Mortal Kombat (2011)

Mortal Kombat has a reputation and rightfully so. It is violent, bloody and overall, just brutal. This review is for the 2011 release, known as Mortal Kombat 9.

In the game, you follow a dark and sinister story, which is direct follow-up of the events of the Armageddon war, which destroyed and wiped out almost all the warriors in the realms. Only Raiden and Shao Khan, who is the cause of the destruction, remain. In their final battle, Raiden is easily overpowered by Shao Khan, and sends a message to his past self via his magic amulet with the message “He must win”. This refers to Liu Khan, who is the only one that can save the realms.

After a long journey with a lot of revenge killing, side stories and character introductions, Shao Khan is defeated by Liu Khan. Raiden vows to rebuild the world, along with the friends he made along the way but immediately after that vow Quan Chi, who teamed up with Shao Khan in the past, reveals that the death of Shao Khan was all part of the plan to take over all the realms for himself and his master Shinnok, the root of all evil. This spawned the plot for Mortal Kombat X in 2015.

There is so much to do in Mortal Kombat. You can play the story mode, in which you play as many different characters throughout your adventure. You can play online or with friends in one on one battles or tag team battles. In the tag team battles, you can actually play with four people on the same screen, unlike Tekken. New attacks come available in this mode, which are special tag team combos that are, like the rest of the moves, really hard to pull off.

Then there is the challenge tower. A literal tower with over three hundred different challenges to complete. These challenges are called “Test your (X)”, which can consist of Might, Sight, Strike, Luck and more. In the challenges themselves, you must destroy a series of blocks with a certain condition, in a given amount of time. It is really cool and grants you the possibility to earn some in game cash that you can use to unlock items and cosmetic gear in the store.

The mechanics and combat feel fluent but take some time to get used to, especially when one is used to the Tekken fight style and controls. Jumps are faster, higher and all over the place.

When talking controls, they are fine and fluent like mentioned, but they still feel a little slippery if that makes sense. This is mainly because of the jump mechanics. When jumping, you can move your character like some sort of pinball through the air, making your placement back on the ground a little tricky.

The graphics are nice and detailed. The character models all look spot on. In terms of animations, Mortal Kombat nails it. The fight moves, punches, roundhouse kicks and grapples all look amazing.

The music is grim and dark, perfectly fitting for this game. What sets it apart, are the sound effects. Hits feel very realistic and the satisfying punch and grunt sounds are just great. It is sound design like this that really enhance the experience.

The new X-Ray move feature is awesome. When in battle, you power up your meter by damaging your opponent or taking damage yourself. When the meter is full, you perform a bone breaking series of attacks, which shows actual bones being broken and shattered in X-ray vision, dealing massive damage in the process. It looks awesome and never gets old.

Of course, you also got the traditional fatality moves. They are as brutal, unique and violent as ever, and the practice mode, which teaches you how to perform them, is a God gift, because they are really hard to pull off and now, you can finally learn them properly.

One thing I did not like at all in this game is the jump scares from the cemetery/burial site hub. In this hub, you can view artwork, play mini games, unlock items with in game currency and much more. However, once in a while, some sort of zombie demon .jpeg will jump in front of the screen, releasing a deafening scream. I needed to be reanimated back to life the first time I saw this mother… After that, I became on edge, uneasy and filled with some kind of fear, wondering when the next time would be that this b!tch would pop-up again. As far as I could find, there is no way to stop it. Call me a dweeb, but this stuff is not necessary in a game like this and I freaking hate jump scares.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed Mortal Kombat and would recommend it to everyone.