clones or making the player feel as though they're missing out. it's a brilliant move to make and i know it will have me wanting to revisit this game in the long-term.
only things i really have to dock this game for are that the music still unfortunately sucks. it's not like abrasively bad or anything, it just serves generic action movie score like MK9 did. music is such a huge thing for me in fighting games, so it's disappointing that we're still getting nothing memorable here. and while i do love this as a fighting game, i don't actually love playing it competitively because a lot of the meta seems to be more based around learning 30-40% combos rather than footsies and spacing. that's not to say that there's none of the latter (only a fool would claim that), i just find it less rewarding to play a game where you opponent can realistically get like 3 hits on you and take a round. but i have enjoyed watching top 8s of this game, so by no means am i slamming mkx. it's just not what i look for and value in a fighting game at that level.
overall, it's a very polished and fun game. i'm a little surprised the average rating on here is only a 3.3 at the time of writing. i would definitely recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in fighting games, and i'm definitely looking forward to when i jump into MK11 in the near future.