Mortal Kombat 11 - An Excellent Game and a Fatal Blow to the Franchise

Mortal Kombat 11 - An Excellent Game and a Fatal Blow to the Franchise

by Morgan Clement

 

First things first with this: I process by either talking out loud or writing. This is, first and foremost, just me processing my feelings on a game that I’d really like to love, but for some reason, can not. Second: these are, ultimately, my opinions. The fighting community is still hype playing this game, and I love watching tournament highlights because this game supports crazy good upsets and high-level play. So, I respect your views; however, these are mine, and maybe you’ll find you agree with some of them as well.

Okay, Mortal Kombat 11 came out last year, 2019 with a relatively high reception. This was it, folks: Netherrealm Studios has brought Mortal Kombat back into the public sphere; they’ve made a game that makes MK relevant again. In so many ways, the previous sentence was true: Mortal Kombat 11 takes some of the camp that me, and many others, enjoyed and ratcheted that up to 11 (this pun was unintentended) by making a gonzo story about time travel, family, and protecting/saving the world. It was hamfisted, dumb, campy, but altogether pretty enjoyable, and managed to pull off what many other franchises just couldn’t: a sincere story in the midst of a campy catastrophe.

The story, to me, was kind of the highlight. I had played 9, X, and Injustice 2, and found little to no issue with enjoying the storyline and getting into the other content. I’ve never been much of an online player; I get too nervous, and on top of that, normally I suck. I know that about myself; however, there’s something in me that just loves this chess-like aspect of fighting games, and that’s normally what keeps me going. The thing is, though, once I beat the Mortal Kombat 11 story line, and moved away from my friends, there hasn’t been much in this game that’s gotten me to come back.

In the release of the game the “Towers of Time”, a component that had been in other games to various degrees (most notably Injustice 2, just under a name “Eververse”, I believe) had been relatively butchered, with many people claiming that the game was damn near a mobile release with its predatory practices of impossible AI and “boosts” that you had to either earn, buy (not with real money), or find to make levels manageable. Netherrealm apologized, worked hard, stood by some of their design decisions, but ultimately scaled back the difficulty, and kinda just left the towers as is.

The other aspects that left some people, including myself, scratching their heads are as follows: 3 different types of currency in the game for various unlocks, a plethora of unlockable customization options that each had their own XP bars that didn’t carry over to another unlockable piece that you liked more, that same gear had gem slots that could only be unlocked by using said gear throughout multiple fights. Oh, and those gems for said gem slots? Unlocked through one of the various currencies and/or going through Towers of Time, which as mentioned earlier… not great.

Despite these issues, though, mechanically, MK11 is a sound fighter. You can watch any tournament and watch the hype surrounding the game. There’s a visual splendor with this game: there’s the krushing blows, a sort of x-ray hit that does extra damage and can only be utilized if certain previous attacks have connected; there’s the fatal blows that can be a sort of “comeback mechanic” that also is a flow-stopping, over-the-top video of sorts that shows your character brutally attacking the other; and of course, there’s fatalities and brutalities and all that fun stuff. There’s reversals, perfect blocks, and ways to expend meters, both offensively and defensively to make your attacks hit harder or stop you from taking more damage from a combo.

So why has this game failed to capture me as a fighter?

Admittedly, fighting games are a weird genre for me, I enjoy them a great deal, but they really have to check a few boxes for me to cosign the game as a whole. 

Does your game look good? Does it have a style?  Does your game FEEL good? Is it fun to play? Can I deeply immerse myself? Is the core loop good enough that I won’t notice how long I’ve spent? Can I enjoy this game alone AND with friends?

Mortal Kombat 11 fails on quite a few of these expectations, even in the face of its previous iterations where they did not, and I think that’s really the problem.

The game looks great. NRS really put the spit shine to character models and environments. I remember looking at early gameplay and being absolutely impressed with the visual fidelity of the game. For a triple-A title, you can tell a good amount went into graphics. 

The style side, however, lands somewhere between old Mortal Kombat, and an all-too-serious Mortal Kombat knockoff. The game has a bit of an identity problem in spots. At times, the game fully accepts its level of camp; in others, though, it attempts to be really serious… overly so, and the graphics back up the serious side of things more so than it really backs up the camp. So you have a spirit that’s “present” but drowned in an overly serious exterior, and honestly, the spirit seems to be dying a bit.

MK11 is a serious fighter. They were gunning for a more “tournament ready” game than previous iterations, and in doing so, they alienated the more casual side of the fighting game scene. This would be fine if the game was flashy enough, but again, the game feels overly serious at times, which disallows it from really being as fun to play/watch as a flashier game like Tekken 7 or Soul Calibur 6.

As I mentioned earlier, this game is a sound fighter, and it plays like one; however, it also plays like an overly serious tournament fighter, similar to Street Fighter V. Now’s the time to mention: I’m not a huge Street Fighter V fan. That is a fighting-ass game for serious fighting gamers. It’s a game that you spend a ton of time in to get decent at, and it’s not really something that I find very visually stunning or even approachable, not to mention its lack of features when it started out. It’s a good fighting game, but it’s just not for me… I don’t find it fun.

I think herein lies the problem, because this hits on both point two and three of what makes a good fighter for me. Mortal Kombat CAN feel good to play, but it doesn’t always. It CAN be fun, but it isn’t always. It can be tiresome, overly focused on tournament-level fighting. Its core gameplay loop is just the fighting (as it should be) but given that it IS so serious about being a tournament fighter, it doesn’t last long before you might tire of just… fighting with little variation. Its single player offerings don’t really satisfy, similar to SFV, although props to NRS for, at the very least, having single player offerings. 

It’s not long, while playing either MK11 or SFV where you begin to feel like all you’re doing is training rather than playing. Some would argue that’s how fighting games are, but I argue good fighting games allow you to forget that. I never think to myself, while playing games like Soul Calibur, Tekken 7, or Lethal League Blaze, I’m just training now… this isn’t fun. No. Instead, I get lost in the game; I get lost in the fighting, the flashing lights, the hype. The loop is well hidden behind how much FUN I’m having. They’re all accessible, and if you want to train, you can, but it’s not the meat of the experience.

On the plus, however, MK11 IS fun with friends. It’s a fighting-ass fighting game, for better or for worse, but if you play with people who are at a similar level, just like any other fighter, you end up surprising one another and having a good deal of fun in the meantime. I’ve spent countless hours with buddies, going through the roster and playing each character. It’s a blast. The problem is, the minute somebody leaves, you’re left with a game that allows not much else but to train… and if you do that, and your buddies don’t have the game, you’ve classed yourself out of your buddies, then no one is having fun.