Announced just days prior to E3 this year, Mortal Kombat X is looking to make big advancements in everyone's favorite bloodiest, most bone crunching fighting game series.  Ed Boon has taken the success of the 9th game in the series, simply titled Mortal Kombat, and added on top of that base several key new features, the most important of which may be the variation system, which will allow old and new players to find a way to play every character based on their favorite fighting style.  For example, if you like Scorpion, but traditionally have hated his moveset, now you can choose from one of three variations to his moveset, one of which includes double katana, one that's more projectile based, and the one many of us all know and love.  There are also multiple fatalities for every character regardless of their variations, and also an -ality that has yet to be announced.

Every character in a roster that will be approximately 25 fighters strong will have 3 variations, leading to almost 75 different variations of characters.  While the final roster has barely been confirmed, we do know that Sub Zero & Scorpion are in, along with Casey Cage, the daughter of Sonya & Johnny Cage, D'Vorra, an insect creature of some sort, Ferra/Torr, a giant behemoth with a very violent little person riding on his back that can be used as a projectile, and Kotal Kahn, a sort of Aztec or Incan god, which I am assuming is a descendent of longtime Mortal Kombat boss, Shao Kahn.  Guest characters have a decent chance of showing up in the game, as the Freddy Kruger DLC from MK9 was one of the highest selling characters ever in that game, so clearly it's lucrative for them to continue that trend in this iteration as well.

The game takes place right at the end of MK9, but skips around from that point, forward 5, 10, up to 25 years and back, to show you where the characters have gone and what's happening with them in the future.  No further details on the story mode are available at this time, but it sounds like it will be an intriguing one.

One thing to note, confirmed for the PS4, at least, is that the game will run on full 1080p at 60 frames per second, so it will be a true HD experience on that console at the very least, it is unknown at this time if the same can be said on the Xbox One.  The 60 frames per second on the PS4 is key, because the combat has been sped up in this year's game, so you're going to need every frame you can get to react to what's happening in a battle.

As seen in the very first trailer, and confirmed in multiple showings of the game at E3, the environments are very much a part of the action as well, players can rip branches off trees or take dead bodies out of the water at the docks and use them to batter their enemies as well as use parts of the environment to help jump around or flip over an opponent to get behind them and continue the onslaught.

All in all, Mortal Kombat X looks like it's going to be another bone-crushing hit when it comes out in 2015.