Mortal Kombat X Announce Trailer

Uhm ever heard of the Wu Tang Clan? Ghost Dog? RZA?

The connection between rap/gang culture and asian warrior codex, like the Bushido/Hagakure, has been a pretty old and well established one. Basically gangbanggers compared what they are doing, to the fights in feudal Japan/China with all the "honor", "fight till the end stuff" and rivalries between dozens of different clans/gangs, and started to translate these to their every day live, giving their whole way of life some artificial depth and meaning, giving them at least the impression of doing something "honorable".


Not a big fan of "gang culture" myself, but they could have picked worse "role models" than those. But I'd agree with you on the "cultural prostitution", at least after having seen The Man with the Iron Fists...

Man am I excited for this, also Sub-Zero > Scorpion!

That was FREAKING EPIC. The rap music made it even more cool IMO.

This seems like a really uninspired, poor representation of trap...

Happy to see that too. I work in the music/tv industry and have a professional relationship with Big Freedia so cool to see people on Giant Bomb know him as well. My friend had a bounce competition with Freedia when he was in our office a couple months back. Suffice to say he lost.

Yea... we run that trap shit now. MKX needs some Flosstradamus beats...

Was Sean Price not available?

@gutterkisser: And it's still okay to not like the music even if you think it works tonally. I think it doesn't work tonally. There is nothing less bad-ass than hiphop or rap to me as far as music goes. MK and this trailer are about bad-assery. So it didn't fit in the slightest. For me. And that's fine.

It did fit for you and that's also fine. This is about taste, not quality or anything else.

@pdgbanana: dubstep was 2012's fad musics.

@charlee_coco: so seems it is a bit of both, someone got a sort of confirmation from Ed

Fuck yeah it's rap music. Not exactly the best fit, but I'm not opposed to it.

Really? Rap music?

I don't hold some stubborn allegiance to a genre, I just like well-chosen music. If they used a country track that worked, I'd totally be down.

This track works, tonally. The slow instrumentals lend it cinematic weight, and the staccato of his flow emphasises the flurry of fighting.

FYI, 'dubstep' is not a catch-all term for tech house, electro or whatever other electronic genre you're not familiar with.

Whatever. Other fighting games don't have fatalities, so they can't compete.

I get why they don't, but that does not appeal to people like myself at all. I want a reason to win other than beating some random person I don't care about or the AI. Getting to do a fatality is the big pay off. Injustice came close with the fancy end game cutscenes, but I really didn't get any satisfaction out of winning in that game.

It's the same reason new the Killer Instinct let me down even though I loved the SNES one. I did enjoy what they did with the musical ultra finishers though, but it's not the same.

Oh god yes. It was obvious MK 10 would come, but having it confirmed like this made my day!

Interesting that they went back to old school style ninja outfits. Less flair, less scorpion carapace shoulderspads and arm braces, more hoods and stuff. Maybe it's the dark and gritty reboot of the reboot? :P

@akraftwerkorange said:

Yeah I get that, which is only true in a particular time and place, mostly in the US, since in europe we had little exposition to that particular combination ( although I think the relation runs deeper than that, tying back to the rise of Blaxploitation and martial arts movies in the 70s, that were seen as "exotic minority" cultural exposition... this was picked up by the mainstream and seeped into the mainstream urban culture). However the fact that it's understandable doesn't really give it a reason, just a superficial link. In fact both cultural expositions of either subject were widely ignorant and rather silly, mainly focusing on skin deep aesthetics, prejudices and mysticism. Particularly about Asian influences, until the mid 80s, there was very little differentiation in the mainstream media between say Kung-fu, Ninjitsu, Karate, Kendo, Tai Chi, etc.. It was all clumped together in exotic oriental martial arts.

I'll give you that Mortal Kombat embodies that spirit of silly, nonsensical vague asian influences, in a very over the top, fantastic way. But the fact remains that from it's start, MK became famous in part by its iconic aggressive synth electronic heavily sampled title song, and it has always had a more "wacky techno ninja" vibe , than a "badass urban" vibe, which is rather dissonant with what we've come to expect of the series. Now, I don't particularly care if they decide to take the franchise in other way, and give it PHAT BEATS.

I enjoyed MK9 in a very dumb silly way, and even then I don't really care about the direction of the story or the tone. Just don't think that was the most effective song to use.

And about the Rap/HipHop > Ninjas, well yeah, there is a very particular connection, but it's still more incidental than meaningful.

Wait. this may be a slight spoiler, but isnt Sub-Zero supposed to be a Robot now?

Haha that was my same exact thought. :P

The rapping itself was on point--swift, percussive, etc.--but the instrumentals were bland, like they just slapped on a couple background loops and called it good. The game, similarly, looks to be another lovingly crafted Netherrealms title, but the overall formula--the figurative 'background loops'--seems dead tired to me. Or maybe it's just me. I've been playing Mortal Kombat for, what, like 20 years now? And I suppose there are only so many times I can come back to the same game. I hope today's youth gets a kick out of it, though. May every child with strict parents have a friend whose don't give a damn!

I have had this problem with almost all MK games. The moves look very stiff. Not fluent. Which is not bad, it's a traditional way of looking at fighting. It's just not really my thing. I prefer the 'flowey' stuff.

