I love Mortal Kombat. It’s never been the flashiest or the most in-depth fighting game, but it’s always been a whole lot of fun since entering the 3D space. Yes, the game is brutal, but at this point the team at NetherRealm have done about as much as they can when it comes to shock value and it’s the core experience that keeps it going.

What makes Mortal Kombat different than its contemporaries is the robust story mode that plays out, and has been playing out for multiple generations of games now. The MK series is so far ahead in this regard that it’s the only fighting game series that I can recommend on the story alone, making it really great for single-player fans out there. You can easily invest hours into the insane story mode and still feel as if you got your money’s worth.

Street Fighter and everyone else has attempted the MK formula in this regard, but none have come close. It sets MK apart because the core fighting experience is as solid as ever, but also offers a mot more than beating up on random people online, or your friends at home. Content is the key in Mortal Kombat 11 and it flows freely in a bunch of different modes that you’ve come to expect.

But I really want to focus on the story for a couple of reasons. Mortal Kombat 11 is coming in hot and has a lot of ground to cover. The story here isn’t tied to any game before it and is free to branch out into a unique story, something that we haven’t had since Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. Yes, this is tying up the reboot events that the past few games have been retelling, but it adds all new mythology; for better or for worse.

NeatherRealm knows their world really well, but when they venture away from it things get a little muddy. Because of the large roster of characters and the teams insistence on giving you time with each, certain fan favorites are going to be overlooked, forgotten midway through, or left out completely without mention. For everyone you love in the game, you can pick out someone that is either missing or now dead. And those that you do love have had their stories altered yet again to make the past irrelevant.

Time is being reset yet again, but this time by new series baddie Kronika, because the letter K is the studios kink. Shes reset the universe a bunch of times, learning each time on her quest to perfection and what see considers balance. She’s been pulling the strings from Shang Tsung to the Elder Gods themselves. Yeah, another unknown and unseen evil that controls everything. At this point it feel cheap, but it gets the job done.

The problem is that everything in the story feels fairly empty. You know how this is going to end if you’ve read any sort of fantasy in the past decade. Raiden and Liu Kang end up fighting over and over again in every timeline. I won’t spoil the end, but you can see where things are going and what needs to happen. The issue is that characters don’t end up mattering all that much to the story or the series on the whole.

There are also long stretches of time when characters you’ve just played as disappear for several chapters, so when they do pop back into the story you’ll have forgotten all about them. I can’t tell you how many times I had to grab my phone as ask Google what happened to “insert random character here” because they hadn’t been mentioned for over an hour that I just thought they were dead. Johnny Cage for one major example of this.

I only mention this because Cage has had a weird arc in this reboot trilogy. He was a dunce who ended up saving the world and killing Shinok, a fallen Elder God, once Liu Kang and Raiden went crazy. He’s a bad ass in all respects, but sort of disappears half way through this game. The same thing happened in the first game and it just bugs me. The story format means the studio has to move away from characters at times, but there isn’t a send off most of the time, simply characters getting a minor injury and leaving the game outright making the pacing an issue.

Hell, the final battle of the game is missing half the cast that made up the core of the first half of the game. The time travel plot is interesting in terms of characters meeting their old selves from other timelines, but it never goes anywhere. A couple of jokes and that’s pretty much it. And then there are characters who simply get the shaft.

Kotal Khan is a joke that seems to lose at every turn before going away forever. Sheeva and Baraka are back but never get involved outside a few cut-scenes. And then there are the fact that fan favorite charters die in the story in the most stupid ways. Look, I’m not against killing off characters, but when they just had their heads impaled and back broken during a match., getting hit with some poison in a cut-scene is a sad way to go.

The ending at least closes off this chapter of Mortal Kombat, but it doesn’t leave the series anywhere left to go other than, well, start all over again. It’s all just a bit messy and feels like they just wrote themselves into a corner that they had no other way of getting out off. Critics and press are probably going to praise the story as well-written, but that’s only if their understanding of good storytelling comes from bad fanfic. The game’s story is fun, sure, but when it’s whole point to to simply plug holes that it made to itself, it’s not really great storytelling. Let’s face it, Mortal Kombat just got out of control and I’m glad this has all come to an end; for now.

