PixlBit

 With Street Fighter V's “launch” still freshly in the public eye, its easy to forget that another big fighting game release is coming out next Tuesday, Mortal Kombat XL. The expansion to the very successful Tenth canonical outing of MK looks to be just as big and bloody as ever with some new surprises...provided your playing on the right platforms.

 

To me the biggest success MKX did was make Mortal Kombat feel more mature and serious. I understand the idea of series featuring four armed half dragon men fighting dick Hollywood action stars who punch people in the dick as something “mature” and “serious”, but MKX pulled it off. The Variation system breathed some freshness into Mortal Kombat's combat. XL doesn't seem to change much of that up but definitely adds a lot of fan favorite changes. A fresh new netcode, more stage fatalities, a brand new stage...to MKX at least, and four new brawlers to MKX.

 

Much of XL's excitement though has been dampened by the sudden and abrupt lack of support for the PC version of the game. This continues the unfortunate trend of WB Games having terrible PC ports: MKX's original PC port was a managed mess that went through plenty of patches to fix it. None of them did anything though and it still remains a mess. At least the PC port did come out, a luxury PS3 and Xbox 360 owners don't have as the ports for MKX on those platforms were canceled after delays. XL's new DLC character cast is also rubbing some the wrong way with two of the four DLC characters slots being held to guest characters. Don't get me wrong, both Letherface and Alien look like great characters, but when there was Rain and Sindel clearly in the game's story that you fought, it seems a little hard to not flesh them out into their own characters. At least Baraka got some love as a variation for Alien...of course that love came from his death from a chest burstin' alien. XL will certainly keep Mortal Kombat X alive for a little longer.