Netherrealm: Mortal Kombat's gameplay "keeps people coming back"

Contrary to widespread opinion, Netherrealm's Erin Piepergerdes has said gameplay, not gore, is Mortal Kombat's main draw.

"At the heart, the gameplay is the most important thing," the associate producer told Siliconera. "It’s what keeps people coming back."

Piepergerdes said ambitions for the title run to matching "tournament" grade fighters.

"We also balanced the gameplay considerably more than some of the early games to keep it really competitive and make it almost a tournament level fighter," she said.

"Some" Street Fighter games and Tekken were named as examples.

Netherrealms is set to roll out rebalancing patches should exploits be found once the game releases.

"We also have the tech in place, where once the game is released to the general public, if something comes up where we think a move is too overpowered or if heaven forbids someone finds an exploit in the game we can actually tweak those moves through a patch to balance things back out again," Piepergerdes explained.

Mortal Kombat releases for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in mid April - except in Australia. A demo is available now from the PlayStation Network.