Another MK would be lovely, but I'm not getting a PS4/XONE yet, not now and not in 2015 (((

It'd take Project Beast but like times five to convince me.

Whats the beef people have with the animation? Looks great to me ... am I missing something?

Well that is not a false equivalence at all.

This is way worse than what they had.

That was a tight trailer, hopefully they get it to close to that for the final game.

For the people hating on the music: licensing music for trailers can involve a lot of bs, so take it easy on them. (even though I think you guys are crazy thinking this song doesn't work with the trailer)

Posting in a thread about hip hop.

Bad choice of music if you ask me.

My first experience with Mortal Kombat was playing the original arcade game. I would have never thought the series would still be around all this time later.

I almost expected the environment to react to the players hits like in Def Jam Icon.

@pimblycharles: oh god can you imagine nether realm making Lang a character? Digitized Lang is a scary thought

Wow, that trailer did everything it could to turn me off of the game. The animations looked weird and rubbery, and the music, holy crap was that song awful.

With that being said, I do look forward to this game so I can see where they go with the story via Youtube. The ending of Mortal Kombat 9 was a big cliffhanger, and left me wanting more. I just hope there's not a stupid moment where a character murders everyone in under two minutes.

I think the music fit in pretty well. Sadly I doubt it, or anything like it, will be in the full game though.

I'm hyped - MK9 was damn good so bring on ten!

I'm excited and the concept looks great.

Lets just hope the studio has got their network code up to par. Because let's face it the online component for Injustice and MK9 was unplayable.

Didn't dismiss all critics. Just called the people dismissing this for being rap music idiots. Which you aren't doing here.

If somebody doesn't like the song, that's one thing. There are better tracks. But there were plenty of comments along the lines of "had me until rap".

TAYLOR GANG OR DIE

Hype! Love that song as well.

I'm a white kid from Illinois, but I think the cultural connection comes from the Blacksploitation films, and, resulting from them, the creation and overwhelming success of the WU-TANG Clan. Black kids quoting Italian gangsters and watching kung fu movies to develop their approach to the world isn't too crazy.

This song didn't fit though. The fast-rap approach would only fit a far more staccato trailer. The fluid fighting should have had a slower track or more camera cuts.

@sydlanel: you pretty much described all of Mortal Kombat as a whole

This trailer would have been better without the music.

I always thought of Scorpion and Sub-Zero as like the yin and yang of the series, but for some freakin reason they keep treating them like Ryu(Scorpion) and Ken(Sub-Zero) and making one of them clearly the better one. They realize there are a ton of Sub-Zero fans, right? Don't get the marketing tactic of constantly showing one of the fan favorites constantly lose.

Also, hip-hop needs to stay far, far away from fantasy-based video games. Not saying it's bad all the time, just saying, it doesn't belong in a fantasy setting.

Aside from these two gripes, it looks awesome and if that's any indication of how the gameplay will look on the current gen systems or at least the PC, I'm all in.

@hatking: It's very different dismissing an entire genre of music and finding that it's not at all the right choice for a trailer. As I said, when I first heard it I though I had some other video playing in the background because of how random it felt. I particularly don't like this song because I find it a bit weak sounding, but I would imagine it working quite well for a boxing game trailer or some.. Saint's Row - like game trailer ( although that is a lot more bombastic ).

even last year's horrible Yaiba e3 trailer had a lot more of a punch than this.

It's a bit broad to call all critics dismissive idiots...particularly when you are dismissing them all as idiots... pretty rich...

@hatking: It's bad because it's the least hype sounding song I've ever heard in an announcement trailer. It's a really generic, weak beat with even more generic Wiz lyrics over it. I would have preferred something that didn't go for the corny inspirational karate kid tone. If all they got for this game is this tier of hip hop, its a missed a opportunity and a huge bummer. Also, calling bullshit that you would be defending country, it just doesn't happen bro.

What this nonesense about this trailer not being good cuz of the music?? Who cares!!!!!! I understand people don't like rap but damn that was a great trailer. I never play fighting games and now kinda of want to. What I'm trying to say is haters gone hate and dope trailers gone be dope.

Also I do wish there was a GREAT fighting game with a hip hop soundtrack.

And the award for worst kept secret ever goes to...

Seriously though can't wait for another MK, 9's and Injustices story modes were so freaking stupid (awesome) and I can't wait for another absurdly dumb (fantastic) one of those.

Does anyone else think this game really needs a deliberately awful 90s "eXtreme" version of its game cover due to the name? I'd love that.

Oh good, finally a sequel to the best fighting game of last generation.

Ha... that was a long run for a pun.

EDIT: Also, the music was great. Loved this trailer.

Sure i am excited about a new mortal kombat and all that jazz.

But why, as far as i can tell, is sub-zero always on the losing side to scorpion in there promotion's? sure scorpion is all fire skull and stuff, but sub-zero has always been so much cooler than him.

@robo: I get the same impression, duder. The music in the trailer didn't stick out to me at all until I came to the comments section here. Holy shit.

How so? Somebody else tried to tell me this song was too serious for MK. Which is weird to me because MK strikes me as extremely self serious with an absurd backdrop (I said this somewhere else on these forums). And to me, that's a perfect fit for hip hop. Jesus, what genre of music better fits over-the-top violence and masculinity?

Oh, and I would be on people's cases for dismissing country as well.