Mortal Kombat 11
It has been a while! Work has kicked in with a vengeance and my platinum hunt has been put on hold. But, I thought that I really should get this gory love story finished.
Also, 60th Platinum!
Toasty!!!
The Game
Much like Doom, Mortal Kombat is a game that has been a part of my life since I was a child (I didn't only play violent video games, I promise). I have fond memories of playing the arcade version inside a 'Lazer Zone' and spending all my pocket money on ripping my friends' heads off. Also, since it was out of the house, I had no issues with my mother being traumatised at what her young son was playing. Fond memories.
Since then, I have always had a soft spot for this easter-egg-ridden splatter-fest.
Let's start with the graphics.
I will admit that I have a high tolerance for graphical shortcomings in fighting games. Growing up with Soulblade, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat solidified my opinion of gameplay>graphics. With this being said, MK11 has come a long way from its humble origins! The graphics are superb with every drop of blood being painstakingly animated and rendered. Of course, this makes the fatalities super-gory but hey, who doesn't want that? The characters look great, the levels look full and vibrant, and the game engine gets to show off its stuff during the fights. No complaints here.
Another big plus for me is the sound. The sound effects are all spot-on and it's obvious that the sound team has taken a lot of time in building the sonic profile for each character. Frost's biomechanical body has sharp, metallic "shings" in her blades, Jax's fist has a satisfying "CLUNK", and Scorpion's fire attacks make a lovely crackle when you set someone aflame. It's also all done in a way that you don't get overwhelmed by sound when fighting. Audio cues are integral to a game's enjoyment and MK11 has nailed it.
So, this brings me to the gameplay...
If you look at it one way, the game is almost the same as every other MK game except with a few added extras. It's a fighting game: You press buttons, do some special attacks, win (or lose). I am familiar with the formula and I am happy that they stuck to it. The fighting is smooth and I love the Fatal Blow mechanic (some of them also look amazing). The fatalities are also exactly how you would expect them to be: over the top (let's be fair, some of them define the term "overkill"). My main gripe lies in the sheer amount of things that there are to do in this game. You have a story mode, local fights, online (with lots of different modes available), AI simulators, The Krypt, Training, extensive Kustomisation, Klassic Towers, Towers of Time, Character Towers...
I feel exhausted typing it out!
I know that it seems ungrateful to be complaining about a game being full of content but it made me a little overwhelmed on starting the game as this is the level of variation that I see on an RPG rather than a fighting game. With this being said, the modes are explained in great detail and I enjoyed the towers and their Konsumables.
The platinum
I am sorry to say, but this platinum is grind-city. On one hand, you will have a lot of fun exploring the fatalities and trying out the different game modes but on the other hand, the long grind will put a lot of players off this platinum. I can also say right now that I am usually terrible at fighting games but this is one that I was able to platinum without too much of an issue. The roadmap was quite confusing at first but hopefully, this will clear some stuff up.
Another huge plus is that you can let the AI fight most of the battles for you! I know that this could be frowned upon in the community but it cuts down on some of the grind needed for the trophies.
My go-to guide for this was https://www.powerpyx.com/mortal-kombat-11-trophy-guide-roadmap/
My roadmap consisted of:
- Complete the tutorial trophies
- Collect 5 severed heads (see below)
- During the completion of the above trophy, I always added a konsumable to the character
- Complete 2 fatalities for each character
- Complete brutalitiy and mercy trophies
- Finish the online trophies
- Complete the Krypt trophies
- Complete 5 character towers for the character intros
- Mop up individual trophies that I had missed.
I will say, the trophies make you play and explore each character and it was fun to see everyone's fatalities. The brutality trophy also made me play around with other brutalities and I found myself having a lot of fun whilst trying to minimise the grind. I also hate to say it but even the online was pretty fun! It was nice to have online trophies that made me get into the game but didn't force me to sink an unholy amount of time into the game.
Overall, it was an enjoyable platinum but I dont think that I would have enjoyed it if the option for the AI control didnt exist. I am fortunate enough to have had a couple of months working from home so I was intoxicated by the novelty of watching the AI complete my grind for me. Maye, I am a bad person, maybe I am protective of my time, or maybe...just maybe...I take the advantage when it is given to me. Who knows?
So, before I talk about the notable trophies, I want to talk about:
Severed heads/Character Victories
You get severed heads from performing 25 fatalities against a single character. Once you achieve the 25, you get the head. Impaling the head in the Krypt will land you with a character victory (5 of those count towards the trophy).
