MK 11 REVIEW SERIES
MK 11 REVIEW WINDOWS

Tidal waves, fireballs or something which turns the screen black every few seconds. Homing rockets which occasionally appear to life-steal on impact. They introduce modifiers which spice up the matches by applying fight-specific conditions such as environmental attacks. They’re similar to the Classic Towers, only with alternating levels rotating on specific timers e.g 8 hours, 24 hours, etc. Right now, as it stands, Towers of Time suck. But it’s with Towers where this excellent package starts to take a turn down the rickety old live service path. For all you oldies out there, these are pretty much the Arcade mode of old. Another benchmark for the genre.Ĭlassic Towers make a return too – a battle through various enemies of increasing difficulty which unlock a character’s specific ending. Not only that but the game rewards you with various kurrencies etc for each completed tutorial (more on that later).

There’s even Fatality training thrown in too, for folks wanting to practice unleashing their brutal finishing moves. The game even lets you watch an AI action the specific moves, all whilst highlighting the button presses and input timings via an on-screen pad. You can choose from a range of basic, advanced, offensive, defensive and character specific tutorials which explain each element of the game’s deep fighting mechanics in detail before tasking you with carrying it out. The game’s tutorial mode is a stroke of genius too. You’re sure to find at least a few characters you’ll konnect with. Each character from the game’s strong roster feels distinctly unique – whether it’s the speedy kick-based kombos of Jacqui Briggs or the heavier deliberate 2-handed sword wielding techniques of Kotal Kahn. Fatalities are more brutal than ever, alongside the new excellently ferocious ‘Fatal Blows’ which give players an easy-to-initiate power move (LT+RT) usable upon low health once per match. Punches and kicks hit with serious bass-filled impact thanks to an excellent sound mix. Easy to pick up and play but incredibly tough to master. Of course it wouldn’t be a Mortal Kombat review if we didn’t talk about the game’s fighting though. The whole thing is almost worth the entry price alone. Also, the kutscene fight scenes are almost John Wick level of awesome too – I could watch Cassie Cage’s butt kicking badass’ery all day long. The voice acting and facial animations are superb throughout (other than Ronda Rousey aka Sonya Blade who somehow still continues to deliver wooden performances). There’s plenty of twists and turns with numerous nods to previous games. It took me around 5-6 hours to komplete the story, and I loved almost every minute of it. A summer blockbuster that’s just a downright pleasure to enjoy from beginning to end. This is the Avengers Endgame of the video game world. Jumping from character to character across an exotic range of settings and backdrops. You play through a bunch of incredibly well produced and framed kutscenes which seamlessly merge into player controlled fights – very similar to what we saw in the developer’s previous work with Injustice 2 (but better). It allows developer NetherRealm Studios to bring back a bunch of klassic characters for a heavy hit of nostalgia, whilst at the same time justifying regular explanations of what happened previously in the MK universe to any new players who haven’t followed the series. The result of her attempting to do so is a bunch of old versions of characters meeting more recent versions of themselves. The game’s villain Kronika is looking to rewrite history in order to destroy Raiden and his influence. Not only is it by far the best story mode a fighting game has ever seen, it provided some of the most fun I’d had with a story mode in any video game over the past few years. The story mode in MK11 is an absolute benchmark for the genre.

MK 11 REVIEW SERIES

Whilst debatably I probably shouldn’t have played the games during my childhood (age ratings etc please game responsibly kids), the series holds a fond place in my memories. That said, I grew up with the Mortal Kombat series. EVO 2019 certainly won’t be graced with my presence, that’s for sure.

MK 11 REVIEW WINDOWS

Learning timing windows and memorising ginormous combos are not my jam. Let’s just get this out the way – I’m somewhat of a filthy kasual when it comes to the genre. MK11 is an amazing game somewhat damaged by the modern effects of ‘games as a service’. It’s a package of two halves – an incredibly awesome story mode and super tight fighting mechanics, mixed with a brutally unrewarding grind for kosmetics. Mortal Kombat 11 is the kulmination of 27 years of glorious fighting game goodness.

Mk 11 review