Mortal Kombat (2011)

10th Game Completed in 2023

So yeah, Mortal Kombat. Good game. I finished it, I liked it. I'm kinda struggling to figure out what to say about it.

The story mode here is definitely the highlight. It's a direct sequel to Shao Kahn's ending MK Armageddon - everyone has been killed except Raiden and Shao Kahn, so Raiden sends a message to his past self that fundamentally alters the timeline. You start the game alllll the way back in the first Mortal Kombat tournament, but everything goes a bit different this time due to Raiden's intervention. Different characters die off permanently, different characters live, and the events of MK4 and later basically do not get a chance to occur. Lots of world and character building ensues. Trouble is, what's here isn't especially deep... A lot of the scenes boil down to, "Hey, how you doing." And then they fight. Shao Kahn gets defeated a few times, only to see him and his minions change the rules and keep pushing toward a defeat of Earthrealm. The scenario is interesting though, and it's enough to drive you through the whole campaign.

The game runs and plays amazing on Series X. Smooth framerate and crisp visuals. It's funny because the prerendered cinematics are actually a drop in quality compared to the improved in-game performance. Gameplay is great here too, with inputs for combos and special moves feeling exceptionally natural and easy to pull off. While I'm sure the online mode is full of sweaty tryhards, you don't need to be a sweaty tryhard to feel confident in control of each character and a handful of moves. The graphics are very much "of the era," but do feature some genuinely hideous character models with odd proportions and weird faces.

Given the subject matter and setting of the game, the gore didn't bother me. It's cartoony, it's ridiculous, and makes sense in context. What did bother me though is the ridiculous sexualization of all female characters - outrageously large boingos and extremely scantily-clad models. I know this is toned down significantly in later games, but in this one, every single female character has jiggly butts and boobs and almost no clothing. That's kind of absurd to me. I love the female form, but come the fuck on. These are skilled fighters, not strippers. It makes no sense, and it's just there for horny teenagers to goon over. Tasteless and shitty.

Overall, I dunno. It's worth a play, but it almost feels redundant in 2023 unless you absolutely must play this particular story. It does frame the subsequent game's events, but it's also a bit of a nothing burger that feels very amateur in its writing. It's a large improvement over the games before it, but simply a stepping stone to those that would come after.

2.5D FIGHTER - A soft reboot of the franchise that sees Raiden trying to change the outcome of Armageddon.

PROS:

++ Entertaining story. Story was campy, but entertaining.

++ Roster. Large roster of characters

++ Offline content. Lots of offline game content.

CONS:

-- Unfair story fights. Some story mode fights felt cheap and were incredibly frustrating. (2v1 fights, and most especially the irritating boss fight with Shao Khan)

-- Overly sexualized designs. Female character designs were awful, and greatly sexualized each of them.

-- Okay fatalities.

Mortal Kombat has a reputation and rightfully so. It is violent, bloody and overall, just brutal. This review is for the 2011 release, known as Mortal Kombat 9.

In the game, you follow a dark and sinister story, which is direct follow-up of the events of the Armageddon war, which destroyed and wiped out almost all the warriors in the realms. Only Raiden and Shao Khan, who is the cause of the destruction, remain. In their final battle, Raiden is easily overpowered by Shao Khan, and sends a message to his past self via his magic amulet with the message “He must win”. This refers to Liu Khan, who is the only one that can save the realms.

After a long journey with a lot of revenge killing, side stories and character introductions, Shao Khan is defeated by Liu Khan. Raiden vows to rebuild the world, along with the friends he made along the way but immediately after that vow Quan Chi, who teamed up with Shao Khan in the past, reveals that the death of Shao Khan was all part of the plan to take over all the realms for himself and his master Shinnok, the root of all evil. This spawned the plot for Mortal Kombat X in 2015.

There is so much to do in Mortal Kombat. You can play the story mode, in which you play as many different characters throughout your adventure. You can play online or with friends in one on one battles or tag team battles. In the tag team battles, you can actually play with four people on the same screen, unlike Tekken. New attacks come available in this mode, which are special tag team combos that are, like the rest of the moves, really hard to pull off.

Then there is the challenge tower. A literal tower with over three hundred different challenges to complete. These challenges are called “Test your (X)”, which can consist of Might, Sight, Strike, Luck and more. In the challenges themselves, you must destroy a series of blocks with a certain condition, in a given amount of time. It is really cool and grants you the possibility to earn some in game cash that you can use to unlock items and cosmetic gear in the store.

The mechanics and combat feel fluent but take some time to get used to, especially when one is used to the Tekken fight style and controls. Jumps are faster, higher and all over the place.

When talking controls, they are fine and fluent like mentioned, but they still feel a little slippery if that makes sense. This is mainly because of the jump mechanics. When jumping, you can move your character like some sort of pinball through the air, making your placement back on the ground a little tricky.

The graphics are nice and detailed. The character models all look spot on. In terms of animations, Mortal Kombat nails it. The fight moves, punches, roundhouse kicks and grapples all look amazing.

The music is grim and dark, perfectly fitting for this game. What sets it apart, are the sound effects. Hits feel very realistic and the satisfying punch and grunt sounds are just great. It is sound design like this that really enhance the experience.

The new X-Ray move feature is awesome. When in battle, you power up your meter by damaging your opponent or taking damage yourself. When the meter is full, you perform a bone breaking series of attacks, which shows actual bones being broken and shattered in X-ray vision, dealing massive damage in the process. It looks awesome and never gets old.

Of course, you also got the traditional fatality moves. They are as brutal, unique and violent as ever, and the practice mode, which teaches you how to perform them, is a God gift, because they are really hard to pull off and now, you can finally learn them properly.

One thing I did not like at all in this game is the jump scares from the cemetery/burial site hub. In this hub, you can view artwork, play mini games, unlock items with in game currency and much more. However, once in a while, some sort of zombie demon .jpeg will jump in front of the screen, releasing a deafening scream. I needed to be reanimated back to life the first time I saw this mother… After that, I became on edge, uneasy and filled with some kind of fear, wondering when the next time would be that this b!tch would pop-up again. As far as I could find, there is no way to stop it. Call me a dweeb, but this stuff is not necessary in a game like this and I freaking hate jump scares.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed Mortal Kombat and would recommend it to everyone.

Mortal Kombat actually has a compelling story with some nice character arcs. It actually has a much better story than it deserves and because the game is played with 16 different characters, you get to see many different sides in this story and that was nice.

The story ain't the best written ever and it ain't revolutionary, but it suits the needs of the game just fine and it gives plenty of chances to the player to beat someone else up. The characters also ain't paper thin (most of them) and the main characters actually get to have an arc, something I seriously didn't anticipate.

Now while you can play as 16 different characters and that adds a more rounded point of view and it shows you many different sides in the story, every character has the same moves as the one before and after. I played almost the whole game using the same moves that I found very early and without much difficulty. Oher than the Shao Khan stage where I lost quite some time, but still after finding out the first time what I had to do, the second time I did exactly the same thing and just beat him again with a different character.

Still while I do believe that the controls lack, it gave me quite some fun playing it. Maybe it was because of the simplicity or maybe because it was a simple game and it didn't try to be anything great, while having a nice story with some compelling points. Also the voice acting was really nice. So yeah it has a story much better than the one it deserved and it offered me quite a lot of enjoyment.