There's so much to love about Mortal Kombat 11, a kind of Mortal
Kombat greatest hits package and certainly NetherRealm's best-playing
fighting game ever. But then there's a gnawing issue that drags down all
the good the game does, like skeletal hands clawing at your feet.
The
combat is considered. The action is hard hitting and high damage, but
Mortal Kombat 11 is not a blisteringly fast fighter. Zoning - the act of
lobbing projectile after projectile from a safe distance - is
prevalent, as it always is with NetherRealm's games, but I've found
success and a good deal of satisfaction getting up close and personal.
Spacing is key, as is your ability to whiff punish your opponents for
their mistakes. You'll also want a few low-high mix-up strings to hand
and quickfire hit-confirming to turn those hopeful prods into juggles.
For maximum carnage, special cancel into an eye-popping Fatal Blow.
If
all this sounds like gibberish, fear not. Mortal Kombat 11 has perhaps
the best tutorial yet seen in a fighting game. It eases you into an
understanding of the way Mortal Kombat 11 - and indeed most 2D fighting
games - work. I like to think I know my way around a frametrap, but
Mortal Kombat 11's tutorial taught me a thing or two and refreshed my
memory of a few fundamentals I'd long-since forgotten.
It's
ace for fighting game newcomers, too, and NetherRealm, clearly mindful
of the casual audience its games attract compared to the likes of
Capcom's Street Fighter series, starts with the basics and ramps up
slowly but assuredly. If all you want out of Mortal Kombat 11 is to have
a bit of a laugh with the Fatal Blows, Fatalities (which are excellent,
by the way - more on that later) and the story mode (also excellent!),
Mortal Kombat 11 is as accessible as you need it to be.
Don't get
me wrong, Mortal Kombat 11 is still a fighting game and venturing online
can be an intimidating experience, but the tutorial does just about all
that can be asked of it to get players going. And, once you've gone
through the initial tutorial lessons, it's a case of learning as much as
you want to learn about what makes Mortal Kombat 11 tick. It's a game
that tells you everything if you want it to, from frame data to block
damage, or nothing, if that's how you want to roll.
Stick with the
tutorial, though, and you'll learn about the likes of Crushing Blows -
attacks that hit harder and change the game if they land under certain
circumstances. I love the Crushing Blows, and find myself trying to set
them up so I can launch into combos. You'll learn about new defensive
abilities, which help you out of tight, high-stress situations such as
being battered in the corner. The only combo breaker in the game, dubbed
Breakaway, sees you drop from a juggle onto the floor, and it's great
for saving yourself from suffering a lot of combo damage. Every
character has a couple of wakeup attack options (great for mind games!),
multiple overhead hops, escape rolls and can amplify special moves.
There's a lot of really useful stuff in Mortal Kombat 11 designed to
help you deal with being stomped on, and I appreciate it.
Speaking
of the meter, Mortal Kombat 11 has two: a defensive meter and an
offensive meter. Each is divided up into two bars, which replenish over
time (and not from your actions). Most of the more interesting mechanics
use some amount of meter. Amplify a special move to, say, do more
damage or keep a combo going, and you'll burn one bar of offensive
meter. The Breakaway combo breaker burns two bars of the defensive
meter. Waking up with a getup attack burns a bar of both. Mortal Kombat
11's meter system is pretty unique, and while I do worry it adds
complication where it's not needed, what cannot be denied is it adds an
interesting layer of strategy.
As
do the Fatal Blows. These super moves only open up to you once you're
near death, and can win you a round such is the amount of damage they
do. But there's a strategy to their deployment. As you'd expect, your
opponent can usually see them coming, so recklessly throwing them out -
armour and all - isn't smart. Instead you want to use them as combo
enders for dramatic wins - or comebacks.
There's more:
interestingly, Fatal Blows can only be used once per match (most
fighting games let you use your supers more than once per match), so you
may want to save it for the final round. If you've got one on deck,
you'll notice your opponent act like they know it could come out at any
moment. If you burn it early, your opponent will feel more relaxed. Mind
games are a big part of Mortal Kombat 11, and it's all the better for
it.
The series - and indeed NetherRealm's fighting games - have
been criticised over the years for their janky movement and animations.
Mortal Kombat 11 doesn't eradicate these issues, but it does a lot to
improve matters. Some of the animation work here is superb, with
characters moving about more naturally than in previous games. There is
still a kind of staccato two-step that comes with NetherRealm's back
forward/down up input legacy, but Mortal Kombat 11 is undeniably the
best-feeling fighting game the studio has ever produced.
And it
looks the part, too. It's not gorgeous, because the word gorgeous makes
me think of summertime gardens and the sun setting slowly over a hill.
Mortal Kombat 11 looks striking. Light breaks into Goro's underground
lair and splashes out over piles of bones. Shao Kahn's leather straps
seem to creak as he brings his hammer down on his hapless enemy's skull.
