Mortal Kombat XL

I'm not clicking on any more of your links. It's not funny.

DOGFIGHT!

We're deciding Who is the Alpha wolf of this pack !

All the Fatalities I've unlocked so far, in order from worst to best, with reasons.

• Sonya Blade: Target Marked — There's just way too much going on in this one, and it's all done by that stupid drone. I don't care about Sonya's tech, I care about Sonya. I want to see her killing her opponent, not her leaving a marker for her drone to follow. Add in the arm severing and then blowing their head up and this one just isn't very good.
• Cassie Cage: Bubble Head — I know that there are people who really like this Fatality, but it never captured me. It's a little too clean, and not as funny as it should be. Disappointing.
• Kitana: Dark Fan-Tasy — There's too much going on in this one, and the result isn't that interesting to watch. All that's left is the top of their head and their fingerless hands, with very little gore. Looks painful, but ultimately not that interesting.
• Goro: Peek-A-Boo — When a Shokan Fatality doesn't need to be done by a Shokan to work it's always disappointing. This one could reasonably be done by Jax, and Ermac's second Fatality is a riff on the same theme, so this one loses points.
• Kotal Kahn: Tight Squeeze — Ultimately, this one is kind of lame. Especially for an unlockable Fatality when his default one is so strong.
• Reptile: Bad Breath — Would've really enjoyed this one if the face melting had gone further, and been on its own. Ripping the head in two is pointless and robs it of some of the more disturbing imagery the series has to offer.
• Shinnok: The Grinder — This one is just kind of boring.
• Mileena: Face Feast — Mileena's face-eating Fatalities never really grabbed me, because you can't really see what she's doing, and it's territory they've been in with her before. There's nothing shocking about it anymore.
• Kenshi: My Puppet — I love the way this one starts, and then it just kind of goes out in a whimper.
• Shinnok: Flick Trick — This one's okay, but nothing to write home about.
• Kung Jin: Target Practice — This one's just kind of meh.
• Erron Black: Sand Storm — The amount of sand that comes out of that one grenade bothers me. Like, how does this one even work? It's an effective image, but the Fridge Logic takes me out of it.
• Johnny Cage: Little Improv — Love the gore on the face in this one, but it's a little too simple. Would've liked a little more spectacle. It's a fun one to bust out if you're tired of "Here's Johnny", though. Johnny's Brutalities being so easy to pull off makes those more attractive, though.
• Reptile: Acid Bath — Very effective final image, and I like how slow sinking into the acid is, but it could stand to be gorier.
• Scorpion: Stop Ahead — This one falls down the list because the very awesome opening of blasting a hole through the chest and the heart dropping into it is made irrelevant by cutting off their face right away. It loses more points because this is Scorpion, and his Fatalities should be among the best. This one is very middling, so looks even worse in comparison.
• Jax: T-Wrecks — I love the second half of this one, with ripping open your opponent's jaw and using it as an ashtray. But it falls way down because of how pointless the stuff with the arms is.
• Kung Jin: Pinned Down — This one really gets by on the final image of the head and arms pinned to the ground.
• Ferra/Torr: Better Than One — This one is great. There's just a lot that are more interesting.
• Sub-Zero: Chest Cold — Nothing particularly wrong with this one. I'm not a fan of blowing out the entire torso except the spine. That's just weird looking. Other than that, great Fatality.
• Ermac: Inner Workings — This one is very effective the first time you see it, but not so much after that. The pay-off isn't the best, and it's kind of slow. But it does get points for the image of your opponent floating behind you like they're dead in the water, with intestines hanging from their mouth. I just wish the lead-up to that was a little better.
• Kenshi: Tele-Copter — There's nothing wrong with this one. There's just some that are better.
• Takeda: Whip It Good — I like sending the whip into their mouth and opening the blades, then yanking out...whatever that is (their trachea?). But cutting the arms off before is pointless, so this one loses points for that.
• Johnny Cage: Here's Johnny — Super funny, but suffers from lack of pay-off. After mugging for the camera, Johnny just kind of lets them fall. If he topped it off with his trademark decapitating uppercut, this would probably be my favourite.
• Jacqui Briggs: Blown Out — This one earns its place because of the mess that's made of your opponent's back. Really beautiful gore work, that doesn't rely on the skeletal structure the way a lot of Fatalities do.
• Liu Kang: Sore Throat — Once again, simplicity is the key to this one's success. It's one of the more efficient Fatalities in the game, and there's really nothing flashy about it, but it gets extra points because of who is doing it. It's an oddly vicious move for Liu Kang.
• Goro: Shokan Amputation — This one is really only here because of the spectacle. Any time a Shokan puts all four arms to good use is always fun to watch.
• Raiden: Bug Eyes — This is one of those ones that's like "Why didn't they do this before?" Grab their head and shock it until it blows off. I don't need Raiden to blow it up in the air afterward, but it's kind of fun that he does.
• Ermac: Head Out — Simple and effective. It reminds me of some classic fatalities. This one is higher than Ermac's other one because it's just more satisfying. Fast, and to the point.
• Kung Lao: Face Grind — I love how simple and pointlessly cruel this one is. There's genuine fear when confronted with the blade, and a moment of relief that they didn't die...and then Kung Lao kicks their face into it.
• Sub-Zero: Ice Bed — This one would be much lower on the list if it wasn't for that last stomp. The ice shards jutting up through their face is great, and I love the eye leftover on one of them.
• Quan Chi: Mind Game — This one is horrifying. It's just so casual, and the combination of mind control and impalement through the mouth are cringeworthy.
• Ferra/Torr: Play Time — This one is just fun. Ferra looks like she's having a blast just hanging out impaled through their opponent, waiting for Torr to pull her out. This one gets extra points for completely bisecting the other fighter on the way out.
• Kano: Head Case — I like the bait-and-switch of this one. Gutting your opponent and watching their intestines spill out onto the ground is great. But I love that Kano then catches them, and blows a hole through their face with his cybernetics. It's so pointlessly cruel, which I love in Fatalities, especially when it's in character.
• Kotal Kahn: Be Mine — Kano's Heart Rip is one of my favourite Klassic Fatalities, and I really like Kotal's take on it. I appreciate that it's not overly complicated. Cut open the chest, rip out the heart, raise it in victory, and crush it.
• D'Vorah: Bug Me — I normally don't like when Fatalities involve injuries that aren't part of the main kill, but it works for this one. I can forgive the padding of punching holes through her opponent with her swarm, because the gore on the face is fantastic. The jaw falling off gets me every time. And then crushing their skull with her boot is just the icing on the cake.
• Mileena: Tasty Treat — I love how balls-out ferocious this one is. There's no gimmick; just Mileena tearing her opponent's abdomen to shreds and chowing down. It's horrifying, and I love it. Mileena is my main, this is my go-to when I'm not after a Brutality, and it makes me cringe every time. I really hope that most of the people I'm fighting have never seen it before, and recoil in horror when they do.
• Cassie Cage: Selfie — The best Fatality hands down. The kill is elegant in its simplicity, and the gore on the smashed jaw is top notch. That Cassie grabs them as they're falling, and takes a selfie, complete with duckface just pushes it over the top. It's exactly what I want out of a Fatality: gory, vicious, and darkly amusing.

