It stands out because of the high peaks MKX hits during its best moments. Others, like Sonya and Jacqui, look far less detailed, with comparatively plain facial textures. Some fighters, like Scorpion or newcomer D’vorah, look excellent, with tons of little details in their faces and costumes. One mild distraction from the excellent combat though, is the visual inconsistency between characters. Liu Kang has a variation where he can switch on the fly between healing and damaging stances, new grappler Torr employs an assist character to double-team opponents, Kotal Khan can place totems to grant himself temporary buffs – this is the kind of stuff you see in Persona 4 or BlazBlue, and seeing NetherRealms open up so many fun new doors is really refreshing. Walk speeds are snappier, pokes feel more useful, and with the awesome new variation system, there’s more to explore, discover, and exploit than ever before. This helps MKX feel like the smoothest-playing Mortal Kombat ever.
Little details like this used to distract me from the fighting all the time, and I’m glad to see them finally ironed out. Injustice was a step in the right direction of addressing the shortcomings of 2011’s Mortal Kombat, but MKX gets the rest of the way there: dash and hit animations no longer look like hapless flailing, for instance. In fact, everyone conveys their fighting style more effectively than in NetherRealms’ prior games thanks to the much-improved animations. He wields it all with a confident martial arts swagger that makes it all seem somehow plausible. He’s got remote-controlled laser swords he can plant and recall at will, explosive kunai throwing knives, and arm-mounted, retractable grappling hooks that can open up into imposing blade-covered whips. He fights like you’d imagine a 21st-century ninja might, with an interesting mix of traditional weaponry and high-tech gadgetry.
Takeda is the most eye-catching new design, and he exemplifies what MKX does right with its new characters. Sure, I go way back with guys like Kabal and Smoke, but fresh faces like Takeda and Kung Jin bring so much novelty to the table gameplay-wise that it’s hard to be sad about their absence. Few fighting games with such a deep vault of fan-favorite characters have cleaned house so completely, and MKX is so much the better for it. Before DLC ever enters the picture, MKX sports a respectable 24 fighters, and a whopping one third of those are honest-to-goodness new characters not palette swaps or tweaked alternate versions of existing ones.
The first thing MKX does to make itself feel new and exciting to both old series fans and casual fighters is a major roster shakeup.