Maybe it's the kind of detail that only high-level players will be able to appreciate, but I didn't see the appeal. I'd have to spend more time to understand how they differ. The first is that each character has three variations to its fighting style, which you have to pick before a fight starts. In terms of innovation in the fighting itself, there are two big updates here. When someone cut off Sub Zero's face, his brain slipped out of his skull, his exposed tongue glistening as it wiggled cluelessly. The textures and character models were of a much higher quality. The fighting itself felt really good, which is to say, it felt almost exactly like Mortal Kombat 9, only prettier. You wouldn't be wrong if you called it a treadmill, but it seems like the kind of system that a fighting game needs to make you feel like you're getting somewhere, even if you're not taking on human rivals. Forever aloneĪll of these rewards and points give Mortal Kombat X the kind of incremental-but-steady progression system that hooked me to Call of Duty for several years. You can even enter team fights, where five members of your faction fight five simultaneous fights against another faction, and the team with the most wins gets the points.Īt the end of every week, the faction with the most points overall will get a reward, which can even include a special, faction-specific Fatality. Your faction will modify the menus' visual themes, and everything you do in the game will earn points for your faction. Assuming you're online, when you first start Mortal Kombat X you'll be asked to choose one out of five factions associated with groups in the game's fiction: White Lotus, Brotherhood of Shadow, Black Dragon, Special Forces, or Lin Kuei. It also sounds like the best rewards will come from Mortal Kombat X's greater, cross-platform multiplayer Faction War mode. NetherRealm is still a little vague about what exactly you'll be able to spend these points on, but cosmetic changes to characters is one example. These aren't merely fun, almost puzzle-like elements to introduce to a fighting game-they’re also a great way to force and teach a lone player to discover each fighter's movelist. The conditions I saw were focused on winning rounds while using certain moves. Each level in the tower has some kind of environmental twist-I saw one where bombs were falling from the sky, another where I had to dodge roving laser traps-and an extra condition that will earn you more points.