You know T-Wrecks is called that because Jax turns his victim into a T-rex, right? The arms are kind of necessary.

That's the thing. They're considered so important that it's named after it, but it a) looks stupid, and b) isn't the lasting image from the fatality.

The first time I saw it, I went "Well that was stu—WOAH WHAT THE DAMN HELL!" The interesting part of the Fatality isn't the arms, it's the jaw.

edited 20th Apr '15 8:17:40 PM by BadWolf21

The jaw is also supposed to be the gaping maw of a T-rex as well.

That doesn t mean I don't still find the arms pointless and stupid. The image isn't mandatory. They picked it.

T-Wrecks is one of my faves actually. I still think ermac's first and Takeda's first is one of the best do to how gross they sound and look. Great sound direction in this game.

The sound is amazing. I hadn't realized how important it was until an audio glitch removed the squelchy bits from Mileena's X-Ray once and it was super weird.

Unless I've encountered a weird glitch, you don't actually need to unlock the fatalities to be able to use them. I can use the second fatalities that I haven't unlocked yet just fine, as long as I look up figure out how to do them.

Nah, it worked that way in MK 9 as well. It just told you what button inputs you needed to do if you haven't already stumbled on them.

It's always been that way, thankfully. Course before the 3D ones you pretty much had to look up how to do all the fatalities.

edited 21st Apr '15 10:10:13 AM by Hashil

I once inadvertently did a Brutality with Shinnok on Sonya. I stole her leg grab and finished the match with it, leading to a Brutality. I didn't even know that move could do that.

It was pretty hype.

My point is, it's a nice surprise when you inadvertently finish your foe, but I do feel people should be able to unlock the conditions in the Krypt. That seems fair.

