As Mortal Kombat escalated during its early years, the series introduced more ways to finish fights. Fatalities were just the beginning. Friendships, animalities, and babalities become part of the equation. Brutalities were in the console ports of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, but disappeared from the franchise soon after. They’re back and very bloody in Mortal Kombat X.
Given my penchant for horror films, my tolerance for fake gore is pretty high. Even still, I’ve found myself looking away from some of the violent finishers being introduced in the next Mortal Kombat. I’m not saying they’re a step too far. If anything, I’m applauding the creativity.
In their original form, you pulled off a brutality by executing an extremely difficult combo when it was time to “finish him”. When I say you had to string together a bunch of hits, I’m not joking.
Here’s an example of Reptile’s finishers from Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, courtesy of a FAQ:
Tongue Food: B,F,D,BL (2/3 screen)
Acid Loogie: F,F,U,U,HK (1/4 screen)Friendship (reptile-in-a-box): D,F,F,B,HK
Brutality: HP,BL,HK,HK,BL,HP,LP,LK,LK,BL,LP
Babality: F,F,B,D,LK
Pit: BL,RN,BL,BL
Brutalities only stuck around through Mortal Kombat Trilogy and did not appear in Mortal Kombat 4. A new system was conceived for 2011’s Mortal Kombat, but it was never finished.
RT @danRX4 @noobde How about Brutalities?? Noobde: Our designers had a pretty cool Brutality system working, but there was no time 2 finish.
— Ed Boon (@noobde) May 19, 2011
On a livestream today, NetherRealm confirmed brutalities were part of Mortal Kombat X. Previously, brutalities resulted in the other fighter blowing up and chunks of bone appearing. No more. Brutalities in Mortal Kombat X live up to their name and have unique finishers:
Apparently, the game will have more than 100 of these.
Comments
7 responses to “Mortal Kombat X’s Brutalities Are Gruesome”
Those gifs might be the fastest and hardest to keep up with I have ever seen
I am so excited for this game!
No Youtube links?
Love how Kotaku US will make a bunch of pointless gifs out of a video, but won’t link the video itself. Try here, and there’s quite a few more here.
You have gifs. I fear of a day when there are no more videos on the internet, just gifs.
Hmm, they’ve completely changed brutalities. Now it seems they are just basically a fatality you can stick on the end of a combo, or just a ove you can do once the opponent reaches a certain percentage of health left. They are no longer your ultra combos from UMK3 and MK Trilogy.
I’m kind of okay with that, to be honest. The old Brutalities were ridiculously difficult to pull off and were essentially regular moves being repeated rapidly until the character exploded, and every single character’s Brutality was basically the same. They weren’t really bad, but I do like the idea of Brutalities now being more brutal versions of special moves you end the match with, kind of like mini Fatalities. Plus I feel like they’ve moved past punching someone at super speed until they explode into five torsos, seven legs, two heads, and a whole lot of ribcages.