Mortal Kombat 11 Review – IGN

By Mitchell Saltzman

When it was introduced for the first time 27 years ago, Mortal Kombat has always been known as "this fighting game where people's heads are torn out". More known for his coolness and violence than for his gameplay. Things have changed since then, as MK9 and MKX have improved the quality of play in order to cope with the quality of the violence. Mortal Kombat 11, which is not only the best Mortal Kombat game in history, is arguably the best game of all time. It's one of the most complete fighting games you can buy, with one or more player modes that will last a very long time, for both casual and hardcore viewers.

The quality that characterizes Mortal Kombat among the 2D fighters is that his fight is centered around two keystrokes, two keystrokes and a blocking button. It's actually more unique than it looks. While other 2D fighters usually have a combination of mild, medium and / or heavy attacks, weaker attacks binding to stronger attacks, Mortal Kombat does not have this concept. Instead, MK uses a "dial-a-combo" system that requires knowledge of very specific button combinations to create a combo. It's certainly not an ultra-accessible combat system for newcomers, but fortunately Mortal Kombat 11 comes with one of the best combat game tutorials I've ever played. It covers everything from the basics to the most advanced techniques such as frame traps, imprisonment and block chains, while highlighting key concepts and clear instructions on implementation. of these techniques.

Mortal Kombat 11 retains all these unique mechanisms that give his identity to this series and, of course, to the gloriously gratuitous and often comical violence of his famous fatality. However, all this surrounds new combat systems that look nothing like the series. Mortal Kombat 11 is much better for its willingness to take these bold steps to keep cool.

In a certain way, the less it is, and the faster it is not always better. For this purpose, Netherrealm has significantly slowed the action compared to the latest games, especially compared to Mortal Kombat X, focused on the hyper-rushdown. The racing button is gone, travel speeds have been reduced at all levels and both advanced and advanced combo ropes are much rarer. At first, I was not a big fan of how slow Mortal Kombat 11 felt, but the longer I put in, the more I began to understand how these seemingly small changes were adding up to change the running of a match in a great way. . With a greater emphasis on cautious positioning and punishment by smell and less on a total blitz to impose your 50/50 game, the fights feel more tactical and rewarding than a smart game.

Mortal Kombat 11 also radically changes how meter management works by splitting it into two. The defensive counter is mainly used for special wake-up options, interactive interactions in the environment and a revolutionary movement called break. The Offensive Counter is used to amplify your special moves to make them safe, increase their damage, open up combo opportunities, and more.

The best thing about the split, however, is the fact that it allows the Fatal Shots – a powerful hit capable of inflicting 35% damage on its own – to exist independently of the meter. Fatal shots are often extremely fast and hard to respond to, but this is counterbalanced by the fact that you only get one per game. If even a player has saved him, the last moments of each close fight of Mortal Kombat 11 are extremely tense – almost like an old West stalemate.

Krushing Blows is the best new addition to the Mortal Kombat 11 fights. These special critical hits are activated automatically, but only when certain criteria are met: for example, each character has a Krushing Blow tied to his or her uppercut who s & # 39; 39 will activate if it hits as a marker or punishes a high attack. If the uppercuts can not usually be used as combos, this is a Krushing Blow uppercut that propels the opponent in the air and opens it to a great juggle of tracking without costing a meter.

There is so much to love about this mechanism, even on its surface, it is very satisfying to see an otherwise normal punch causing a complete bone explosion in your opponent's body. However, at a higher level, the addition of Krushing Blows adds another level of depth to each character and rewards a deep mastery of his movements. It's also a limited resource, because you can only use Krushing's shot of every move once per game. It is therefore a huge advantage to learn the requirements of each Krushing shot to maximize their effectiveness.

Time Kombat

The fighting games in the Netherlands have always been the best to offer story modes that are essentially the equivalent of absurd video games from popcorn movies, and Mortal Kombat 11 is no exception to this rule. He does not have any new video gaming innovations, but his six hours are big, bombastic, well played (apart from Rousey's portrayal of Sonya Blade by Rousey, who seems terribly inexperienced), and ridiculous of all. manners. But more importantly, he fleshes out the entire list and gives each character a little time in the spotlight.

The story continues where MKX stopped (watch my Mortal Kombat story recap video to catch him before diving) and quickly introduce a new revolutionary character: Kronika, an almighty being with a control of time that trace the path of another imminent reset of the timeline, due to the upheaval by Raiden of the balance between good and evil with his beheading of the ancient god Shinnok.

