‘Mortal Kombat X’ Jason Voorhees Variations Revealed, New Predator Teaser

NetherRealm Studios has only just revealed the first gameplay footage of masked murderer, Jason Voorhees wielding his iconic machete, and now it's gone one further. The developer has released official descriptions and videos of Jason’s play style, as well as his three fighting variations; “Relentless,” “Slasher” and “Unstoppable.” The studio has also released the first in-game footage of fellow horror icon, the Predator.

The first footage of the Predator comes via the IGN YouTube channel, who captured the brief, five second video shown during the latest Kombat Kast livestream. It’s only the briefest of teases, but it shows the Predator activating and deactivating his arm-mounted claw weapons, while his signature clicking is heard in the background.

During the rest of the Kombat Kast, which is hosted on the official “Mortal Kombat” Community YouTube channel, the team at NetherRealm, joined by series co-creator Ed Boon, introduced Jason Voorhees. As noted by GameRant, his “Relentless” variation offers Jason a high degree of mobility by focusing on teleports and command-grabs. “Slasher” lets gamers make ample use of Jason’s machete, using it as a throwable projectile to start combos and command-grabs.

Jason’s most unique, and likely divisive variation is “Unstoppable,” which allows him to utilise a pursuit ability that startles opponents, manifested by swapping out certain control functions on the opponents gamepad. In addition to this, Jason also has two abilities powered by the chain wrapped around his neck. The first allows him to slowly regenerate health, while the second lets him deal additional damage.

In Unstoppable mode, Jason’s also harder to kill. Dropping him the first time will simply deduct the remaining portion of his metre and apply that to his health, up to a max of 20 percent. To top it all off, in all three mode, Jason can make use of a “Juggernaut” ability that provides him with increased damage resistance. However, he is unable to jump while this ability is active, and falls asleep, leaving himself entirely open to attack once the buff exhausts itself. If NetherRealm gets the balance right, it sounds like Jason could be an interesting option for tactically astute players.

As reported by IGN, Ed Boon also spoke on the subject of improving multiplayer connectivity issues experienced by “Mortal Kombat X” players. Boon promised that the team is aware of the issues and is working hard to rectify them, noting that they aren’t satisfied with the game’s current performance either.

“We definitely want to hear it, there's no way we could consider ourselves content with the online experience. We don’t want you to have anything less than your optimal match,” he said.

Boon went on to add that the reason the team added easy fatalities to the game was because focus groups indicated that they were the number one request. He says that gamers loved fatalities, but some are simply never able to experience them because of the time pressure involved in getting the complex button presses right.