My method for getting these kills revolved around using the AI. I loaded up an endless tower and whoever was first in line was the poor sap about to be murdered. I enabled AI and let my character fight. Once the "Finish Him/Her" came up, my AI character could then land a fatality. Once the next fight loaded, I quit the tower I was on BUT DID NOT QUIT TO THE MAIN MENU SCREEN. This meant that the tower reset and I could fight my victim again. If you quit back to the main menu then the player order would reset and you would lose your victim. Another bonus of this method is that quitting the tower once the second match loads counts as a tower victory! I managed to get around 175 towards my 250 from this alone.
This may sound like a boring grind but being able to let the game chug away in the background was quite fun. I don't usually want an AI to complete trophies for me but 250 towers is an insane grind and quite frankly, it was a form of protest on my part!
On a final note, the question of "will my AI character always do a fatality?" comes up a lot and I can give some data on that! I noted the kills of my AI fights for a couple of the heads and this is what I logged (I used Total Kahn):
Total Kahn - Sonya - FR, F, N, F, F, F, F, N, FR, F, F, F, F, F, B, F, N, F, F, F, FR, N, F, N, F, F, F, F, F, F, F, F, F, N,
Total Kahn - Jonny Cage - F, FR, FR, F, F, N, F, F, FR, F, FR, FR, F, F, F, FR, F, F, F, FR, FR, F, F, F, F, N, N, F
As you can see, the rate of fatalities is quite high (62% overall). This also meant that I was able to grind out a significant portion of the tower trophies along with the heads.
Once you get a severed head, you also unlock the victory for the character. Do not forget to equip it!
Character Intros/Character Towers
This was the most enjoyable part of the game for me. I loved the character towers and the difficulty was challenging without being too frustrating...all except for Kronika. MK11 has some excellent features and characters but Kronika was not an enjoyable boss. Her design and lore is underwhelming (although I do love a bit of time travel) and her fighting style is infuriating. Kronika seems to be immune to every form of grab/throw/combo/special and she constantly teleports everywhere whilst throwing out unblockable moves which destroys your health bar in seconds. My only reliable way of beating her was to spam uppercuts and jump-kick her. At first, I thought that I was being cheap but this seems to be a common tactic in the Kronika-hating community. If you ignore Kronika then the character towers are a great addition and the various affixes to fights added a level of difficulty which was adaptable and fun.
Notable trophies
This one was so tedious. I managed to get around 2 and then I forgot about them for the rest of the game and had to grind them all at the end. Bad mistake. Big tip: every time you go in the Krypt, pull down anybody that you can see, it will make things easier in the end!
I thought that this would be a grind but it ended up being hilarious. Some of the konsumables were absurd and it was hilarious to have a zombie head, a chicken on a missile, a massive bone hand, and an oversized party popper joining the fight to help you. I would even go as far as to say that some konsumables made a lot of the tower fights trivial as they were so overpowered. Use them and have fun with them, you won't regret it.
I feel that I have to cover this again to show how ridiculous a grind this trophy can be. If the game had not counted a 1-match tower as a tower completion then this trophy would have taken weeks/months of grinding to complete. I am not a fan of a trophy that a designer has to put a back-door to in order for it to not be completely ridiculous to complete. Even with this workaround, it took a fair amount of time to achieve!
There is only one trophy that strikes fear into my very soul and that is an online trophy in a fighting game. I am usually TERRIBLE at online fighters! But for some reason, MK11 clicked with me and I ended up having a 67% win-rate (on Frost)! Honestly, by the 30th game, I was getting into each fight and I was enjoying learning people's fighting styles and how to beat characters. Granted, some people stomped me but hats-off to the matchmaking system, it really works.
This is notable as it is so unnecessary. You will find yourself gaining a LOT of koins and trust me, you will not struggle to open 200 chests. The only thing you will struggle with is the very act of opening 200 chests! I blitzed it as one of my final trophies. If you want to, you can spread the load and do them as you go along but you will get bored, I assure you.
A solid addition to the franchise that is enjoyable but with no huge shocks or frills
With AI: Short. Without AI: LONG. I think that I racked up around 50 hours of gameplay and that was with the AI helping me through the fatalities
This was good platinum to get and I enjoyed some of the features but there was the grind and the unneeded additions that brought it down to a six. Without the AI help, I probably wouldn't have even attempted it.
Decent without being too memorable. The menu music is unobtrusive but nothing had me humming along.
The arenas were diverse and busy with a lot of opportunities to interact with the background. Some of the moves were just plain gross (I'm looking at you, cactus)
Smooth combat with a good moveset. The game allows you to do well by only learning a few key combos whilst also allowing you to delve right into split-second frame-learning. Truly something for every type of player
The story was a bit too much for me. I liked the individual character stories and some were stronger than others but I never found myself diving head-first into the lore of the universe. Kudos to the designers for the sheer amount of information that they supplied but it wasn't for me.
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