All this sets up the amusing scenario of the fusion of the past and the present and makes it possible to live very great moments where the characters of the present are confronted with their past. In addition, there are cases where characters from the past are confronted with the harsh reality of what awaits them in their future. The Johnny Cages steal the show with their witty jokes and the general juxtaposition of their two very different personalities, but there's also a handful of fantastic character building moments featuring fighters who traditionally have not had much time to the screen, Jade in particular.

Krypt Raider

The Mortal Kombat 11 characterization resembles the natural and generally stellar evolution and interbreeding of the Mortal Kombat X variation system and the Injustice 2 gear system. The amount of customizable options for each character is absolutely stunning, each character having at least 60 skins, 90 pieces of customizable equipment and a selection of 10 techniques to add to their core skill set. To be fair, most skins are just colors of default outfits, but no matter, there are a multitude of ways to make your fighter stand apart when you play online. The problem is how to access it, which is usually not the right time.

Some of these items can be unlocked by playing in the story mode, but most of them are achieved through the timers and Krypt, two modes that go hand in hand. Mortal Kombat 11's Krypt, like those of previous Mortal Kombat games, is a huge dungeon filled with treasure chests that require some kind of currency to open. This time, the loot is random, which poses a big problem because there is so much unwanted loot. You can open an expensive chest in the hope of finding a new fatality, a skin, a character intro or a brutality, and end up with a handful of speed increases for a character you do not use, consumables from the junk food tower, conceptual art, etc. additional currency. There are elements of puzzle solving and Easter eggs in Krypt, but it's actually an explosive dungeon of surprise boxes and occasional fears, and it's a disappointment.

Then there's the Time Towers, a set of theme-unified challenges, and it's in this mode that Mortal Kombat 11's biggest problem lies. Some of the tricks use modifiers that make fighting very difficult. difficult to play. Imagine trying to win the fight against an opponent who starts with twice your health, while having to deal with a constant torrent of projectiles and support characters. Or an opponent who will shock you to stay close to him for more than a second or two. It's a challenge, of course, but it's more frustrating than fun.

You can use various consumables to give you a chance to fight and they make fighting impossible otherwise impossible to overcome. But frustrating tactics such as projectile or consumable spam are frustrating to say the least.

Another problem is character-specific tricks, which are the best places to unlock material specifically for the character you love to play. For some reason, some rounds of stall are blocked until you perform an arbitrary and repetitive task, such as hitting 50 rounds, cutting 50 rounds or 75 rounds (!), Which adds nothing to a useless obstacle. . Finishing the tricks themselves is already a difficult task, so it's ridiculous to have to grind something else. To make matters worse, the rewards are random, so you can not even get anything that would make the time or effort worthwhile.

Fortunately, all the tricks are not terrible. Some of the gadgets are fun, like having to fight with the screen that turns black every few seconds and manage to break the monotony of ordinary matches. And, as they refresh regularly with new challenges, you can always switch to a different tower if the one on which you are stuck is zero.

Taking online

With such a deeply unsatisfactory progression, it's the great online mode that will really make me come back several months from now. Mortal Kombat 11 is one of the best netcode I have ever experienced in a fighting game. Even matches against two-bar wifi connections have little or no lag, which is remarkable, which is remarkable given the difficulties that other games have experienced in these conditions.

All the expected options are here: you can play ranked, casual or King of the Hill matches, but you can also play strange matches of artificial intelligence where you pit a team of your own custom characters against one another and watch her face. for rewards. You can improve your fighters in this mode with special increases and even define their artificial intelligence behavior, but there is not much else besides a way to make Mortal Kombat 11 work while getting some rewards.

The way character customization is handled in the ranked game is interesting. You can define your cosmetics the way you want them, but each character has two predefined competition variants to choose from. What is strange is that these variations do not exist as predefined variations elsewhere than in the competitive game. So it's strange that you really have to create them yourself if you want to train with them. It's also a bit disappointing that you can not customize your game sets into ranked games, especially since some of the best and most efficient moves, like Scorpion's Misery Blade, for example, are not usable. at all in the rankings. Fortunately, the occasional playlist allows you to use whatever you want, and unlike Injustice 2, there is no improvement in equipment-related statistics, so everyone is on an equal footing. .