The moon shines bright in the night sky as those two famous Mortal
Kombat warriors fight forever on the stone bridge in the distance. The
violence - is this still a thing worth discussing? - is hilariously
over-the-top. It is also utterly unrealistic. Blood looks like jelly,
bone defies the laws of physics and characters make other characters do
things you can't help but laugh at. Shao Khan has one Fatality where he
strikes down with his hammer on the top of his opponent's head and it
squishes into their chest. I chuckle every time.
Oh,
the character faces are superb! NetherRealm did glorious work with the
superhero and villain faces of Injustice 2, and Mortal Kombat 11's faces
are just as good, if not better. Sub-Zero and Scorpion's are highlights
- as are those belonging to central characters Cassie Cage, Jax Briggs
and Kano. NetherRealm is a level above other fighting game developers
when it comes to this stuff, which is good news for the story, a mode in
which you spend a lot of time looking at character faces doing
emotions.
NetherRealm has a reputation for superb story modes and
it reinforces it with Mortal Kombat 11. It's schlocky, nostalgia-fuelled
fun that revolves around clashing Mortal Kombat characters of different
eras. This is a wonderful plot device for some comedy gold, and Mortal
Kombat remains one of the few genuinely funny games around. As you'd
expect, young Johnny Cage and old Johnny Cage have some good bants. And
it doesn't make much sense at all. Early on, Cassie must complete one
final task before she's accepted as the bad ass soldier she was born to
be: she has to beat up her mum, Sonya Blade. You control Cassie in this
fight, and I ended up drilling a hole through my mum's eye socket, into
her brain and out the back of her skull. "Commander Cage, reporting for
duty!" Cassie says, helping her mum to her feet. It's stupid and I love
it.
There are what are meant to be heartfelt moments. There's a hint of a
complex character in Jax, a father who goes off the deep end while
grieving the loss of his wife. But the brilliance of Mortal Kombat 11 is
it knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to be anything else. It
knows it's preposterous and it doesn't take itself seriously. So when
Jacqui partners up with young Jax - her father-to-be - to knock some
sense into her dad, you don't scoff - you root for the good guys.
Structurally,
the story mode follows the same pattern as Injustice 2's. You sit back
and watch the cutscenes - many of which are smothered in generous
dollops of juxtaposition and kung-fu action - then transition into a
three-round fight between whichever character the chapter revolves
around (sometimes you can pick between one of two characters to control)
and the villain of the scene. Rinse, repeat until the story ends, a
handful of hours later. This kind of fighting game story structure
starts to grate after a while, but thankfully the plot hurtles along at a
pace you're perfectly happy to keep up with.
The dialogue is
well-written and the voice acting is superb, although former UFC fighter
and current WWE star Ronda Rousey is awful as Sonya Blade. Her robotic
tone sticks out like a sore thumb against Erica Lindbeck's brilliantly
sassy Cassie Cage and Andrew Bowen's neurotic young Johnny Cage/family
man old Johnny Cage. It doesn't help that every time Rousey speaks in
the game I can't help but question NetherRealm's decision to cast
someone who has seriously troubling views on various topics. This was a
PR stunt that should never have left the marketing room, let alone made
it into the game.
So,
you've done the tutorial, whizzed through the story mode and now you're
ready to get stuck into Mortal Kombat 11 proper. This is where the game
can feel a bit overwhelming, as there's a lot of modes to consider -
and, what's that? Icons at the bottom of the screen and numbers next to
them. Ah, they must be virtual currencies. Sorry! Kurrencies.
If
Mortal Kombat 11 has an endgame - and I think it does, remarkably - it
is a grind. And what a grind it is. What was once a fighting game series
is now an odd mishmash of genres. There's RPG in here, with character
builds, crafting and farming for materials. There's a loot game in here,
via the surprisingly expansive Krypt. And there's PvE and PvP modes to
play, some timed, some constant, each offering a different set of
rewards. Whatever takes your fancy, you're always working away at Mortal
Kombat 11's ever-present, overly complicated grind. It is the
foundation upon which the game is built.
Here's how it works.
There are three in-game currencies in Mortal Kombat 11. Koins, soul
fragments and hearts. Each is earnt through gameplay. You cannot buy
these with real-world money. Koins are spent on opening chests that
contain a random assortment of loot in the Krypt, a huge area made up of
familiar locations from the Mortal Kombat series linked by secret
tunnels, elevators and trap-riddled corridors. You explore the Krypt via
a generic fighter character and a third-person camera perspective,
which is quite the thing to see in a mainline Mortal Kombat game.
There's
a Metroidvania feel to the place - some areas must be returned to once
you've found the right key item needed to proceed - and there are loads
of nice surprises and puzzles I won't spoil here. As a longtime Mortal
Kombat fan, there's a lot to love about the Krypt. It's littered with
fan service, is packed with secrets and is fun to explore. Brilliantly,
the Krypt is narrated by Shang Tsung, Mortal Kombat's famous
soul-obsessed sorcerer who's wonderfully-voiced by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.
