I'm 32 and Mortal Kombat has been a game series that I have been playing pretty much my entire gaming life! I remember getting the first game on Sega, since that version had blood in it, and I have played every main line game in the series. MK9 changed things up and gave us an actual single player story that was damn good and MKX added to that by adding new characters who I think will be central characters in the coming years. That brings us to MK11 and man...what an awesome thing this is! It does have a few issues but this is my second favorite game of the year with only Kingdom Hearts 3 in front of it! I've been playing a lot of it since it came out and wanted to take my time before writing something about it.
I want to start with the story because it's so much damn nonsense and fun! It deals with time travel so we see characters meet their older selfs and seeing older Johnny Cage interact with young Cage is my favorite of those! The younger Cage makes a sex joke at one point in the story and older Cage basically grabs him by the ear and takes him out of the room and it's so great! The main villain is a new character named Kronika and she's pretty interesting. She sees Raiden messed up her vision of the timeline in MKX so she is gathering an army to correct it. She's not playable and I think that's a shame but hopefully she'll be free dlc down the road once they give people time to get the game and play though it. The story is pretty short but it's so much fun! The final chapter is fucking crazy and I loved every second with it.
Since it's a talking point I'll quickly talk about Ronda Rousey as Sonya Blade. I honestly didn't mind her in this game. Maybe it's because I'm a WWE fan and I've heard her on the mic for over a year but she was fine. Unless I'm remembering wrong, Sonya was never a super charismatic character. She has always been pretty stone faced and serious so it seemed like a natural fit for Ronda to play her. I know that articles are coming out about some of her past opinions that happened like 3 years ago but we won't get into that here. Was she amazing? No. Was she awful? No. Does she fit? In my opinion yes.
So let's dive into the meat of this game and talk about the fighting and the main stuff you do. Of course you can just play a match against the computer, they have the traditional towers that have been there since MK9 and they have the Towers of Time. These work like that multiverse stuff worked in Injustice 2 if you played that. They basically are all on a timer and rotate out after a certain amount of time. They are pretty challenging but you get the best rewards from them. Some of them are focused on a particular character and it's a good way to get character specific loot. You can also pay some in-game koins to get character specific towers anytime you want.
Another huge change they have made is to the Krypt. It's basically a third-person adventure game. You go around opening chests and solving puzzles to open up the next area and it's pretty cool. The best part about it is that it's all on Shang Tsung's island and Cary-Hisoyuki Tagawa, who played the character in the 1995 movie, voices him and is the character model for him. There are some really cool moments if you are like me and a huge fan of that movie! I recognized so many locations and seeing them this many years later was awesome! It can be a bit grindy to get stuff but they have a patch out now that gives you more stuff per match and it seems better than it was at launch.
I really haven't played a fighting game online much since MKX but the net code in this game has been very good so far and a good bit better than MKX. I've played a few matches that have had lag but only like 2 matches out of around 60 or so. I've mainly been playing one-on-one but they have ranked, King of the Hill and a tournament on the way in a month. Even if you are like me and use wi-fi there's no need to worry, the connection is a solid one and I'm very impressed with that!
Before I get to the negatives I wanted to talk about some of the changes to the base game and the loot. They have two sets of bars on the screen and one is for enhancing moves and the other is for defensive moves. It's more clear what they are for than the previous game. They also added a Fatal Blow that you can activate when you get to below 1/3 health and these are a literal game changer. They replace the X-Ray moves of the past games and they deal heavy damage. They can kill if used on someone with around 1/3 of their health. They are brutal and some are more gruesome than Fatalities. The loot works like it did in Injustice 2 and you get it just by playing the game, opening chests in the Krypt, and doing the Towers of Time. Each character has a ton and will take you a long time to get it all! I also want to add that the game doesn't revolve around combos like MKX did. Of course they are still a big part of the game but it has a slower pace and let's you be able to compete even if you don't know many combos and I think that's for the best! I also want to say that I kind of like the AI Battle option. You basically pick 3 fighters to fight a team of 3 from someone on your friends list or a random person. You get rewards and you can customize their fighting style they have. So if you want them to be aggressive you can make them that way. You can also level up loot by doing that and some loot pieces can only be obtained in the AI Battle. You can also let the AI fight in towers and it's an easy way to get koins and level up!
I want to talk about a few negatives I have with the game. I mentioned that the loot can be a bit of a grind and that's an issue. Like for real, it could take playing the game till the end of the year to get it all and that's an insane. When you open up a chest in the Krypt it's random stuff outside of a few select ones so you never know what you will get. There are micro transactions in the game but they are for a currency called Time Crystals and you can buy things from the store with them. The things in the store reset every day so it gives you a reason to log on everyday at least I guess. You can earn Time Crystals in game but it takes a while to get enough to buy things since skins cost about 500 and you get 10-15 when leveling up. I also don't like that some characters are being held off until dlc. They have said that Shang Tsung is the first dlc character but he's been a staple of the series since it started and I'm not sure how I feel about putting him as dlc. You also see Sektor and Cyrax in the story but they aren't playable either. It's a bummer cause I've always loved them! I'm also not big on the new character Kollector. He has an interesting look but that's about it. In the story they say that he's been at Shao Kahn's side the whole time but this is the first we are seeing him and...yeah whatever I guess...time travel!
So all in all I love this game and I feel it's the best playing MK game of the modern era with a ton of content! I've been playing it a ton since it came out and I'll keep playing everyday for a while cause I just can't stop! Definitely game of the year material in my opinion!
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