Overall 7.5 Graphics 10 Sound 5 Addictive 8 Story 5 Depth 10 Difficulty 5
7.5
Mortal Kombat 11 review SuperCrash64
It is 2023, and we've had about 3 months of NRS's newest installment in Mortal Kombat 1 so I'd figure it'd be time to take a look back at it's predecessor in Mortal Kombat 11.
For clarification, I picked this game up on PlayStation, Switch, and Series X and have been playing this game since aftermath in 2020 until the Mortal Kombat 1 beta dropped in September 2023 so I've got a ton of things to say on this entry.
Graphics: 10/10. This game was causing a lot of discourse about whether or not it looked better than Mortal Kombat 1 and while I do disagree with that assessment, I still think Mk11 looks great no matter the platform your playing on. Each character has personality in their attacks, their weapon choices, and especially their facial textures. Johnny cage and Kung Lao look confident and arrogant. Liu Kang and Raiden look intense and focused. Shao Khan and Kotal Khan are big body bosses that are intimidating.
They also have a handful of guest characters that look amazing like the Joker, John Rambo, and The Terminator that look amazing.
Stages also look pretty great as well with my favourite being the tournament arena. It has live demos of arcade machines representing all the older Mortal Kombat games up to that point which is really cool, it's a nice thing to see while your fighting.
Sound: 6/10. I'll cut straight to the chase, I don't really remember any of Mortal Kombat 11s toons except for the menu theme that pops up as soon as you turn on the game.
The voice acting is great and some of the fight intros are pretty well done.
Addictiveness: 6/10. Even before Mortal Kombat 1 came out, it was starting to become a pain to find matches in ranked. Particularly as you get your rank into Demi God-Elder God, you'll find less players at those ranks than you did at apprentice-chamoion. It's also worth noting that if your offline for more than three days, this game will take points away from you and eventually demote you off of champion.
Excuse me for having a life guys.
Story: 5/10 I really don't care for Mk11s story. It's timeline mumbo jumbo and I'll keep it brief at that.
Depth: 10/10 As I've mentioned before, I've had 3 years of experience on this game and so while ranked maybe the only thing I do, it may not be the only thing you do. This game is packed with a lot of stuff to get and unlock. Skins, intros, outros, the Krypt, and especially Towers of Time.
As I've been playing mortal kombat 1 and it's vanilla invasions mode, I only recently came to appreciate how much Mortal Kombat11 offered in comparison.
Earning Cosmetics is the main luxury in Mortal Kombat 11 and the bulk of its done through towers of time. Towers of Time has a lot going on. Character towers will help you unlock skins intros and outros, there's consumables you can equip before fights to help you get more currency, and currency is spent everywhere in the Krypt.
The Krypt is very cool as your getting cosmetics while transversing Shang Tsungs Island which is paying homage to the events of the first tournament. You'll see the palace, Goros lair, the pit, and a ton of other Easter eggs thrown in.
There's also heads you can unlock by fatalitying a character 25 times which will earn you even more cosmetics. It's grindy and annoying but as your progressing, you can equip these things called augments to trivalize the online towers and make it a fair bit quicker to get cosmetics.
Finally there's also Ranked which has rotating skins, some of my favourites being the Osh-Tekk inspired outfits. Ranked is annoying because it's best of 2, and if someone loses to the character your currently playing; they'll counter pick you with a matchup that is terrible for your character.
Not only that but there's some genuinely awful game mechanics that get under my skin like Breakaway and auto regenerative meter. Breakaway can only be done while being air juggled, so if you fight someone like Sub Zero for instance and they keep their combos grounded you have to hold all the damage they just did.
Auto regenerative meter makes it so that they're more likely to breakaway, I cannot explain how many times I've had people sitting at half defensive bar and auto regen meter gave them breakaway which means my combo is dropped and I'm getting punished.
Speaking of getting punished... there's way too many wakeup options in this game. There's wakeup roll to either the left or right, there's wake-up up 2 which launches. Wakeup up3 which doesn't launch but is safer on block. Along with wakeup jump and wakeup buttons.
Jumping attacks are way too op in this game. If you play ranked, expect to fight slight gas Kabal and bionic bounce Jacqui. Anti airing jump ins usually do results in you being the one getting stuffed because they have ridiculously huge hitboxes.
Krushing Blows are this games main gimmick, they're once per match; have different properties and perquisites to meet, and usually result in very high damage.
It's not balanced though like some characters get better and more practical KB requirements and some are just missing. Particularly there's a handful of characters like Johnny that don't have any throw krushing blows while Liu Kang has one on both his forward and back throw.
Finally there's fatal blow.. if your opponent is at 30% HP they just get this free damage and it has no startup warning or scaling. Online Sub Zero players rob you consistently with forward 2 into FB into GGs.
Difficulty: 5/10 It depends on you. What character your using, what combos your doing, what your gameplan is... whether your opponent is on a McDonald's WiFi connection also factors in the experience.
The game isn't that hard to pickup and play, I'd say it's the easiest for people to do well in and there's plenty of guides made by content creators on YouTube over the years discussing fundamentals and characters, all good stuff.
The only thing that's remotely "hard" and I use that in quotation marks is the Kronika boss fight and that's because she doesn't let you play the game proper. She doesn't take combo damage or get put into hit advantage, so at higher difficulties like hard or expert.. she's an unfair fight, so if you play klassic towers keep it on normal and keep it enjoyable.
Overall: 7.5/10. Mortal Kombat 11 is still a solid fighting game with lots to do and enjoyable content, albeit with a lot of whack balancing and gameplay decisions.
If your on Xbox or PlayStation, this game is still on Gamepass and PS Plus extra... so if your unsure and have $15 to spare(I think it's $15 still) give it a go.
That's all I have to say, later.
Graphics 10 Sound 5 Addictive 8 Story 5 Depth 10 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 12-10-23
Review Replies: 0
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