As i can't write a review in the traditional way on gamespot for some reason, my blog will have to do for now... tho no one reads it, i'll post this when it's available on normal review, also I had the privilege to buy it a day before release because of some uninformed blockbuster employees, btw i live in mexico, so don't try to go to your local blockbuster (if it still exists in the us) and try to do this, or maybe you'll get lucky, idk... anyway, on with the review!

I'm personally not a huge fan of fighting games, but whenever someone mentions mortal kombat, my mind goes way back to super nintendo era, where i got my ass kicked so many times on this game, but out of all games, I didn't mind being bullied in Mortal Kombat, cause it was FREAKING FUN. This is exactly what this new Mortal Kombat does for me now (not saying i suck so much as I sucked before), i mean the nostalgia combined with the new and interesting features and gameplay of this fresh and new Mortal Kombat.

This game feels like an old-school mortal kombat, i mean, you WILL have FUN while you're playing it, and the gameplay kinda feels like old MK, only that it's a lot quicker and the movements feel a lot more fluent than in previous games! so all in all it's really a pleasure to grab a control (in my case xbox), sit down and play till my eyes rot!

So you have your normal tower fighting succession as you might remember from previous mortal kombat games, but now there is a lot more to it (if you're playing by yourself) than just sitting and doing the towers over and over again, now you have a unique story mode, which i'm enjoying right now. (*KIND OF A SPOILER BEGINS) I haven't finished this mode yet but still i'm just going to structure it, trying not to ruin anything for anyone. So the story is, as far as my intuition tells me, divided in 3 parts, first one, the first tournament held by shang tsung, second one, a new tournament that is held in the outer realm by shao khan, and the third one (which i'm about to begin) that is held on earth realm. In story mode you are not able to select what character you choose, the story flow let's you face whatever fight is going through the plot at the moment, and i was kinda bummed not to see the use of fatalities in this mode, but that was for the sake of the story, you couldn't kill a main character that was going to be defeated by the story's sake... so I wasn't much bothered bout this.(*END OF KINDA SPOILER) I thought this new addition of a story mode was going to be short, but i've been playing it for almost 6 hours now... and for a fighting game, that's pretty impressive! The story is pretty interesting too. The transition between plots and fight is really well done, and i haven't had a dull moment yet.

Then we have a challenge tower, which let's you take on more or less 300 challenges with pre-selected characters. I've played like 25 challenges till now and all of them are very entertaining, some of them take your mind off of all the fighting for a second and let's you relax, and after completing a challenge, you get a cash reward, or a medal reward... i'm not sure what it is, but still with the "money" you get you can go to the krypt and unlock literally a crap-load of unlockables. From concept art to fatalities, but fatalities are REALLY hard to find, you navigate in this kinda awkward cemetery, torture land, thing, and you have to approach gravestones and torturing machines that gives you completely random goodies (as i said from concept art to fatalities), and as for my knowledge, there is no way to know what gravestones or other things gives you fatalities or a specific price you want.

After that we have a succesion of, let's say they are minigames, in which you can test your sight, might and luck. i'll let you get on that by yourself for the sake of shortening this review. Oh and these minigames can also be found on the challenge tower.

Now let's get to a subject we all want to know about. That's right!!! FATALITIES!!!!! So we've all seen the various fatalities of the new mk in youtube or conventions or some other media, but what we've seen is the frosting of a big fat cake! Each character has at least 3 fatalities, and to my knowledge, there is no friendship or animilities or such things, but as i said before, i've only been playing this since 2 p.m. local time (mexico city) and mostly the story mode. Anyway, the first fatalities you unlock are pretty gruesome and great. Blood spills everywhere and you can really see on detail what a body looks like from the inside when ermac rips johny cage in two.

So all in all, it's a great game that keeps you coming for more, and that's a lot to say from a guy that get's tired of fighting games really quickly, but with the new unlockables, story mode, challenges, and other new added features, this game sucks you in more than any other fighting game has ever done before! I have to give this game a 9.5/10, just because they left out a bunch of characters, which will come later via DLC, but we'll have to pay for them. If you are a MK fanboy, go buy this game NOW, cause it truly washes all the bad taste of all the previous 3d MK games, and if you are not a fighting game fan, still buy this, you'll have a great time, believe me!!!!

I hope this review helped you guys and hopefully i'll find some of you kicking my ass online on the near future!!!! cheers!