Tone Deaf: The difference between MKX and it's predecessor

It's been about a week since the launch of MKX, the newest entry in the Mortal Kombat franchise and technically the tenth, and reception seems pretty positive. Sure the micro transactions blow and the season pass is questionable but the roster is great and the gameplay seems to hold up. However, there's definitely been some rumblings that while good, MKX isn't as good as it's predecessor, MK9. Why is that? Well I think a fair amount of it comes from the tone. While both great gorefests, MKX and MK9 are very different stories, and they're worth examining together.

So let's go back to 2011. It has been a long time for Mortal Kombat. While the series has maintained a presence, it has suffered from the lull the fighting game suffered in the new millennium. While Street Fighter took big gambles with the III era games, Mortal Kombat was kontinually making wide revisions to it's gameplay, shifting into a pseudo 3d setup and including a stance system. while admirable, the result was that the series had become disjointed, uneven and not quite as refined as it needed to be.

In 2008 when Capcom released Street Fighter IV and revitalized the genre, Mortal Kombat's entry was MK vs DC, which seemed more reliant on gimmicks and lacking in the gore department. In the 90's Mortal Kombat was the Sonic to Street Fighter's Mario. It was faster, edgier, and darker, and now it looked like it was a shadow of it's former self as well.

When 2011's Mortal Kombat came out, it was a rebirth. No more pseudo 3d, no more stances, no more weapon systems, Mortal Kombat was uprooted and replanted in the soil of Street Fighter, it's rival. And the beauty was, it didn't gut itself to do it. By returning to it's basics Mortal Kombat didn't forget itself, it highlighted the juggling and speed that made Mortal kombat so unique to start with.

Part of the beauty of MK9 was just how in love with Mortal Kombat it was. When some reboots are outright adversarial to the original series, MK9 loved it. MK9 loved that it's poster boys were an Ice Ninja and a Fire Ghost and wanted you to know it. One of the easiest ways to demonstrate that is too simply look at the design of everyone's favorite revenant, Scorpion.

MK9's Scorpion design is some of the most Final Fantasy shit ever, and it's gorgeous. From head to toe Scorpion is decked out in enough spikes and spears to make the whole 90's quake, all he's missing is the pouches to be full blown liefeld. And yet, it's a very symbolic outfit, entwining symbols of scorpions in the mask and hood with skulls in the braces for the fact that dude's a fucking hell ghost. It's great.

Now, let's look at MKX's Scorpion design. Simple, practical, faded. A hood, a vest, a mask, done. Even the hood is more natural that the typical MK ninja hood. No tights, just a basic hood. The design underlines the design philosophy of MKX, a more grounded style with a darker atmosphere.

MKX isn't what MK9 is. MK9's roster was a composite of the franchise, featuring only one truly new character in the form of Skarlet, where as nearly half of MKX's roster is newcomers. MK9 is bright and cheery while X is dark and downtrodden. MK9 is simple while MKX incorporates multiple gimmicks from the series past.

In a lot of ways MKX seems like the more typical reboot we've come to expect from the Games Industry, but truth be told MKX couldn't exist without MK9. Timewise the difference between MKX and MK9 is actually more than MK9 and the then previous entry MK vs DC, but MK9 did more than revive Mortal Kombat, it bred reverence and love in a new swath of gamers as well as rekindle the love it had with older ones. MKX's roster is rounded out by newcomers like Erron Black who would feel at home in any MK game, but the bulk of it is characters with strong ties to older ones like Cassie Cage. Why would I care about Johnny Cage's daughter if I don't know who johnny Cage is?

By reestablishing the klassic roster, MK9 allowed MKX to distance itself while still maintaining relevance. Of MKX's 24 character roster, 16 are returning. That brings us 8 kompletely new characters to fuck around with. Compare this to say, Street Fighter 3 whose roster was almost ENTIRELY new characters but really came down to 9 when you cut boss and returning characters. That's not accounting for variants either.

The point being MKX is a fairly big departure from what we think of Mortal Kombat. For the most part the big players are here, johnny, Liu Kang, Kitana, but some older mainstays have sat this one out, like Jade and Baraka. Why is it that after such an unabashed love letter the series is doing such a distance job?

Well the answer is, that's Mortal Kombat. As you'll recall Mortal Kombat has been in a constant state of shifting gameplay and quality, usually finding some success but never perfection. As a result Mortal Kombat has accumulated a large Kast of kharacters in it's revisions, even dropping some of it's more iconic kombatants along the way. Reformation of the casts gave us interesting new fighters like Kenshi and Tanya, both returning in X. Rebuilding the Kast largely from the ground up has been a fairly common trait of MK games, and one to be expected.

At the same time the game is coated in the gimmicks of previous titles. Deadly Alliance had the stance system before X, and 4 had a similar sprint meter. Deception had the same interactive environments, and the story focus on 9 is on full display here. MKX isn't just a sequel to 9, it's a sequel to Armageddon as well. It is the next Mortal Kombat, not in the new timeline, not in the new series, but the next Mortal Kombat. Period.

Mortal Kombat X takes place 25 years after MK9, which is also the time difference between MKX and MK1. It's kast feature fighters from every MK, save MK vs DC which had no new MK fighters, and MK9's Skarlet. It has, as established, mechanics from games past and a large new kast. In terms of tone it returns to the dark palette of games past but maintains the violent glee throughout.

So why do some like MK9 more than MKX? Well the answer may be that they don't like MK, or rather what it has become. MK9 appealed to nostalgia, backed up by it's genuinely good gameplay. MKX rather embraced the sporadic nature of the series into one big gumbo seasoned by new spices. The core dish may seem the same, but presentation goes a long way.

There's no right answer to which is best. Personally I prefer MKX a bit but MK9 is still great. MK9 and MKX are world apart, and both unabashedly in love with the series. It really comes down to how and what you love about Mortal Kombat, but ultimately both of them have ninja ghosts on the box, and that's pretty fucking cool. Kool. Whatever.