How to Become a Better Mortal Kombat Player

Mortal Kombat X has been out long enough to know if you’re going to stick with it, or if you’ve already dropped it in favor of The Witcher 3 or whatever new game you’re playing. Those of you who are still playing (and there are quite a few of you) may already know the ins and outs of MKX and are beating up novice players online or going to tournaments and taking names there. However, there are a lot of players who are just hopping online and mashing buttons, or they’re just stuck at a novice level of skill.

Fear not, we’re here to tell you how to get better at Mortal Kombat X so you can beat the online legion of Scorpions. In fact, if you follow a few quick tips you may even want to venture out to a tournament and try your hand against some of the more skilled players around. No matter what your intentions, we’re here to improve your MK skills, so listen up!

Training Mode

The first step to becoming a better Mortal Kombat player is to head to the training mode and grind out your combos. You want to make sure you have combos for every potential situation. This includes combos from a low and/or overhead combo starter, combos off an air-to-air attack like a jump punch, and combos in the corner where you can usually maximize your damage.

Practice these combos until you can do them blindfolded. If you’re really serious about getting good at MKX, you’ll practice each combo until you can perform it successfully 10 times in a row. This is important because when you get in the heat of battle, it’s always harder to pull off freshly learned combos. In the training mode there’s no pressure to hit your combos, but against another person that’s an entirely different story. The more muscle memory you have, the easier it is to hit these combos under the pressure of a real match.

Training mode is also important to practice against setups. When you get beat by another player using a tactic that you might deem “cheap” head into the training mode. Select that player’s character as the second player, then set the AI to record your actions and perform the same tactics that other player was doing. Take control of your character again and figure out a way to get around that tactic. You may need to get better at blocking a mix-up, perhaps use an armored special move to avoid the situation, or simply stay away from the opposing character. Whatever the answer may be, you can find it in training mode.

Play, Play, Play

The best way to become good at Mortal Kombat X is to play the game as much as possible. The more your play the more familiar you are with your own character and any characters you play against. The net code in MKX is good enough that you can get decent practice from it. There’s no substitute for offline practice with no latency at all, but you can still get good practice in online, especially if you can find better players to compete against.

Chances are if you live in a moderate-size city, there are other people who are playing Mortal Kombat. You can go to sites like Test Your Might to find regional forum threads where players can go to find local gatherings. You may be surprised at just how many people play MKX out there. Whether you’re in Miami, FL or Sacramento, CA you should be able to find other players within an hour or so of your residence. Even some remote cities may have more of a scene than you expect. If you don’t see a thread covering your city or state, make one and see if anyone posts in it.

Lose, Lose, Lose

The average player won’t get much better if they continue to play people who they beat constantly. You learn more from losing than you do from winning, so it’s important to find players who are better than you. If you can use the same tactic over and over again to beat an opponent, what would happen if you played yourself? How would you get around that tactic? If you don’t play someone who can get around how you play, you’ll never improve.

Many players get upset when they lose matches, especially if they feel they lost to a “cheap” tactic. In all honesty, there are very few tactics in fighting games that are truly considered “cheap” for competitive players. If you’re getting beat by a certain tactic, you just need to figure out how to get around it. Don’t consider the opponent cheap, they’ll just doing what works. If you stop them from doing that, you’ll either win or at least force them to play differently.

If you’re looking for more Mortal Kombat X tips, check out Prima’s free guide or head directly to our tips on how to play Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Jason or Tanya!