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MKX - Great game and why you should NOT buy it
10 years ago
It's been more than a month since I got the game, but my usual way to rant about something, long after everyone who was at least interested in the topic jumped the ship long ago, has finally paid out - I have even MORE to rant about :D
Now, after all the hype and the great predecessor (MK9), the game is just as I expected it to be - great fighting game. The formula was expended, it plays really good since it allows more options during the fight now with a great cast of characters, each with their own playstyle (although, ya can still categorize them as slasher, brawler, range etc.). The great new thing are the variations - each character comes with three and each one of them alter the style a bit or a lot, changing characters abillities and thus their fighting style. For example, Scorpion turns from hard melee brawler (ninjitsu) to controlling the battlefield while utilizing his skillset and combo to devastate enemies (inferno). It might not seem like much, but even the characters one wouldnt usualy play since they are way out of their comfort zone have at least one variation that suits ones needs.
The rhythm of fight has also changed with return of brutalities, last seen in their rudamentary version in MK3UT - unlike other finishers, brutalities never break the flow of the fight and feel more rewarding that way. Some are easy to do (do special move x for x times, finish the match with x), while others are rather hard to achieve (do a 6 attack combo and finish it with x move) - depending on your skill or knowledge of character, there is always a way to finish the battle with one of these. Fatalities are back as per usual, and even as they are rather gory comparred to previous games, they feel awfully token (hold onto that word, i will come back to it) - mainly cause they give the minimal reward comparred to other finishers and also since the game has a glitch that pops up every now and then, the fatality failing to be performed (you do the fatality, but instead of seeing it, you just wait like a dolt with other guy swaying around until the game notices it and finishes the match). Aside of one more kind of finisher, there is hardly anything else - babilities and friendships are missing, same as with stage fatalities (although, there are stage brutalities that are hidden really well, thus feeling more rewarding when done).
One major addition is the Faction system - basically, you chose a faction and contribute points to it by fulfilling daily tasks, doing towers or playing against other players. You are rewarded with parts for your banner and more faction specific finishers, so called faction kills (basically, letting someone off screen do the dirty work for ya). At the end of the week, one faction wins, thus unlocking the fifth finisher, bunch of banner stuff and koins. The whole thing feels rather token, since one hardly has the feeling that ones work contributes to anything and the lack of any feedback also quickly drains any interest in the whole thing. You just do the do, switch to the winning faction one hour before the weeks end and do a single tower, and you won...yay and stuff.
The towers themselves are expanded upon - now you have your klassic tower, test your luck and strength towers as well as endless and survival tower for single player. If you play online, you also have daily, hourly and weekly towers, each of them having a specific theme (like, weekly tower basing its char roster on previous MK games or hourly tower being all about a certain gimmick, like having an armor growing stronger by each fight). The online modes are extensive - from simple one on one fight to 5 v 5 and such, ya got everything there - sadly, I havent played the online mode much to really talk about it, at least, not positive stuff.
Story mode felt rather lacking this time around - rather short and concentrating on just a handful of characters. The story itself and setting aint that bad, but it feels rather rushed at moments and bad guys dont feel that much of a obsticle - comparred to the MK9 story mode, this time around you can rush through it with little to no effort. The QTEs are a mixed batch - i didnt mind them, since ya cant really fail by missing all buttons and ya wont get any penalty, but if ya do them perfectly (which aint hard), you get - ya guessed it - shit for yer banner. Let me just say few things about the banner - its a nice thing that allows you to addapt it to your game style - certain characters, certain finishers or techniques - you can even make a set to recieve certain things, like more faction XP, personal XP or Koins. Speaking of coins, the Krypt this time around is great, like a game inside a game. It looks and plays like Legend of grimrock, although the random "fights" or jump scares are fought with a qte. The cost of certain items is really high, which brings us fluently to the reasons why you should NOT buy this game!
WHile the game itself is one of the better fighting games, the whole thing surrounding it is shameful. PC port performs like shit, even after two giant patches - only lobster people from outter space could botch it even harder. The steam version came with the "new and improved way to download your games!", which worked as bad as expected. The game downloads only a bare bones version of it, the rest downloading 'while you play'. It must be said that i could play this game a day after it was released, due to this fucked up idea, most people having issues even after downloading all 27 partial downloads. I can only assume that console port was handled better, but i wouldn't know.
The second big downside are the micro transactions. From pressing x to play goro (who is already on disk, mind you) to easy fatality tokens (see, told ya to hold onto it), it really leaves one with bitter aftertaste. Where things go from shameful to criminal is the fact that the latest patch on PC wiped most people save games. While the patch was fixed and relaunched, most save games were gone - krypt unlockables and all. Funny enough, the "Unlock everything in Krypt" DLC launched around that time for 20€ and if that doesnt stink, then i dont know. The net code is bugy as fuck, sometimes crashing, sometimes failing to connect (even though it was far worse before it was "fixed") - even so, the lag in 90% of the games is too high to do anything meaningful, so the online play aint fun nor alluring, which to me explains wait times of up to 1 hour for 5 v 5 matches.
