Month: April 2015

On Saturday, NetherRealm Studios teamed up with the folks at ESL and Xbox to present the first official Mortal Kombat X tournament. The event featured a selection of eight high-level competitors, who faced off in a single-elimination bracket comprised of first-to-five sets.

If you didn’t catch the tournament live, or if you just want to have a nice place to steal some tech once the game releases tomorrow, ESL has uploaded the tournament in its entirety for your viewing pleasure.

The tournament had a wide array of character representation, including Kung Lao, Quan Chi, Raiden, Scorpion, Jax, and Erron Black. The only cast member fielded by two players was Kung Jin, who saw use from Ryan “FA|Prodigal Son” Hart and Christian “KiT|Forever King” Quiles.

Also interesting is that, once selected, all contenders stuck to their guns as far as their character’s fighting variation was concerned, with the exception of Ryan “Ketchup” Neal and Malik “MIT” Terry, who saw success with all three of Scorpion’s different fighting styles. One particularly noteworthy match saw the latter struggle against Razer’s Carl “Perfect Legend” White as Ninjutsu Scorpion, initially going down two matches against the Evo champ. Once at this disadvantage, MIT switched to Inferno and ended up taking the set, speaking volumes about the potential for matchups to change entirely based on a variation switch and promising for a healthy metagame.

Below, we’ve embedded all three finals matches, but you can follow this link to watch the full tournament playlist. For results and a full match log, be sure to head over to our coverage of the event.

Source: ESL

Concept videos for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are always exciting, especially when such videos are devoid of characters like Doctor Doom and Vergil. In the video below, pat728 has given us just that as Nova and Arthur team up to throw down.

One of the main strengths of this pairing is the fact that Arthur’s dagger assist leaves opponents in so much blockstun that Nova has free reign to run his high/low mixups–he’s even able to go so far as to attempt two overheads on the same assist if he so pleases. This duo also offers up plenty of situations where Nova will be left with frame advantage in the case of a block, or with the ability to follow a hit with a combo of his choosing.

Additionally, this team has access to some particularly nasty incoming mixups as well as ways to hit-confirm into easy crumples in the event that you want to tag in a third member of the party, who could very well be a top-tier contender, to finish the plate.

Of course, a video like this wouldn’t be complete without some exciting combos, which pat728 has included in bulk, so be sure to check it out below and let us know what you think.

Source: pat728