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When I think back to my time at this year's EGX London, the thing that stands out the most was the abundance of blood. Maybe it has something to do with the games I chose to play, but whether it was the unmistakable crimson of the succinctly titled Bloodborne, the claret carnage of The Evil Within or the outlandish neon of Sunset Overdrive, there was enough heart juice on show to open a blood bank. Still, if you think about it more in terms of quality over quantity, there was one game that took the crimson crown by a landslide, and that was none other than Mortal Kombat X.Considering the series' tempestuous history, it's no surprise that NetherRealm Studios has kept true to form in the brutality sweepstakes. The 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot was a carnival of broken bones and contorted cartilage, and by tapping into the extra horsepower offered by the new generation of consoles, this new game pushes the level of detail even further. This is particularly true of the returning X-Ray moves. They still show off the inner workings of the human body as you crack skulls and shatter ribs, only now, you can make out each individual tooth and each overlapping strand of muscle tissue.
One of the more inventive X-Ray moves that's been shown so far involves a spear made out of frozen entrails and an unprotected eye socket. No prizes for guessing which ice man pulls off that particular routine. But as impressive as this slugfest looks when running (even now) at a steady 60fps and 1080p combo, a fighting game ultimately lives or dies by the sophistication of its fighting system. It doesn't have to feature more sub-systems than you have fingers to count on and it doesn't need to lock its tastiest combos behind a wall of precise inputs. It just needs to be easy to learn, hard to master and heart-poundingly intense when fighting a human opponent.
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