In the end, it is a great game, but i would advise anyone not to support the product nor the company with their borderline criminal attitude towards our wallets and temper. This game, even in its polished form, represents all that is wrong with tripple A and gaming industry in general - the greed chasing away people from potentionally great games. It killed Dead Space, and now Im afraid they want to kill off MK too. At least i still got disciples...oh, wait :/
Now, after all the hype and the great predecessor (MK9), the game is just as I expected it to be - great fighting game. The formula was expended, it plays really good since it allows more options during the fight now with a great cast of characters, each with their own playstyle (although, ya can still categorize them as slasher, brawler, range etc.). The great new thing are the variations - each character comes with three and each one of them alter the style a bit or a lot, changing characters abillities and thus their fighting style. For example, Scorpion turns from hard melee brawler (ninjitsu) to controlling the battlefield while utilizing his skillset and combo to devastate enemies (inferno). It might not seem like much, but even the characters one wouldnt usualy play since they are way out of their comfort zone have at least one variation that suits ones needs.
The rhythm of fight has also changed with return of brutalities, last seen in their rudamentary version in MK3UT - unlike other finishers, brutalities never break the flow of the fight and feel more rewarding that way. Some are easy to do (do special move x for x times, finish the match with x), while others are rather hard to achieve (do a 6 attack combo and finish it with x move) - depending on your skill or knowledge of character, there is always a way to finish the battle with one of these. Fatalities are back as per usual, and even as they are rather gory comparred to previous games, they feel awfully token (hold onto that word, i will come back to it) - mainly cause they give the minimal reward comparred to other finishers and also since the game has a glitch that pops up every now and then, the fatality failing to be performed (you do the fatality, but instead of seeing it, you just wait like a dolt with other guy swaying around until the game notices it and finishes the match). Aside of one more kind of finisher, there is hardly anything else - babilities and friendships are missing, same as with stage fatalities (although, there are stage brutalities that are hidden really well, thus feeling more rewarding when done).
One major addition is the Faction system - basically, you chose a faction and contribute points to it by fulfilling daily tasks, doing towers or playing against other players. You are rewarded with parts for your banner and more faction specific finishers, so called faction kills (basically, letting someone off screen do the dirty work for ya). At the end of the week, one faction wins, thus unlocking the fifth finisher, bunch of banner stuff and koins. The whole thing feels rather token, since one hardly has the feeling that ones work contributes to anything and the lack of any feedback also quickly drains any interest in the whole thing. You just do the do, switch to the winning faction one hour before the weeks end and do a single tower, and you won...yay and stuff.
The towers themselves are expanded upon - now you have your klassic tower, test your luck and strength towers as well as endless and survival tower for single player. If you play online, you also have daily, hourly and weekly towers, each of them having a specific theme (like, weekly tower basing its char roster on previous MK games or hourly tower being all about a certain gimmick, like having an armor growing stronger by each fight). The online modes are extensive - from simple one on one fight to 5 v 5 and such, ya got everything there - sadly, I havent played the online mode much to really talk about it, at least, not positive stuff.
Story mode felt rather lacking this time around - rather short and concentrating on just a handful of characters. The story itself and setting aint that bad, but it feels rather rushed at moments and bad guys dont feel that much of a obsticle - comparred to the MK9 story mode, this time around you can rush through it with little to no effort. The QTEs are a mixed batch - i didnt mind them, since ya cant really fail by missing all buttons and ya wont get any penalty, but if ya do them perfectly (which aint hard), you get - ya guessed it - shit for yer banner. Let me just say few things about the banner - its a nice thing that allows you to addapt it to your game style - certain characters, certain finishers or techniques - you can even make a set to recieve certain things, like more faction XP, personal XP or Koins. Speaking of coins, the Krypt this time around is great, like a game inside a game. It looks and plays like Legend of grimrock, although the random "fights" or jump scares are fought with a qte. The cost of certain items is really high, which brings us fluently to the reasons why you should NOT buy this game!
WHile the game itself is one of the better fighting games, the whole thing surrounding it is shameful. PC port performs like shit, even after two giant patches - only lobster people from outter space could botch it even harder. The steam version came with the "new and improved way to download your games!", which worked as bad as expected. The game downloads only a bare bones version of it, the rest downloading 'while you play'. It must be said that i could play this game a day after it was released, due to this fucked up idea, most people having issues even after downloading all 27 partial downloads. I can only assume that console port was handled better, but i wouldn't know.
The second big downside are the micro transactions. From pressing x to play goro (who is already on disk, mind you) to easy fatality tokens (see, told ya to hold onto it), it really leaves one with bitter aftertaste. Where things go from shameful to criminal is the fact that the latest patch on PC wiped most people save games. While the patch was fixed and relaunched, most save games were gone - krypt unlockables and all. Funny enough, the "Unlock everything in Krypt" DLC launched around that time for 20€ and if that doesnt stink, then i dont know. The net code is bugy as fuck, sometimes crashing, sometimes failing to connect (even though it was far worse before it was "fixed") - even so, the lag in 90% of the games is too high to do anything meaningful, so the online play aint fun nor alluring, which to me explains wait times of up to 1 hour for 5 v 5 matches.
In the end, it is a great game, but i would advise anyone not to support the product nor the company with their borderline criminal attitude towards our wallets and temper. This game, even in its polished form, represents all that is wrong with tripple A and gaming industry in general - the greed chasing away people from potentionally great games. It killed Dead Space, and now Im afraid they want to kill off MK too. At least i still got disciples...oh, wait :/
Don't buy fighting games on the PC...especially if they aren't made by the original developers and instead are "ported" by a third party.
(To be fair though, KI was released for free, and has one free character on weekly rotation. I still don't think it's fair to put 90% of the game behind a paywall, but it does have that going for it)