Review Rewind – Mortal Kombat X Story Review

• Played on: PS5 via backwards compatibility
• Time Played: 3 Hours and 30 Minutes
• Developer: NetherRealm Studios
• Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
• Release Date: April 14th 2015

We’ve moved on to the next game in the NRS era of games and this alternate timeline, Mortal Kombat X. This game manages to improve on things from Mortal Kombat (2011) drastically but still has its issues.

Mortal Kombat X starts off two years after Mortal Kombat X before skipping twenty years, which the game tends to forget as there are moments where characters mention it be twenty-five years and this inconsistency is just the beginning of this game’s issues.

Mortal Kombat X followed NetherRealm’s previous game Injustice: Gods Among Us, taking a lot of things from their gameplay and bringing over such things as stage interactions which can easily interrupt combos if you press the wrong button.

Mortal Kombat X manages to improve on things such as the character design by finally not exploiting the look of their female characters and making them dress in some really good fashionable outfits that fit their character backgrounds.

The gameplay feels similar to Mortal Kombat (2011) but just slightly faster as some of the characters feel more fun to play in this game compared to the last like with Johnny Cage for example. The positives end there, this story overall was disappointing.

There was also the nicely added addition of quick time events which made the very dull story engaging at times, I was even shocked when the game allowed you to actually do a fatality on someone for the first time, it was the only moment during the story where I had actual fun.

The plot for the story is absolutely confusing if you didn’t decide to read the prequel comic that was released. I love comic tie-ins but making it a necessity to read a comic to understand a game’s story instead of just using it to enhance the experience is a major flaw.

There were so many questions that I needed answered such as how did Shinnok’s amulet get into Mileena’s hands when we last saw it with Raiden. There are so many time jumps in the story and each time I was just questioning ‘How did this character end up here?’

These are all questions that never get answered and it made playing the story rather pointless. The least NetherRealm Studios could’ve done was provide a recap or make the comic available to read within the game for people who would rather read it than just look at a recap.

The story sadly wasn’t interesting enough and I wasn’t able to follow the character arcs well as it felt like I was missing a huge chunk of what had happened.

There are a lot of moments that could’ve been really interesting like Hanzo no longer being under Quan Chi’s rule and his change as a person but we don’t get to see any of that and are just dropped into the game with this different Scorpion, with no explanation on what happened to get him to this point.

Another story plot point that could’ve been interesting was the Cage family, alongside Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage is their daughter, Cassie Cage who is just one of the many Kombat Kids who got added to the game, and surprisingly she’s the most interesting one which says a lot.

There’s a storyline through MKX’s story where Johnny and Sonya don’t get along anymore and instead of some very intricate backstory on why they’ve separated after just seeing them getting along with each other, we get the lazy trope of “focusing on the job too much”, a lot of the story of this game is just lazy tropes and it was upsetting to see.

A lot of new characters got introduced but besides Cassie Cage and Takeda who is the son of Kenshi, I didn’t really care for anyone else.

There were characters like Ferra/Torr who had an interesting design and even play style but added nothing to the story and it makes you wonder why they were even made for the game, such a good character just went completely to waste.

This game could’ve easily been double the length and taken the time to explain the things that were needed to at least make it interesting, I lost interest maybe an hour into the story and it took me a total of 3 and a half hours to beat it.

Mortal Kombat X fails to tell a good story by missing out on any exposition and horrible characterisations due to there being no background knowledge of what’s going on at all.

You could easily just jump into Mortal Kombat X without playing Mortal Kombat (2011) and you won’t be any more confused than the people who did play Mortal Kombat (2011).

While there are some fun new features, it isn’t enough to consider spending 3-4 hours on this story mode unless you’ve read the prequel comic that’s required.

Rating: 2 out of 5