Combat (no I won’t be spelling it with a K) has been tweaked this time around making for a familiar, net new experience. The big trick here is the character customization that you are afforded. I’ve mentioned before that the Injustice series has always been a testbed for Mortal Kombat and it shows here. You can alter and tweak costumes, but you can now also alter moves and fighting styles.

This adds a strategy layer to each character that we haven’t really seen before. For the average player it isn’t going to mean much, but to the pro level players it’s a nice feature. Each character isn’t just a set character that you memorize to counter as the different moves and styles should provide to some really interesting match-up in competitive play. But what I really enjoyed was the AI fighter that you can now set up.

This computer controlled character will take over for you in certain game modes. What’s nice about this is it helps to dull the grind heavy nature of the Mortal Kombat 11 experience. I hate grinding, especially in fighting games, so sending your AI character to do the work grinding for koins that can be used in the Krypt is really neat.

You have the requisite tutorial and training modes that are really well laid out for those wanting to learn characters without being fed to the wolves and learning to git gud. Wanting to draw in new players to an established fighting game series is hard, so having these modes does a lot to help break the barrier of entry down for those just getting into MK.

The graphics are fantastic this time around and show the power left in this current console generation. MK11 looks great and I’m in no hurry for whatever next generation of consoles is about to be shoved down out throats. Facial animations are better than ever and the mo-cap work is outstanding. There are a few moments where the emotions didn’t play with the scene the right way, but these were few and far between. The animations in game are also fantastic. This really is the smoothest Mortal Kombat game ever, but they still have the stupid falling system at the end of a match. Granted, it’s less obtrusive this time, but it’s weird having a beaten player stand back up only to fall down again because they lost the match.

The MK series has made a name for itself on its fatalities, and they are are gruesome as ever. They’ve lost the shock value they had in MK9, but a few still pack a punch the first few times you see them. What has changed it the super moves you can pull off during a match. Gone are the traditional X-ray moves as well as being able to trigger them by using a meter. Instead, you can pull of a super when your life-bar in a critical state.

This takes a little getting used to, but makes a lot more sense. These supers, or Fatal Blows, feel more desperate and serve as a way to even the odds a little when you are clearly on the losing end of a battle. Sure, in most other MK games these would be fatalities since body parts are being broken and gouged out, but I like what they did with the mechanic. It’s classic while feeling more impactful on the whole.

Most of the things wrong with MK11 are more nitpicks than anything. The grind is a pain, but it was clear from Injustice 2 that this is were the studio was heading toward. The only real downer is Ronda Rousey voicing Sonya Blade. She’s terrible. I wrote a whole piece on why she was a bad idea and now that I’ve played the game I was totally right. Her performance is cringe-worthy and feels utterly out of place with the excellent, and professional voice cast. But, hey, marketing is marketing and I’m sure her name brought in lots of new fans.

My biggest issue when it comes to characters isn’t who was left out, but rather is that the new characters added to this roster who feel pretty bland. The god characters all feel clinical and built by committee instead of trying to design them to last beyond this iteration. I’ve already forgotten the weird six-armed thing whose race gets added into the game as if they’ve been around forever. But as quick as he shows up he’s out of the story. And don’t get me started on half of the main characters from the last game being left out like they never existed without even a mention.

Everything that MK11 does right easily makes the few missteps easy to move past. One thing I have’t heard mentioned is that for the first time in the series the female characters have real purpose and character depth, where before they were hot chicks that also fought sometimes. Jade has real character growth for the first time in the series and all the ladies look incredible without needing to wear swimsuits. They feel like they have agency and aren’t written simply to ogle at.

If you are a fan of what Mortal Kombat has been doing this modern series you are going to love what is on display here. There’s a lot of reason to keep coming back and the inclusion of DLC characters should help to please fans of those missing fan favorites. I can highly recommend Mortal Kombat 11 for what it does to keep things feeling fresh and for what it does to close out this current series.

“Mortal Kombat 11 is a great way to bring in new fans while closing out this modern trilogy”

Final Score

4/5

About Author