Secret ladder fight requirements: Do the MK 1 Tower this week, then finish match #6 with a flawless victory and either a Fatality or Brutality.

Temporariness of the tower leads me to believe that there will be more, different secret fights in the future.

The ones based on MKII, III, IV, and IX will probably all have them, and I feel like the Premier towers will probably cycle back around more than once. It'll take a while, because in addition to the five based on previous games, there's one for every character (including DLC), and a handful of others, but it'll probably come back eventually.

Ed Boon's hinting at a Story Pack.

I've finished pretty much every Klassic Tower ending bar Shinnok's, and some of them add up to a story. That is, if you discount certain things and pay attention more to the narration than the pictures. Obviously, there's spoilers for pretty much every Klassic Tower ending from here.

After the events of the story (but not the epilogue- I'll get to that in a minute), Kotal Khan hires Erron Black to kill the SF four (Cassie, Jacqui, Takeda and Jin). However, Jax is around with them due to Cage asking him to take over whilst he's in hospital, and successfully kills Black, but dies in the attempt. Sonya foresees it in a dream and is told by Johnny. This event shakes up several of the heroes. Kung Jin decides to travel to the Netherrealm to attempt to aid Kung Lao, despite Raiden saying it wouldn't work. Takeda decides it's now or never to kill the assassin who murdered his mother, and takes Kenshi with him, ending up meeting Taven and killing Daegon. Raiden, corrupted by Shinnok and further motivated by Jax's death, decides to go after his threats. He sends Jacqui to spy on Kotal, where she takes the golden skull, and sends Cassie to kill Shujinko so the events of Deception can't take place. He snaps Scorpion out of his suicidal state and infused him and the Shirai Ryu (minus Takeda, who is in the middle of hunting down Daegon) with a portion of the Jinsei, in order to bring him along to invade Outworld. Down in Outworld, things are dire. Erron is dead, Shang Tsung has been revived from, and has killed, Ermac, and is making an army of Mileenas in his flesh pits. Reptile has left to his new raptor clan after being sent on a scouting mission and Ferra is now a brute in the process of being sold off to a new rider. Without any forces to speak of, and with whatever artifact he had being stolen by Jacqui, he is defeated by Raiden, and has to plead to the Elder Gods to give him a chance, and invokes a new Mortal Kombat tournament for the fate of Outworld. And finally, with the Lin Kuei left to defend Earthrealm alone (since the Shirai Ryu are in Outworld), Sub Zero finds the frost dragon to make them more powerful.

Liu Kang took control of the Netherrealm before Jax died. Just before he left to attack Outworld, Raiden cut off Shinnok's head to make a point to Liu and Kitana about invading other realms, as they both appear to be ruling the Netherrealm together at that point. At the very least, Liu Kang's story is already proven canon by the epilogue to the story. Kitana's vision, given by whatever being killed Jade in 9 that apparently wants to restore the unaltered Armageddon timeline, happened afterwards, otherwise she'd have told Raiden to stop meddling in the timeline.

This story assumes that the dead Quan Chi and the defeated D'vorah's Klassic Tower endings aren't canon. It also does not account for Shinnok's story, nor the image at the end of Khan's story which breaks the canon as Ermac, Erron, Ferra/Torr and Reptile all appear in it. It's just a headcanon of mine, but it would be very interesting if such a broad range of endings were actually canon. It definitely sets up the next game in an interesting way.

Ok, that's pretty long. Sorry about the wall of text, I just wanted to share what I think about the Klassic Tower endings.

edited 22nd Apr '15 12:42:12 PM by Ninja2634

tfw you beat someone with 150 wins and 20 losses with scrubby ass Jax tactics.

Subzero: You think me a Revenant still?

Scorpion: You sure seem untraumatized.

Good point. I know this sort of thing may not make for interesting stories, but these guys go through too much trauma to be ignored. Hell, in the old continuity, Cage died four times!

I'm so over the sub/scorp rivalry but I know we'll keep getting these guys since they're basically the Ken/Ryu of MK for better and worse.

They've finally buried the hatchet canonically. Rather that'll actually stick or not, though.

Speaking of which...

It's totally a joke, but it still brought me tears

So it seems Tumblr brought back Quan Chi's "WOOLAY" meme.

My dad has bought the game and I got to play some. The characters I liked to play in 9 obviously aren't in this game so I went with the closest thing which was Sub-Zero

I loooove messing the opponent with his ice clones. Mindgames are such fun to do.