TarkatanDentist
Noob
Would I consider Mortal Kombat X to be the best fighting game ever created? In all honesty, the answer to that question is no. In fact, of all the mainstream fighting games that exist (Tekken, Street Fighter etc.), I wouldn’t say that Mortal Kombat X indisputably outclasses any of them – but at the same time, I also wouldn’t say it’s indisputably outclassed either.
Now, there are lots of little aspects of Mortal Kombat X that I’m not a huge fan of (and people who’ve seen me post will know that I’m not afraid to say what I don’t like!), but this thread isn’t about that. This is about the major things that MKX has gotten right – both as a sequel to MK9, and as a fighting game in its own right.
#1– Providing an offense-based alternative to the numerous defense-based fighting games out there
Now, I reckon this will be quite controversial to say, but I, for one, am very happy with the fact that MKX is predominantly geared towards offense rather than defense.
This is not to say that I think that defense-based fighting games are inferior – not in the slightest. Rather, I think it’s good that it’s helping to provide a greater variety of options for fighting game fans. There are already many defensive fighting games on the market right now (Street Fighter 4, Tekken, Injustice, largely Smash Bros etc.), so why not one that rewards offense more so than defense as well?
I especially believe this is important because a rather large number of folks still believe that rushdown is just a case of smashing blockstrings wildly and without thought – having a concrete example of how that simply isn’t true is very refreshing.
#2 – The variation system
True, MKX wasn’t the first fighting game to do this. But it’s definitely one of the most fleshed-out examples of the variation system in any fighting game, and in many ways, it’s a stroke of genius, as well as being a sign that NRS aren’t afraid to take risks.
On the one hand, you have characters like Reptile, where all three variations fight largely the same, but have the own unique ‘flavour’ (a lot like traits in Injustice) that allows Reptile as a character to appeal to a wider fanbase than he would have previously. But then you have characters like Takeda, where his Ronin and Shirai Ryu variations fight completely differently, and require entirely different strategies in order to be effective – in these cases, you effectively have 2 or 3 fully separate and distinct characters in one package.
It’s not quite the 29x3=87 functionally unique characters dream scenario, but all-in-all I feel pretty confident saying that NRS did a very good job of making most of the variations worthwhile, and that it provides more variety than, say, USF4 did with 44 regular characters.
#3 – Daring to do things differently
All things considered, MKX throws a lot of traditional fighting game ‘rules’ out of the window – and it’s an excellent change of pace once you stop expecting it to play the way you ‘want’ it to.
The armor system is particularly intriguing, given that it powers through most any attack, including throws, at the expense of the damage taken being unrecoverable. The idea of throws going through armour would cause an uproar in, say, Street Fighter 4, but in the context of MKX (where you can only store 3 bars of meter instead of 4, and where throws are very strong) it works nicely.
Another example – high attacks hitting crouch blocking opponents would be utterly absurd in most any other fighting game (doubly so the ones that are back-to-block!) But in MKX, you not only have many characters with safe d1s, you also have a wide variety of crouching attacks, many of which are safe and/or combo starters, to discourage the use of high attacks which would otherwise be overwhelming. For comparison, in the Tekken series, attacks that crouch under highs are usually unsafe on block – and if they aren’t, the reward on hit will be pretty low.
It breaks the rules, which is one of the main driving forces of positive change in the world. Who’s to say - 10 years from now, the ‘average’ fighting game might well closely resemble the MKX ‘outlier’ we know today!
#4 – The balance
OK, so in the interests of fairness, this is something that a lot of fighting game series seems to be getting better at since ~2009; it’s not really unique to MKX.
However, I feel that MKX deserves special merit because (with the possible exception of Smash Bros, I guess), its cast is among the most heterogeneous in any fighting game of recent, due to the aforementioned variation system. How each particular character aims to win varies dramatically. Street Fighter does a pretty good job of being heterogeneous as well, but in general almost all SF characters can fairly easily be divided into four or five different categories in terms of how they intend to play the game, so I’d argue there’s less ‘variety’ than in MKX.
If we consider a few characters generally believed to be top tier or high tier – ask yourself this. Does Kung Lao fight in the same way that Quan Chi does? Do either of those two fight like Shinnok does? Do any of those three fight how Tanya does, or Cassie Cage, or Johnny Cage? By and large, the better characters in the game fight in surprisingly dissimilar fashions. And this is without considering that even lower-mid characters have been shown to be viable as well.
True, a handful of characters that definitely are not viable exist, and ideally patches will help them out. But in terms of the proportion of the cast that’s viable, considering how diverse it is, easily at least half of characters are viable, if not more than that, and that’s actually far better than almost any FG could say even 10 years ago.
#5 – NRS learning from their mistakes
Even MKX’s harshest critics struggle to argue the fact that MKX is a noticeable step-up from MK9 gameplay-wise.
A lot of the more ridiculous aspects of MK9 (absurdly huge block damage, infinitely armoured safe combo starters, invincible wake-ups etc.) were either toned down or removed outright. Likewise, with respect to gameplay elements that originated in Injustice (mainly interactibles), they were toned down to a much more sensible and practical level.
Above all else, it shows that NRS are paying attention to how to make their games better. So when their next fighting game comes out (or, you know, the next patch for this very game), we can feel pretty confident that the changes they make are unlikely to do more harm than good.
