So I spent the last few days tapping away on the latest mobile release from NetherRealm Studios – the free to play mobile version of the highly-anticipated Mortal Kombat X. So how did I find it? Do I recommend it? Read on to find out.

Here’s one thing I really found weird when NetherRealm Studios was promoting Mortal Kombat X for mobile – they called it the first Mortal Kombat game you can play on mobile.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I direct you to the long-lost days of 2011 when EA decided to release a remastered version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the iPhone and iPad:

Yeah, I’m pretty sure everybody just wants to forget that abomination and move on. I can’t. I owned both iPhone and iPad versions and I can’t wrap my head around how terrible it was.

Which brings us to this year’s release of Mortal Kombat X. The franchise has never been this good since the original MK games. The MK reboot was fantastic, and of course MKX has been getting almost unanimous praise all over. I’ve been a Mortal Kombat fanboy since the beginning, but I’d have to settle for the mobile version for now until I get my hands on a PS4.

Now I can’t say I haven’t been disappointed by NetherRealm’s mobile offerings. The mobile version of the Batman Arkham games is boring at best, and it took a while before Injustice: Gods Among Us Mobile got its hooks on me. What I’m saying is that we could’ve had a rich gaming experience with great Unreal-powered graphics on our phones and tablets, but we ended up having to settle for tapping and swiping, with all the trappings of a rich free to play experience.

Let’s not pretend Mortal Kombat X for mobile is going to be any different.

Connection Error

With that expectation set, I downloaded Mortal Kombat X from Google Play, and since us Android plebs waited a while before MKX was finally available, I was excited to play it. Finally, I can get my grubby hands on all the Fatalities and other bloody acts this great mobile game can offer!

Seriously, I’m excited. So I connected to the WB servers, and-

The influx of new Android gamers must be hugging the servers to death. No biggie. I’ll just go offline, pick a battle, and-

Somehow the game still tries to ping the servers and give me an ally even though I’m on offline mode. Even going on airplane mode doesn’t tell the game that I already turned off all the fucking antennas and the phone won’t have any way to communicate with the servers.

The Classic Fighters You’ve Never Heard Of

Anyway, after a day and a half of frustration, I managed to get the game working. Of course I wanted to pick my all-time favorite character, Scorpion, so I can finally do all the cool moves that I have been itching to do for a while now-

Oh, I have to keep on grinding so I can earn enough of the three currencies (kurrencies?) so I’d be able to purchase the characters I want. Ok, fair enough. I guess I’m going to have to fight as the classic Mortal Kombat character Trooper for a while. And since I won’t be able to use Fatalities with bronze and silver characters, I’m just going to have to save up enough one of the three virtual currencies for me to get that Inferno Scorpion. And I’m still not yet there. I’m halfway through the 350 Souls needed for the Inferno Scorpion, but the game’s difficulty took a massive jump when I got to the Boss Reptile.

Anyway, I was messing around with my Sony Xperia Z3’s screen recording feature and here’s a video of me beating up a few lower-tier characters. You can see the basic gameplay there. Sorry for the terrible audio .

So, unlike Injustice: Gods Among Us, you can’t pick to just tap for a regular hit or swipe to unleash a stronger attack. You have to wait until the system tells you when you can swipe. I don’t like how it simplified even further the already gimped system of Injustice.

Honestly, though, I’ve kept my expectations low and I’m enjoying MKX mobile so far. I somehow just can’t connect to the servers when I’m on LTE, but I think that’s a mobile internet provider problem more than anything else. However, the game is laggy at times. The load times can be hell as well. There’s an annoying bug where the hit areas for the cards just aren’t sensitive enough and I end up tapping the shit out of one card just so I can be able to upgrade an ability or two.

But to balance those list of negatives, I can say that NetherRealm makes some of the most fair free-to-play systems. Not once have I ever felt the need to shell out cash so I can get any of the gold-tier characters right away. Sure, the game’s difficulty took a steep jump up after a few levels, but nothing I can’t manage.

I’d wait for a few updates for some bugs to be smoothed out, but for a free title, I’m pretty ok with Mortal Kombat X mobile. It’s not a game that I would recommend, but it wouldn’t hurt if you have 1.5 GB to spare in your phone. The graphics are way better than that terrible UMK3 port from before, but at least that one had full controls. I just really hope MKX plays well with LTE eventually so it can actually live up to the mobile part.

Download Mortal Kombat X mobile here if you’re on Android and here if you’re on iPhone or iPad.

So there’s my Mortal Kombat X mobile review. Do you agree? Leave your thoughts in the comments!