Streamed it for some friends expecting to laugh at it for being terrible, and that's exactly what happened. The story mode was just really bad and dumb.

The game feels like crap to play. I will admit i'm not really an MK player but i don't remember MKX or the old games feeling this... wrong.

Rage has to be one of the worst mechanics i've ever seen in a fighting game.
I don't know how it was in the competitive scene (if this game even had one in the first place) but for i could tell by playing the story mode it basically forces the other player to run away until the rage turns off because of the super armor and unblockable attacks, the only counterplay seems to be activating your own rage or running away. It's annoying and it sucks, it also builds up really easily even if we use combo breakers.

Why it failed. No gore, slim roster, 3D instead of 2D, horrendous finishers.

What worked. The premise, and story mode.

Although impossible, an M rating would drastically improve this and allow for more creativity in the movesets and fatalities. A roster the size of Injustice, 16/16. More costume options and the 2D fighting scale would have made this a very special MK entry.

I mean, everyone's said everything they can about this game already, but I feel like they actually hate it for the wrong reasons. Yeah, the fatalities are beyond dogshit, but people really don't bring up anything else but that. The gameplay is extremely clunky, possibly because I was playing on Xbox 360 but the mechanics themselves are also not great, the quicktime events are...fine I guess but rage is dumb, and Dark Khan is an extremely broken annoying and frustrating boss. A lot of the game feels really 50/50 with how the match goes, the PS2 Mortal Kombat games had their share of dumb stuff but nothing half as egregious. There's also "pro moves", which basically work as enhanced or elongated moves, and they feel extremely awkward to pull off, which makes me grateful they just use the right trigger and meter bars in later games.
The story mode is...fine, I guess? There's not much to write home about, not really any depth to it. It works for the concept I guess.
The other real gripe I have with this game is that it was obviously rushed. The game is extremely barebones, with a lot of big names missing from the roster and no unlockables at all. There's no Krypt, which is SORELY missing here, because from everything you see in the menu, what you see is what you get.
Honestly though, even with all that... Honest to God, it has a better story mode than most of the NetherRealm games lmao.
And it has my favorite design for Sonya Blade, so, I'll give an extra half a star for that.