FINISH HIM.

Few phrases are so etched in the minds of gamers as these two words. With the release of Mortal Kombat X, the series' famous Fatalities are brought to live in more gruesome detail than ever before, dishing out a spectacular spectacle for those skilled enough to win a match and input the necessary button combination. For anyone who wants to see some gore, but lacks the skill to pull off a Fatality, Warner Bros Interactive has decided to cheapen MK's famous phrase by offering any and all noobs an easy way out: purchasable, simplified Fatalities.

mortal-kombat-x
NetherRealm Studios
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With nary a touch of a button, anyone can be ripping out spines, crushing hearts, and taking selfies with corpses thanks to MKX's purchasable Fatality Tokens. For one dollar you get five easy-Fatalities, and for five dollars you get thirty. These auto-Fatalities are consumable, meaning that once you've used them, you'll have to buy them again and again (just do yourself a favor and YouTube the Fatalities if you want to see them that bad).

While giving new players access to Fatalities is not a bad idea, since they'll get some spectacle to avoid MKX's rather easy Fatality commands, but what we have here is a greedy, free-to-play-esque model being applied to a full-price game. It makes sense for publishers to try to get as much money as possible when making a game, but they should do so by offering loyal players fun new content like costumes or characters (which NetherRealm did with the DLC characters and costumes), but not by nickel-and-diming them with consumable junk like this. If these purchasable auto-fatalities are successful, one can only fear what similar tactics other games might try.

"Summon Ramuh for only 40 Summon Crystals (3.99 a pack!) in Final Fantasy XV!"

"Fire a Hadouken at any time for only 99 cents a fireball in Street Fighter V!"

Might we remind you that Mortal Kombat X's publisher is Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the same company that publicly refused to fix the game-breaking errors and glitches of Batman: Arkham Origins (developed by subsidiary studio WB Games) and said that its focus wasn't to fix the game, but to create more paid DLC content for it.

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