Mortal Kombat 11 (2019)

I guess sometimes you can't go home anymore.

I played a ton of MK 1,2,3 and some of 4, mainly in the arcade. I decided why not see what the latest MK games have to offer. Graphically it is beautiful and disgusting all at once. The brutality is over the top fun. However, the game just isn't fun to play and feels stiff and horrible next to a Street Fighter. I realize it is a different beast but it just feels completely jagged and uncooperative in the controls. I also tried using a fight stick and it didn't correctly recognize the inputs, which seems extremely lame. Too bad.

2.5D FIGHTER - All fighters must unite to stop Kronika from permanently altering time and history.

PROS:

++ Enjoyable campaign. Story mode was a fun adventure, and there were lots of great moments between characters.

++ Roster. I really liked the overall roster and all the DLC characters were great additions.

++ Phenomenal visuals. Fighters are animated well, and the graphics are amazing. It sets the bar for fighting games.

++ Offline content. Lots of worthwhile side content, as always.

++ Great customization. Lots of ways to customize each character.

++ Tutorials. Solid tutorials that teach fighting game noobs the core mechanics of fighting games.

++ Meters. Defensive/Offensive meters are separate from Fatal Blows and it worked well.

CONS:

-- Slow customization screens. Equipping and viewing items during Kustomization is slow.

-- Mediocre DLC campaign. Not a big fan of the Aftermath story expansion.

-- Boring villain. Really disliked Kronika as the main antagonist. She was really boring and uninteresting. She wasn't menacing like Shao Kahn or dastardly like Shinnok.

MK11 rocks. I'm so glad it does. I'll explain why I'm glad it does in excruciatingly long detail, waxing poetically about my history with this singular franchise.

One of my FIRST ever gaming memories, and my first MK game, was MK3 on Sega Genesis. We played that shit in preschool, y'all. I was flippin' 5 years old watching Sheeva stomp some poor son of a bitch into the ground, or watching Scorpion literally uppercut the head off of a dude. Ain't no daycares letting their kids play MK games now. Now, they probably have kids poking at some screen doing some Paw Patrol and My Little Pony minigames.

It would be an understatement to say that exposure to the glory that is MK3 had an influence on me. I was a fiend for Mortal Kombat when I was kid. My mom made me a Scorpion costume, handcrafted, for Halloween one year, and my dad bought me the Mortal Kombat film on VHS which I watched until I had it memorized. And that movie's soundtrack is probably why I have such a strong preference for industrial music.

Then when my family got a SNES, I played MK3 Ultimate until I was able to beat everyone in the game. For a youngster like me, that was a big deal. MK3 was hard, man! For the longest time, I felt like I was barely able to play successfully against low-level AI enemies, so imagine my feeling of accomplishment the first time I even made it to Motaro; then the first time I beat him; then the sheer adrenaline rush and feeling of utter fear when I made it to Shao Kahn for the first time.

The sequel to the film, MK Annihilation, sucked by all measures but I was still obsessed with that movie. Getting to see Cyrax do some crazy jumps to electro-industrial music was one of the highlights of my moviegoing career at that age. I spent time in school drawing Motaro, and begged my dad to locate the PC version of MK Trilogy and get it working so that I could play as the boss characters.

I missed out on the spin-off games until later in life but I re-entered my love affair with the franchise when Deadly Alliance came out. Guys, that game was a revelation for me. I don't have the clearest memories of it but those I do have are incredibly fond. I really dug the story and the fact that we got to see non-cyber versions of the cybernetic ninjas, and using weapons and different martial arts/fighting styles. And I feel the same way about the subsequent Deception and I can't tell you how many hours I put into Armageddon which was the last PS2 game I spent a lot of time on before I left my PS2 behind for the PS3. Armageddon had and still has one of the best opening cinematics of all time. ALL TIME.

Mortal Kombat was rebooted for PS3 and I played through it but I don't remember it a whole lot other than the novelty of a cybernetic Sub-Zero and a non-cyber Smoke. I'm sure it was good but that's about the extent of my memory with that game.

And then there's Mortal Kombat X and XL. I played these with friends for couch co-op and PVP but that's mostly it. The new characters are decent enough. Kotal Kahn and D'Vorah are badasses, I'm glad they carried over to MK11.

So while I wasn't super thrilled wit MK 9 and X, I'm really digging 11. I haven't mastered it by any means but I find myself wanting to stick with it and progress with characters more (that's another thing: I love that you can 'upgrade' traits and items as you use characters, and build load-outs for them). I'm sure criticism can and has been leveled at how much content in the game are add-ons or paid for, but I didn't jump on this game until it was bundled up in a wildly affordable sale price so I've certainly gotten my money's worth.

Of all the franchises that are not only still alive and kicking but having renaissances with newer generations, I'm glad Mortal Kombat is one of them. It's been interesting to see it maintain a position of relevance and fill a niche some of the other fighting games either don't or can't, and to evolve in ways that appeal to modern gaming trends without being, well, crap. It's managed to retain its soul and character, at least in my eyes.

