Review of Mortal Kombat 2011

If somebody told me five years ago that Mavel vs. Capcom 3 was going to be a accessible fighting game rather than a game that appeals only to the fighting elite and that Mortal Kombat was going to be a technical fighter suitable for tournament play, I would have laughed my ass off. But here we are in 2011, the year when the FBI finally declassified the existence of aliens, making this officially the year when pigs fly and all that never seemed possible actually happens.
After Mortal Kombat 3, the series began to focus more on graphics than gameplay and as a result alienated many of the series' original fans, turning Mortal Kombat into the bane of the hardcore fighting game community. By the time that the developers actually made a real genuine competitive fighting engine, it was unfortunately a marketing abomination that nobody wanted which ended up being the final nail in the coffin for a struggling Midway Games. Fast-forward to 2011 and forget over a decade worth of sub-par Mortal Kombat games. Mortal Kombat 2011 is everything that Mortal Kombat 4 and later should have been.

MK2011 plays like an evolution of Mortal Kombat 3 with a few new quirks thrown in that the series should have incorporated a long time ago. The game now includes a meter that allow for EX moves and super combos which were ignored by the series for years but have finally made their way into Mortal Kombat. The results are surprisingly good for ideas that the dev team didn’t try out until recently given how the flow of every match is determined by how a player uses the super meter. While EXing specials for increased speed and damage among other effects is useful, the ability to end a combo with a super is probably the most satisfying part of MK2011. Supers not only hit for an insane amount of damage, they also show the insides of your opponent shattering as intestines rupture, skulls break open and spinal cords are snapped. When used well in a combo, these attacks can drain over half your enemy's health.

Ramming home the mix of old and new would be the returning roster of classic characters without any new additions to the roster as well as classic stages and remixed music of previous MK games. Fans who abandoned the series after MK4 will feel more at home with the new MK than players who began with the previous console generation's games which may alienate some fans but more than likely they'll be won over the the presentation and solid gameplay despite the loss of 3D movement. While on the topic of nostalgia, both the, “Toasty” guy and babalities make a return, some of the latter are strangely adorable and a nice break from the extreme violence of the game's fatalities.

What's also great is that a game with this large of a roster manages to actually be as diverse as it is. Each character plays completely differently. Whether you want to projectile spam with Shang Tsung or Reptile or focus on grappling with Jax, every single fighter archetype is represented with most characters being some sort of hybrid. The cast is for the most part well balanced with very few exploitable abilities that I could find and every character having a significant weakness that can be exploited.

The graphics are every bit as impressive as the gameplay. Every single character is rendered both internally and externally, making the fatalities and supers as great to look at as they are gruesome. Meanwhile, the amount of detail put into each character model is also impressive. Characters deform over the course of the fight as eyes are ripped out of their sockets and muscle tissue becomes exposed while special effects are loaded with particles which only further proves that MK2011 is the best looking fighting game on this console generation yet. For as good as everything in this game looks, the best looking things in game are actually Kung Lao and Kitana's faces. They aren't as attractive as Liu Kang and Sonya's but they're certainly the most detailed face models that I've ever seen in any game.

The story mode is honestly better than I expected it to be. After suffering through abysmal writing in the previous two Mortal Kombats I was truly prepared for the worst but was thankfully proven wrong. The characters each have a distinct personality that is represented even better than in Mortal Kombat: Deception. I'm happy to see after years of neglect that the developers actually care about the lore gain. The story isn't as good as Blazblue's but it's on par with Soul Calibur IV's and certainly surpasses that of Street Fighter IV's bare bones storyline. The only downside is that some of the two on one fights and the final boss are incredibly unfair which means that new players who aren't familiar with fighting games would be better off playing the arcade mode to get used to the way the game plays before tackling the campaign.

The single player options are incredibly robust for a fighting game. In addition to the campaign and arcade modes, there's a Challenge Tower that is a series of 300 modified fights and odd minigames that should take at least a weekend to complete, a handful of which are incredibly challenging but most are simply fun diversions for players who bore of the vanilla game. Then there’s the return of the Krypt which was sadly missing from MKvsDC. It's great to be able to unlock additional content over the course of the game and not have everything available to me right off the bat. Sadly the rewards are only divided into concept art, music, costumes and additional fatalities, leaving none of the fun joke items from Deadly Alliance in the game but being able to unlock additional content is always a nice feature even if the rewards begin to feel predictable over time. Still, it's a good addition to the game and it's good to have it back even if it feels like it's been scaled back form what it once was.

Getting used to MK2011 is easy thanks to the solid controls which manage to work well with the 360's control stick. While there is definitely room for hardcore players to pull of ten hit combos, two newbies can still have just as much fun with the game by throwing projectiles at each other for the entire match. The game is as deep as those playing want it to be and it's suited well for both casual and hardcore playing although a more skilled player who invests more time with the game will utterly destroy a newbie who's picked up the game for the first time.

MK2011 also introduces a new tag mode where two players can play though arcade mode together or four players can trade blows during the same match without a need to pass the controller. Tag team works surprisingly well given that it's only been a feature of a handful of fighters in the past, with four player 2D fighters being even more of a rarity outside of Super Smash Bros. The ability to coordinate with a partner adds a new level of strategy to the game that most fighters lack and really helps this title stand out form the stiff competition from Namco, Capcom and Arc System Works.

Sadly, every rose has its thorns and in this case it's the online mode. While the online gameplay features some great ideas like King of the Hill mode which simulates the feeling of having a party at your place, it's made unplayable by lag. I found myself in nearly every online match not being able to perform combos that I could easily pull off offline, not because of a delay but because my button presses simply wouldn’t register. The lag is simply that bad. It's a shame since Blazblue had an absolutely perfect netcode and Super Street Fighter II HD Remix was almost as good in that regard. This makes MK2011's enjoyment dependent on how many gamer friends you have. If you're a hermit, you'll likely be turned off by the lousy and unreliable online mode while more social gamers will get months if not not more than a year of enjoyment from MK2011. In an age where the longevity of a fighting game depends on its online modes, MK2011 desperately needs a patch if it hope to have any sort of lasting impact which is a shame since the offline gameplay is just that good and MK2011 is bound to make a strong showing at both EVO and East Coast Throwdown this summer.

Lag issues aside, MK2011 is one of the best fighting games available for this generation of consoles . The fighting engine is solid, the roster balanced and the single player modes are surprisingly rewarding with more content than can be packed into a weekend and it only gets better with a friend. For those who's appetite wasn't sated by Blazblue and Street Fighter IV and want to play a polished, competitive balanced fighter or those who want to see the graphics processing power of the current console generation pushed to the limit, look no further.

Pros

+ Balanced yet diverse roster,

+ Strong single player mode

+ Four player tag team is a blast

+ Intricate yet accessible fighting system

+ Genuinely good story

+ Challenge Tower is as amusing and often funny as it is fun

Cons

- Cheap final boss

- Laggy netcode

- The kypt could use more depth

9.1/10