Mostly I just want to give NRS credit where credit is due, particularly since there are very few threads about what makes MKX worth playing when compared to the threads about... well, the exact opposite.
Now, there are lots of little aspects of Mortal Kombat X that I’m not a huge fan of (and people who’ve seen me post will know that I’m not afraid to say what I don’t like!), but this thread isn’t about that. This is about the major things that MKX has gotten right – both as a sequel to MK9, and as a fighting game in its own right.
#1– Providing an offense-based alternative to the numerous defense-based fighting games out there
Now, I reckon this will be quite controversial to say, but I, for one, am very happy with the fact that MKX is predominantly geared towards offense rather than defense.
This is not to say that I think that defense-based fighting games are inferior – not in the slightest. Rather, I think it’s good that it’s helping to provide a greater variety of options for fighting game fans. There are already many defensive fighting games on the market right now (Street Fighter 4, Tekken, Injustice, largely Smash Bros etc.), so why not one that rewards offense more so than defense as well?
I especially believe this is important because a rather large number of folks still believe that rushdown is just a case of smashing blockstrings wildly and without thought – having a concrete example of how that simply isn’t true is very refreshing.
#2 – The variation system
True, MKX wasn’t the first fighting game to do this. But it’s definitely one of the most fleshed-out examples of the variation system in any fighting game, and in many ways, it’s a stroke of genius, as well as being a sign that NRS aren’t afraid to take risks.
On the one hand, you have characters like Reptile, where all three variations fight largely the same, but have the own unique ‘flavour’ (a lot like traits in Injustice) that allows Reptile as a character to appeal to a wider fanbase than he would have previously. But then you have characters like Takeda, where his Ronin and Shirai Ryu variations fight completely differently, and require entirely different strategies in order to be effective – in these cases, you effectively have 2 or 3 fully separate and distinct characters in one package.
It’s not quite the 29x3=87 functionally unique characters dream scenario, but all-in-all I feel pretty confident saying that NRS did a very good job of making most of the variations worthwhile, and that it provides more variety than, say, USF4 did with 44 regular characters.
#3 – Daring to do things differently
All things considered, MKX throws a lot of traditional fighting game ‘rules’ out of the window – and it’s an excellent change of pace once you stop expecting it to play the way you ‘want’ it to.
The armor system is particularly intriguing, given that it powers through most any attack, including throws, at the expense of the damage taken being unrecoverable. The idea of throws going through armour would cause an uproar in, say, Street Fighter 4, but in the context of MKX (where you can only store 3 bars of meter instead of 4, and where throws are very strong) it works nicely.
Another example – high attacks hitting crouch blocking opponents would be utterly absurd in most any other fighting game (doubly so the ones that are back-to-block!) But in MKX, you not only have many characters with safe d1s, you also have a wide variety of crouching attacks, many of which are safe and/or combo starters, to discourage the use of high attacks which would otherwise be overwhelming. For comparison, in the Tekken series, attacks that crouch under highs are usually unsafe on block – and if they aren’t, the reward on hit will be pretty low.
It breaks the rules, which is one of the main driving forces of positive change in the world. Who’s to say - 10 years from now, the ‘average’ fighting game might well closely resemble the MKX ‘outlier’ we know today!
#4 – The balance
OK, so in the interests of fairness, this is something that a lot of fighting game series seems to be getting better at since ~2009; it’s not really unique to MKX.
However, I feel that MKX deserves special merit because (with the possible exception of Smash Bros, I guess), its cast is among the most heterogeneous in any fighting game of recent, due to the aforementioned variation system. How each particular character aims to win varies dramatically. Street Fighter does a pretty good job of being heterogeneous as well, but in general almost all SF characters can fairly easily be divided into four or five different categories in terms of how they intend to play the game, so I’d argue there’s less ‘variety’ than in MKX.
If we consider a few characters generally believed to be top tier or high tier – ask yourself this. Does Kung Lao fight in the same way that Quan Chi does? Do either of those two fight like Shinnok does? Do any of those three fight how Tanya does, or Cassie Cage, or Johnny Cage? By and large, the better characters in the game fight in surprisingly dissimilar fashions. And this is without considering that even lower-mid characters have been shown to be viable as well.
True, a handful of characters that definitely are not viable exist, and ideally patches will help them out. But in terms of the proportion of the cast that’s viable, considering how diverse it is, easily at least half of characters are viable, if not more than that, and that’s actually far better than almost any FG could say even 10 years ago.
#5 – NRS learning from their mistakes
Even MKX’s harshest critics struggle to argue the fact that MKX is a noticeable step-up from MK9 gameplay-wise.
A lot of the more ridiculous aspects of MK9 (absurdly huge block damage, infinitely armoured safe combo starters, invincible wake-ups etc.) were either toned down or removed outright. Likewise, with respect to gameplay elements that originated in Injustice (mainly interactibles), they were toned down to a much more sensible and practical level.
Above all else, it shows that NRS are paying attention to how to make their games better. So when their next fighting game comes out (or, you know, the next patch for this very game), we can feel pretty confident that the changes they make are unlikely to do more harm than good.
Mostly I just want to give NRS credit where credit is due, particularly since there are very few threads about what makes MKX worth playing when compared to the threads about... well, the exact opposite.
I think MKX is one of, if not the best fighting game of the last 5 years. It is one of the few games that caters to the hardcore tournament player and the couch casual. Something for everyone
