Do People Not Know There Is An Arcade Story Mode?

I feel like several MK reviews I have read comment on the shortness of the story mode and subsequent lack of single player content. Firstly I think that's bizarre since the story mode seems plenty long to me. But secondly, are people not aware that if you fight the standard 10 person ladder in the Tower mode that each character has their own specific ending?

I'm an offline only player, and MK seems more fully featured as a single player product than almost any fighting game I've played in recent memory. (DOA 5, Street Fighter 4, etc.)

Moving this to the Mortal Kombat X forum...please use the game and platform-specific boards when appropriate.

I tried to make it in the MKX forum. I guess I didn't do it properly.

What reviews are these? Not only is there a traditional single player tower, they have lots of other towers too, like test your luck and the living towers.

I mean the main story is kind of short. I feel like MK9's story was a bit longer but that honestly might be because I had to retry a lot in MK9.

I don't feel like the arcade towers add too much if they have gripes with the story's length. An arcade tower isn't equivalent to more story. The story mode is still short there are just towers too.

That seems like a weird opinion to have, in my opinion, but maybe I'm just old. The single player tower with it's 10 rounds and ending motion graphics are actually MORE story than the first 5 or so Mortal Kombat games. Right up until Mortal Kombat 9 and DOA 5, that was pretty much the ONLY way to convey story in a fighting game. You beat the arcade mode and then it gave you some text or video saying what happens to the character. Many brand name fighting games didn't even have character specific endings. I feel like MKX is pretty much an embarrassment of riches, on that front, when you add in the 3+ hours of story that constitutes the single player story line.

Jeff mentioned several times that he didn't think it had a strong single player offering and when you look at Metacritic, the negative reviews mention that they thought the story was short and there wasn't enough single player content.

I mean, MK9's story was literally the first 3 games worth of story (plus a little extra) retold. The fact that MKX's completely original story is almost as long is kinda impressive honestly.

@bananasfoster: I mean sure but if my complaint was "the story mode is short" having additional towers with 30 seconds of story doesn't solve that. I think it's a good amount of game but I think it's a valid criticism.

I've decided that the arcade tower is better than the story mode at this point, and I've already beat both. The arcade tower at least has Goro, so that's actually pretty weird. Whatever happened to Reiko, btw? I only need to finish the last 3 MKX comics, so I'm just not sure. I've already beat the arcade tower with Raiden right now, anywho.

I totally agree. I also hear Jeff and others criticize the story as being confusing and I didn't agree with that at all, either. The only mis-step, if you want to call it that, that the game makes is not introducing characters. It assumes you know who everyone is, which is the only way I think the story could become confusing. But whether or not the 10th game in a series can assume you know who characters are or not is a debatable point. I personally think it would have sucked if they felt the need to explain everyone, their motivations, and who they were allied with all the time.

The one time I did find myself confused for about 10 seconds is the second time Tanya appears in the story. She changes clothes and because nobody calls her by name, it was difficult to figure out who she even was for a minute.

@bananasfoster: I think it only really assumes you've seen MK9's story. Anything prior to that is pretty much irrelevant. I mean, I know jack shit about anything story or character related in any of those games and I never found myself lost or confused. I guess I don't know who the hell that Serena chick was, for example, but I didn't need to know that to understand who's side she was on or what was happening in the plot.

MK9 was praised for its story mode specifically because it wasn't the standard 10-person ladder arcade mode. There is less of the things reviewers liked, and significantly more of the thing reviewers were glad to be rid of in the first place. How does that seem like an acceptable tradeoff?

People know, it's just laughably bad so noone talks about it.

Honestly I think it's kind of ridiculous you cant do ranked matches while working your way up the ladder like you can in DOA5 & SF4. Also, I could be wrong (maby I havent done enough or maby it isnt working) but are ranked matches even ranked?

I like MKX but I feel like they messed up the online pretty badly.

@bananasfoster:

I agree as well. I read Jeff's review prior to playing, and was waiting the whole time through story mode for it to get confusing. I never got confused, so I'm not sure what that was about. I've logged over 40 hours in the game already, and have only played multiplayer for maybe an hour. After the story mode, then beating the arcade ladder with every character, there's still the hourly, daily, and weekly towers to complete. Add to that the faction towers and invasions, and also working to open everything in the Krypt, there's a ton of SP stuff to do.

Not disappointed at all.

The story is fairly straight forward so I couldn't imagine why anybody would be confused. My only major problem with the story is that it wasn't as strong as MK9's. Every few minutes it seemed like something crazy was popping off in that game's story. MKX felt like a solid introduction to the next generation of MK fighters. Nothing insane about it. The setup to for the next game makes it seem like it's gonna pop off again, though.

It definitely isn't presented in the best way and it may not be clear to people just starting out. It was 2 or 3 days after I got the game when I randomly played a Klassic Tower and was (pleasantly) surprised to find there were character specific endings.

I personally think the story mode was too long and it had a ton of dull moments...

But I definitely wouldn't complain that the game is lacking on single player content.