Long live MK and may there be more to come.

I just threw the game into the easiest difficulty and did an ultra-leisurely playthrough, simply to see the story. I have absolutely zero aspirations to be good at fighting games. I just wanted to watch the "MK11 Movie". All in all, it made for a fun afternoon.

And goddamn, this is a cool game to look at. The cutscenes are truly badass, and the story is better than a fighting game story has any business being.

Now to jump onto YouTube and watch the Aftermath DLC story.

It’s been fascinating to see how Mortal Kombat has evolved over the years, and how NetherRealm has made this series more compelling and exciting in their most recent iterations of this franchise. The reboot of the franchise with 2011’s “Mortal Kombat” was an incredibly smart way of returning to the series’ roots, retell this story in a more concise way, and open up the possibilities for this world, rather than continuing to create an increasingly muddy timeline of events.

“Mortal Kombat X” continued this new take on the story by trying a huge leap forward in time, which also added more depth to these characters and this story. With “Mortal Kombat 11,” I think time will tell if the introduction of time-travel in this world is a good idea. Frankly, I tend to find that having the ability to change things anyway you want in a narrative makes the experience feel like there are no stakes at all, but so far, I think the story in “Mortal Kombat 11” proves that NetherRealm is one of the most successful fighting game makers in terms of telling an actual solid story.

I also found that the “Aftermath” DLC story is a little shaky - and truly feels like the real ending to this story - but at the very least, it does finally present Shang Tsung as a commanding villain for the first time since the original game. Again, I’m not sure if this narrative will work for the best in the long run, but for this installment, Netherrealm has done a decent job with this story.

This might also be one the most intuitive games in this series, a game which allows for a ridiculous amount of customization and refining of gameplay tactics. Training mode is far easier to master than past games, but the game never requires the player to dig deep into combos and customization if they don’t want to (I did not want to).

I recently played Injustice 2, and while I admired just how much the game had to offer, and knew I could easily play the game for 100 hours and still be unlocking new things, I found the amount of time it would take to explore the game fully was daunting. Mortal Kombat 11 pulls back on that somewhat, but still allows for so many things to do, this game seems never-ending.

But still, this might be my biggest problem with Mortal Kombat 11 and NetherRealm’s more recent games. The amount of time it would take to unlock everything the game has is staggering, and despite spending a lot of time with this game, I still feel like I’m missing so much. Yet the rewards that gameplay and The Krypt offer are comprised of either items that can be used in battle, or more interesting prizes. The items are useless, in my opinion, as I only used them when the game told me too. But to unlock so many items in the Krypt or after a bunch of battles, and have them all be these useless tokens was irritating to me.

It isn’t so much that these things are “prizes,” it’s that there are so many costumes/fatalities/moves, etc. to unlock, and the game instead decides to throw in these crappy elements that never make much of a difference in the actual game. Speaking of unlockable items, the Krypt is sort of a mess? I like that they make it more of an exploration, but it’s extremely easy to get lost or frustrated, there’s no real way to know what the player is missing, and the amount of things that need to be done in order to unlock everything is sort of insane.

That all being said, I think this is a decent story that furthers the mythology of Mortal Kombat, with an impressive roster of characters and things to do. Yet like I said in my review of Injustice 2, for a person like myself who wants to unlock all the cool items the game has to offer, but doesn’t want to play a fighting game for 100+ hours, this can be kind of frustrating. I like the fact that Mortal Kombat 11 is a huge game that will keep players invested, but I still wish NetherRealm games could find a way to offer that type of wide-ranging gameplay, and allow the more casual player to see everything that the game has to offer.

Mortal Kombat is the only fighting game series I got into and with number 11 finally having all the DLC released for it, I figured it time to give this entry a try.

The combat is what a fighting game lives and dies on. MK 11 hasn’t changed the basic formula too much, but it doesn’t really need to. The combos and special moves are a good mix of simple enough to be approachable, but complex enough to feel good when you pull off a good string; basically easy to learn, hard to master. And while there is a shared pool of general button inputs the characters pull from, each fighter has their own eccentricities. This means for most of us casual players, you’re only going to fully master one or two characters. Still, finally mastering the more complicated combos made me feel like I was playing the game right, even if I was playing on ‘easy’ mode. While in MKX you had three different fighting styles to pick from, they’ve expanded the system in MK 11. Now you have 3 slots you can fill with certain abilities that add extra special moves or improved combos. There’s just enough selection that you and another player may not have the same exact character.

Speaking of characters, I find the roster a lot better in this entry compared to X. I think there’s more characters overall and a good variety. Most are familiar faces, I think there’s maybe 2 new characters, and the big bad is a newcomer as well. Of the “Kombat Kids” from MKX only Cassie Cage & Jacqui returns and my favorite, Erron Black made it over too. DLC brought back another of my favorites, Nightwolf. The guest characters were a little hit & miss for me. Joker makes sense given Injustice is a thing. And while I play as him a lot, Rambo seems like an odd addition. Sure, the movies are gory, but Rambo has a deeper message than “blood’n’guts”. Robocop sort of rides that line too. Honestly, I do think MKX had better guest fighters, horror movie icons just made sense. Also, I feel awful saying this, but while MK 9 went way too overboard with the sex appeal/exploitation of female characters, I feel like MK 11 went too far the other direction.

