It's still very cartoonish. Some of the new finishing moves are a bit gruesome, particularly the ones where her flesh melts off (i.e. Smoke's Smoked Out fatality, the Deadpool), and the ones where she gets killed slowly: Kung Lao's Razors Edge, Noob's Make A Wish, and Kintaro's Quadrip all come to mind (three of the best fatalities, IMO!). But you've also got some really funny finishing moves, like Cage's ...And The Winner Is or Quan Chi's Beatdown, as well as a whole buttload of remixed klassics, like the Spine Rip, the Toasty, the Dragon Morph, the Klassic Kombo fatalities of Cage and Jax respectively, and *maybe* Cyber-SubZero's Kold Fusion (that's sort of a cross between Cyrax's old suicide fatality and MKII Sub-Zero's Ice Grenade).

I think the only real difference is now the graphics are better and also you're older, so you're less far bloodthirsty then you were back when you were a tween.

I do wish they'd included Friendships, however. Just for laughs and old times' sake! Maybe also an Animality or two, as a easter egg.

Of course, they DID bring back Babalities. A lot of the Babalities are dumb, but it's all worth it for this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAXaCRU6JgM

(in case you haven't played it-

3:57 is really neat if you're a film buff! (it's a famous kill from the original NoES)
6:00 is that funny Johnny Cage fatality I mentioned.
12:02 is the one inflation fetishists are always going on about.
14:25 is another funny one (it's a reference to The Joker, from Batman)
18:34 is the classic spinerip.

Not sure which finishing move I'd say is most the size of an average human mother, as there are too many good ones to pick from.)

If only we could see Kitana's gore-soaked spinal cord take flight...

aww.. the Johnny Cage one's cute too. I have no problem with violence, in games, movies or otherwise but to me it's the difference between playing Quake and Soldier of Fortune. In either case you get off on the gibs but in a different way.

I think it's worth remembering that when the original MKs came out, they literally looked pretty damn photorealistic. Now they look real stiff and cheeseball, but back in the day, a lot of that stuff gave elementary school me some nightmares.

Then I popped 50 cents in and tried to remember how to do the fatalities anyways.

One or both of them could be brainwashed. In the original timeline, Jade was tasked with capturing Kitana during the Third Tournament, but Kitana convinced her childhood friend to join the rebellion against Shao Khan. It is possible that these matches took place in between Kitana's defection and Jade's eventual face-turn.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Mortal Kombat follows a multiple-universe set-up; that is, there is one (now two) "primary" timelines along which all subsequent games in the series converge, but within games, each individual playthrough is considered to be it's own self-contained, emergent storyline. This is how, for example, Lui Kang and Jade can murder Kitana, even if, from a main timeline story perspective, such occurrences would probably never happen.

That's fantastic.

(that and this being the Internet)

The youtube comments confirm your assumption.

It's a guro/ryona fetish vid.

Yep.