Don’t fret, the sickening wet sounds punctuated by the occasional blood-curdling scream that you might be hearing right now aren’t coming from inside your head. You’re not experiencing a psychotic episode, that’s just the sound Mortal Kombat X makes when it’s dominating all the games by ripping their spines out through their recently vacated eye sockets.
Thanks to sales figures tallied by The NPD Group, we now know what the ten best-selling video games are for the first six months of 2015, and some of them may surprise you.
1. Mortal Kombat X
2. Grand Theft Auto V
3. Battlefield Hardline
4. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
5. Minecraft
6. Batman: Arkham Knight
7. Dying Light
8. NBA 2K15
9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
10. Super Smash Bros.
I did not expect to see the brand new Batman: Arkham Knight on there, especially with the recent delay of the very broken PC version. As impressive as that is — particularly for WB Games, which published MKX, Arkham Knight and Dying Light — it’s overshadowed by the success of the latest installment in the now 25 year-old Mortal Kombat franchise.
Mortal Kombat X is a great game, so that victory is well-deserved. It’s a promising sign for insatiable gorehounds, too, who should be delighted to see a game that celebrates the human, and human-ish, body in such creative ways dominate so completely.
Usually, that place is reserved for White Guys With Guns, Sports 2015, or Grand Theft Auto.
I’m glad Dying Light took a break from finding satisfying ways to free clumsy ghouls of their stupid rotten limbs to grab that #7 spot. That’s fantastic news for a brand new, albeit a very familiar, IP. I suspect we’ll be hearing about a sequel in the not-too-distant future.