Netherrealm did bring over an edited version of the gear system from Injustice 2. Instead of their whole outfit being customizable, each fighter has 3 pieces of gear you can change. These have cosmetic and status effects. The rest of the character’s costume is just a skin you can change without worrying about min/maxing. It’s not a bad system, but most of the loot is locked behind towers and randomness. You just have to hope playing this tower will get you the cool outfit you want. I know it’s a whole “state of modern games” thing, but I just want to be able to know what I need to achieve to unlock certain items, not just leaving it to the fate of the RNG.

The story told in MK 11 is interesting. There’s so much Mortal Kombat lore built up that we can have this political intrigue of Outworld monarchies and family dynamics in ninja clans that kept my interest, but this is also a time travel story. Time travel is a just a whole big mess of a plot device and MK 11 definitely goes with popcorn blockbuster time travel logic over hard sci-fi logic. Sometimes past injuries hurt present people, unless it’s a mirror match, and it’s all just a whole mess that is just there to justify bringing back older characters that were canonically dead. I was a little disappointed in the story as MKX set up Raiden as being the big bad because he was gonna start doing his job for once and got a little overzealous about it. Well, evil Raiden lasts for about 20 mins then gets whisked away to be replaced by past, good Raiden. It could’ve been such an interesting “Fighting monsters long enough makes you a monster” type of dilemma they squandered. And you could say, “Mortal Kombat isn’t about the storytelling, it’s about being able to pull a man’s spine out of his asshole.” True, but it does feel like this time around Netherrealm was trying to tell a more mature story. It was actually a little jarring for me to be in the middle of a discussion of shifting allegiances in a robot factory, just to have bloodied corpses littering the floor. Then the Aftermath DLC adds more story, that I enjoyed a bit more. You play some of the greatest hits from the main story and you get to play as mostly bad guys and B list characters that don’t get their own chapters often. Shang Tsung is also just a fun bad guy turned good with his sneering wit and his dynamic with the heroes is legitimately fun.

That is something I noticed about MK 11 in general. Some of the characters and world are still stuck in that edgy 90s mindset, like Noob, Shoa Kahn, & Baraka. With tryhard dialogue and weapons that look like a 14 year old goth kid’s doodles, more spikes and skulls makes it cool right? I get gore is what made Mortal Kombat what it is, but that’s not the selling point that it used to be. The fatalities are a fine staple of the series I still enjoy, but I feel I’ve personally gotten too old to enjoy all the gore. Especially because the gore seems to be just for the shock value and edginess, not trying to use it in any artistic way to make a statement.

All in all, I do think Mortal Kombat 11 is a worthy entry in the series that kinda overshadows MKX really. The combat is still fun and rewarding for a casual and fighting games will always be a good party game to play with friends. There are hints of Mortal Kombat trying to mature and be taken serious, but it is almost held back by it’s heritage.

I've been super ready for this one!

[Pre-Read Info]

System: Xbox One S

Controls: Xbox Elite Controller w/Long Thumbsticks (Arcade Sticks)

Display: Samsung 4K UHD TV

Time Spent: 2 Hours

What can I say about Mortal Kombat 11? It's exactly what you'd expect. It's action, it's gore, it's lore, and its damn fun. (Note: I haven't played Mortal Kombat since the arcades) This legitimately feels fresh and new, and the new characters I've never even heard of before are easy to pick up. It's definitely something for people new and old to the series.

Right off the bat, I jumped straight into the online mode just to test my might. Of course, I got beat pretty bad, but the online experience was actually pretty fluid for a few minutes. Unfortunately it seemed as though the servers crashed but I don't think that's the fault of the game itself, but more so everyone downloading the game and jumping online at the same time. Before that happened though, the few matches I did play were quick and to the point like a fighting game should be.

After the online stopped, I decided to check out training mode to relearn how to play Mortal Kombat. The controls and basic combos are easy to pull off, and things such as guarding and specials are streamlined. Now there are settings you can change to better fit your play style, especially if you aren't new to playing competitively. For me, I made sure to take the time to learn all the basics.

I jumped into the story mode right after that, and don't worry I wont be spoiling anything about it here. What I can say is that it definitely feels like a movie, and that must be that old Warner Bros. magic at play with that. It also recaps a lot of the events, making the need to know the rest kind of unnecessary. If anything, I could totally go for another Mortal Kombat movie (but only if its CG and not live action!).

In my opinion, so far I am in love with it. I spent more time with this during my first few hours than I have with other games. It's well worth the money spent, and while I can't vouch for other versions of it, I haven't experienced any hiccups during my time playing (other than the online thing but again that's because everyone downloaded it and jumped online at the same time). I'm going to sink plenty of days into this game without breaking a sweat or getting bored, so here's hoping you can do the same!

[Video] WARNING: STORY SPOILERS