Mortal Kombat X was definitely in my top 3 most anticipated games list of 2015. From the moment I started playing it I knew it had not only met my expectations but exceeded them. I have been a Mortal Kombat fan since the first one hit the arcades back in the day and have been playing ever since but this was to be my first MK platinum trophy.

It all starts in practice mode. At this point I wasnt sure who I wanted to main but from the pre-release videos Ferrah-Tor seemed pretty cool so I decided to try them out.

That wasn’t too bad.

After running through the tutorial I feel like I am ready to hop online. As I take a good look at the character select screen I see some familiar faces among the new ones. The most noticeable to me at that point was Kenshi who had been my main in the previous Mortal Kombat since he was made available as a downloadable character.

It was simple enough to pick him up and use him based off the experience from the previous game but the big question now was – which variation?

Possessed and Kenjutsu both looked even cooler than Balanced but the latter seemed to have the best of both worlds besides the cool demonic sidekick that comes with the possessed variation. I decided that Balanced would be my main choice and began to practice a bit more seriously. Learning combos and practicing different strategies.

This Fatality quickly became one of my favorites of all time.

At this point I began to play nothing but ranked matches.

It wasnt until much later that I started to appreciate Kenshi’s 2nd Fatality as much if not more than his 1st. Here is the view from the sky cam.

Having some fun with the sword.

This next trophy is a pretty easy one as it is given for viewing your kombat kard. One thing that I always find interesting about these sorts of trophies is that there always seems to be a good deal of people online who don’t realize or care that they can change their card and end up playing with the default card the entire time. Sometimes it is just a cosmetic issue but in this game in particular, the card as well as your icon and background offer very helpful bonuses that are unlocked for completing certain tasks throughout the game.

You can see some of the bonuses up there in green. Those are all pretty low because you unlock more valuable ones later on in the game. For example, you may unlock an icon that gives you 200 extra XP per fight for winning 100 rounds with Scorpion or something along those lines. 200 extra XP per fight may not seem like a lot but if you combine that with bonuses in the other 2 slots it can be very significant over time and very helpful when it comes to unlocking some of the more time consuming trophies in the game like reaching personal level 65 or reaching level 50 in all 5 factions.

Here a person rage quit while fighting me online. You can see the disgust in Blanche’s face.

Nobody likes to see their oponent quit in the middle of a round but in MKX at least we are rewarded by a good old fashioned head explosion and a W.

Blanche was so upset about what she saw that I had to get her involved to calm her down. This really wore her out

I am not sure why but Erron Black looks abnormally sweaty here.

The “trolling” trophy was one I was pretty excited about. Everybody likes to do a little trolling here and there and what better time to do it than during a fatality sequence.

I cant figure out how it took me this long to get the next trophy, but I finally pulled off my first Brutality.

The next one was from the very 1st invasion boss fight with Mileena. I could not believe how hard she was but I quickly became obsessed with fighting her and figured practicing against her would help give me an edge when it came to competing online.

I figured I might as well keep fighting her until I get the 1,000 hit trophy as well. I am not going to lie, that took a while, I remember reading online at the time that some people were doing it by spamming a move with Raiden but I did that one the old fashioned way.

Despite me eventually getting my 1,000th hit on her –

This is probably the photo that does the best job summing up my experience with Invasion Boss Mileena.

As bad as that was, it felt equally as good to unlock the trophies and be able to move on. Little did I know that I would not be able to escape Mileena so easily.

But I can let bygones be bygones and still give up them props. King Of The Hill then became my favorite mode.

I still had to play regular ranked matches to earn the next trophy “Dropping Fools”. This one is for winning 10 consecutive ranked matches and is considered by many online to be the game’s hardest trophy.

Next up was Survivor King of the Hill which is in my opinion the best way to play the game.

It is a good thing that the mode is so enjoyable because in order to get the platinum trophy you will have to spend a good amount of time playing it. One of the requirements is obtaining 1,000 respect points which can be a bit tricky because when you start to beat people, the majority will be angry and give you a very low score in return. I found those interactions interesting but would occasionally be pleasantly surprised that some good sports were still willing to give out high scores even after taking a loss. Another cool bonus of Survivor mode is that you unlock the Hot Shot Johnny Cage costume which he wears during the game’s story mode for reaching 10 consecutive wins.

My 100th fatality.

I just keep coming back for more.

This next one was a bit out of the way since I don’t use Kotal Kahn but it was interesting and the picture came out pretty cool.

“Juggernaut” is a good trophy because it focuses on a really fun game mode that I may have otherwise overlooked. Tower Battles are a way for you to compete with people based on scores instead of fighting head to head and I thought it offered a nice change of pace.

I was shocked when I got this next trophy for playing my 200th online match. (sorry)

I could not figure out which x-ray move I hadn’t done to unlock the trophy for doing them all and it was beginning to drive me nuts when this finally happened.

Next it was time to go for all of the fatalities.

This 50 brutality trophy does a good job of showing off Kenshi’s sweet new outfit.

This just looks awesome.

This too

Raiden has one of the coolest fatalities in the game: First –

And then

Although I mostly used Kenshi, some of the trophies require you to do things with all of the characters. It is a nice way to be able to try something a bit different than what you’re used to and explore new characters.

Back to King of the Hill.

“Keep It A Secret” was at 0.0% for a while after launch. Nobody had any idea what it was and I found that to be very intriguing. These days with the internet it is almost impossible to keep things like this a secret and the excitement of figuring it out on my own reminded me of when I was a kid. Eventually the secret got out.

Ermac is pretty cool I thought as I was unlocking this. I should probably use him them more often.

I love the fact that the PS4 automatically takes a screenshot when you unlock a trophy. Sometimes it just works so well.

I had to add this one just because it is hilarious. I am canned_panda. I started the conversation by saying hello and trying to be friendly. I went on to win several games and as you can see, some of my opponents began to grow hostile, even inferring that I was “cheating” to win lol.

I swore that once I got 1,000 respect points that I would start playing a different mode.

But I ended up going on until I got over 3,000 just because I liked it so much. I really love the dynamics of having 7 other players in the room, even if most of them are usually salty.

I thought this would be my last tower because I wasn’t thinking about all the extras I would need to do in order to unlock 50 kombat modifiers.

All this time on the game so far and I still hadn’t even tried the story mode. I remember the story mode being pretty cool in the previous Mortal Kombat so I was looking forward to it. I decided to check it out.

Next thing I know –

That certainly didnt take very long. Back to chasing modifiers. I must say that the falling Baraka heads are one of my favorites

After getting the two I missed in the Krypt and winning one in the gambling machine I went back to the hourly towers to get number 50. At long last –

Next up was to do a 10 hit kombo with every character. I had been putting this one off because it seemed like it would be a real pain in the ass but luckily it wasn’t too bad. I got nervous for a second that I may have missed someone but then I realized Quan Chi was all I needed.

From here I only needed one more trophy for the platinum. “Elder God” – Reach level 65. I was concerned that it would take unreasonably long but with the right background, icon, and border equipped I was getting an extra 1,690 XP per fight and the bar was moving pretty quickly. I knew I only needed a few more rounds at this point and then there it was.

My most rare platinum yet. At the time of unlocking it only 0.1% of the game’s players had done the same.

I don’t think MKX has a counter to keep track of overall time played but if I had to guess I would say it must have taken me at least 100 hours of playing which began at midnight the moment the game was released and only stopped during my playthrough of Dark Souls 2.

All in all it was a great experience going for all of the trophies and I am glad I was able to get it done. Now I will be looking forward to Injustice 2 to do it all over again.