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Mortal Kombat X review

This article is more than 8 years old

PS3/4, Xbox 360/One, PC; Warner Bros Interactive; £29.99-£42.99

In the early days of video games, controversy was a nice, easy way of shifting units, a facet of the industry far from lost on spine-ripping, viscera-churning Mortal Kombat, a franchise grown on cartoonish levels of gore. Its 10th outing ratchets up the dismemberment further still, but somehow manages to be more funny than repulsive. Along with new and inventive fatalities, in single-player mode there’s an actual plot, albeit one involving the customary world-destroying supernatural absurdities. It’s beautifully woven into the “kombat”, segueing straight from plot exposition to fights involving fists, weapons and magic. The feel of the fighting has also been improved, with simple fatalities that let novice players get gruesome without weeks of practice, and a catalogue of special moves triggered by button combinations that will be instantly familiar to those who’ve played any of the other Mortal Kombats.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK

Far Cry 4: Valley Of The Yetis, PS3/4, Xbox 360/One

The last piece of downloadable content for the wonderful and deservedly blockbusting Far Cry 4 is Valley Of The Yetis, in which you survive a high-altitude helicopter crash and set out to explore the Himalayas with just a machete for company. Although mountaineers wouldn’t normally need to worry about arming themselves, in Far Cry 4 everything is out to kill you, from long drops to snow leopards, the eponymous abominable snowmen and, of course, ruthless fellow humans, making finding weapons and developing your fighting skills an immediate focus. Set in a new map with none of the guns and abilities you earned in the main game, Valley Of The Yetis is its own discrete story with a fresh set of enemies, who admittedly behave exactly like their lower-altitude counterparts. The ending is weak, but as the last available extra slice of joyously ludicrous Himalayan counter-terrorism, it’s still irresistible.

Ubisoft, £11.99

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, Xbox One, PS4 & PC

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles is a spinoff from Ubisoft’s bestselling stealth-and-stabbing franchise, presented not as a freely explorable open world but as a 2.5D platform game in the style of the original 1990s Prince Of Persia. You traverse the screen from left to right, doing your best to avoid would-be aggressors whilst stalking your prey. Remaining undetected and harming nobody but your officially sanctioned targets earns you the best scores, but you can also slug your way through if all that creeping around starts to grate. The voice acting shies away from the borderline-racist fake oriental accents of 1970s martial arts movies, opting instead for plain old English, with authentic Mandarin reserved for the guards and incidental characters. Its mildly engaging charms will be extended, with episodes in India and Russia due soon.

Ubisoft, £7.99

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