Mortal Kombat X PAX Video Features Scorpion, Kano, Raiden

A new video (well technically videos, but they're combined into one) have become available courtesy of a live-stream from this year's PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington. The video features a battle between Scorpion and Sub-Zero (a classic rivalry no doubt) and a jungle bout between Raiden and Kano, showing off Kano's impressive new amateur-wrestling move-set.

The videos focus mainly on the streamlined combat system that NetherRealm Studios have improved for this upcoming outing of Mortal Kombat that works as a sequel to Mortal Kombat 9 while also doubling down as a reboot of sorts as a brand new Mortal Kombat beginning, with brand new characters, stories, bosses and moves.

Since the game is still cross-generational it's using a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 so that it can scale from the Xbox One and PS4 down to the PS3 and Xbox 360. Quite naturally, we won't see how the game will look on the old-gen consoles until it's closer to release. For now, what we're seeing for the eighth-gen systems looks pretty good running at native 1080p and 60 frames per second, which is one of the highlights of the game's mechanics.

While Mortal Kombat 9 also ran at 60fps, there was still a bit of sluggishness in the way some moves and combos were executed. For Mortal Kombat X NetherRealm have evolved what they established in Injustice: Gods Among Us and focused more on maintaining mechanic fluidity.

In fact, that fluidity plays a pretty big part in the way different skills can be utilized to combine special moves and custom combo modifications via the different style variations. That was actually one of my biggest gripes with Mortal Kombat 9, insofar that you couldn't really string together custom combos quite as fluently as you should have been able to.

Another feature highlighted in the video above is that you can hop off environmental structures and use the objects seamlessly with other attacks. It's pretty neat because instead of stopping the flow of the action to perform the environmental attacks it just happens kind of naturally, which is the best way to implement these kind of things.

In addition to this, I was actually most impressed with Kano's grapple and throw attacks; they were briefly showcased before in a video that covered his three variations, but we were able to see them in a slightly more organic and natural fashion with the video above.

Kano could easily be one of the more unique characters on the roster given how diverse his move-set becomes with each variation. I could also see him becoming rather popular in the FGC scene given that unlike some of the other characters on display you see a distinct variation in his play-style, going from long-range initiator to a grapple character, to a sort of unorthodox counter-attack strategist.

The game is set for release next year for home consoles and PC. You can learn more by visiting the official website.