Tagawa played Shang Tusng in the so bad it's actually good Mortal
Kombat movie from the 90s, and he reprises his role here with an
infectious glee.
Unfortunately,
it turns out the Krypt is the beating heart of Mortal Kombat 11's
grind, which becomes apparent when you consider this not as a fighting
game, but as a loot game. There's this serious fighting game side to
things, which NetherRealm neatly compartmentalises in the fight section,
and the loot game, which fuses the Towers of Time and the Krypt in this
awkward embryonic state, each relying on the other to feed the player
with currency.
I've settled on a loop where I play the Towers of
Time, a set of time-limited player versus computer challenges - some of
which are so difficult they feel unfair - in order to farm koins, soul
fragments and hearts. I then spend these in the Krypt, hoping to get
loot I want. Most of the time I get trash - aka loot that I don't care
about because it's a piece of gear or some concept art for a character I
don't play. I focus on a few characters (Shao Khan, Cassie Cage and
Jacqui Briggs, currently), and I want the best skins and gear for them.
Everything else just gets in the way, although, I must confess, there
are some lovely bags available for The Kollector - bags he stuffs his
enemies inside.
You earn currency too slowly. Even though
NetherRealm recently patched the game to make it dish out currency more
generously, Mortal Kombat 11 is a stingy game. The rate you earn hearts,
which unlock the Krypt chests with the juicy loot, is particularly
miserly. You get a handful of hearts for performing Fatalities and
Brutalities during a match, so you find yourself doing these in all the
time just to make sure you keep hearts trickling in.
Mortal Kombat
11 has been accused of being a microtransaction-fest, but this fear is
misplaced, I think. The only thing you can spend real world money on is a
premium currency called Time Krystals. Time Krystals can, currently at
least, only be spent on character skins, Brutalities, gear and,
bizarrely, easy Fatality tokens (easy Fatality tokens must be one of the
most pointless video game microtransactions of all time). The thing
about all this is, the virtual items you can buy with Time Krystals are
on a timer. When the countdown hits zero, they're replaced by a fresh
set of items. This means when you see something you're interested in,
you're more likely to buy it because you may never get the chance to buy
it again. Why? Because chests in the Krypt contain random loot, not set
loot, and, oh yes, now I see why the live service revenue lever pullers
at Warner Bros. did that. Clever.
The furore over
microtransactions has distracted from the real problem with Mortal
Kombat 11's grind: time. It just takes too much time to earn the
currency you need to get a chance at nabbing the cool loot you want for
your favourite characters. It's that simple. I don't think Mortal Kombat
11 is about pushing people to spend loads of money on
microtransactions. Rather, I think it's more about pushing people to log
on as often as possible, checking out stuff like daily challenges, the
skins on sale that day and the rewards available from the Towers of
Time. If the grind is about anything, it's about engagement.
My
other niggles with the game revolve around the variation system. Here,
you take one of the characters and select their abilities and gear
augments, creating a unique twist of your own to, theoretically at
least, ensure a huge amount of variety in competitive play. The problem
is ranked mode limits you to picking from two pre-set tournament builds
per character. I don't have as big an issue with this as others seem to.
As someone who spends time in the lab fussing over execution, combos
and working out some of the finer details all in the name of meaningful
competition, I appreciate NetherRealm's attempt to level the playing
field, and I'm sure reconciling the variation system with the need to
craft a balanced fighting experience would have been a nightmare.
But
I know for a huge number of players, limiting ranked play to two
pre-set variations per character - some of which do not include the best
special moves - makes spending a lot of time with character builds
pointless. Why come up with imaginative ability combinations when you
can't bring them over into ranked? It's a shame, because experimentation
with variations and working out what's possible with the combo system
is a joy - and something Mortal Kombat 11 lets you do that most other
fighting games do not.
I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable but, sadly, increasingly common situation of recommending a game reportedly produced under damaging crunch at NetherRealm.
I feel it's important to shine a light on worrying working conditions
in reviews, but it does not feel right to warn people against buying
what is for the most part a wonderful video game because of it - I'm
sure the last thing the developers of Mortal Kombat 11 want is some kind
of sales boycott. But crunch is a very real issue for many developers
across the world. To ignore it is to condone it, especially when it
seems every triple-A video game's production is now as hellish as that
of Apocalypse Now's.
Overall, though, I can't let this - or the
grind - overshadow what is for the most part a fantastic fighting game.
Mortal Kombat 11 is the complete package with modes for days, a
wonderful story, brilliant characters and hard-hitting combat. I'm
thoroughly enjoying playing ranked mode, shaving the rough edges off my
rushdown Shao Khan and unearthing all the secrets of the Krypt along the
way. The grind is an ever-present frustration, but it is also something
I am willing to power through - like Shao Khan's hammer to my
opponent's head.
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