As promised, NetherRealm Studios kicked off their Jason pre-release festivities with a ton of new Mortal Kombat X footage. They showed off all three of Jason’s variations, detailed his shared and unique move sets, and even revealed one of his two Fatalities. For all intents and purposes, the Jason gameplay was enough to help Mortal Kombat X players decide whether Jason is worth putting money down on either the Kombat Pack (a.k.a. the MKX Season Pass) or the Horror Pack.

The footage itself was fairly comprehensive, detailing all three of Jason’s fighting variations: Relentless, Slasher, and Unstoppable. While each variation name seems pretty cut and dry as far as their Mortal Kombat X move sets, the NetherRealm devs helped clear up and confusion.

  • Slasher, as the name implies, is the Jason variation focused on using his signature machete. He can use it as a projectile, to jumpstart combos, and even as part of throws and command-grabs.
  • Relentless is focused on teleports and command-grabs, which make Jason a little more agile than the other two variations. Jason’s teleport is actually a unique mechanics, as the characters disappears into mist on one side of the screen and out from the other.
  • Unstoppable is arguably the real gem of the bunch for two reasons. First, this variation has a ‘Pursuit’ ability that essentially frazzles the opponent’s nerves. This is represented by a button swap, meaning certain commands are actually mapped to completely different buttons. He also has two different abilities tied to the chain around his neck, one that slowly regenerates health and one that makes him deal more damage.

The other cool thing about Unstoppable is that Jason can’t be killed…the first time around. Once the player downs Jason Voorhees, the game will take whatever portion of his meter remains and put that amount back into his health (up to about 20%). In essence, it makes Jason come back from the dead, much like he does in the Friday the 13th films.

As if that wasn’t intriguing enough, all Jason variations also include a ‘Juggernaut’ type ability where the character has increased damage resistance. However, the ability comes with two caveats: Jason can’t jump and once the buff runs out he falls asleep. That means players can turn into a charging menace, but no matter what they will be open to attack by the end.

The Jason gameplay footage concluded in the best way possible, with a brutally violent Fatality. NetherRealm had teased this particular Fatality during their Jason gameplay trailer, but we finally got to see it in full. Essentially, Jason delivers three diagonal machete strikes to his opponent before separating their top 1/4 from the bottom 3/4.

All told, the Jason footage looked exactly like players would hope. The “personality” of the character was well preserved in everything from the intro to the Fatality. And that resurrect ability is sure to drive some Mortal Kombat X fans crazy, but may be perfect for beginners.

Mortal Kombat X’s Horror Pack, which includes Jason, releases May 5th for Kombat Pack owners and May 12th for everyone else.