Mortal Kombat 11

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local, Local Wireless), 2-8 Tournament (Online)

.

Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Mortal Kombat 11 is of course the latest in the long line of hyper-violent Fighting Games, released on multiple platforms in 2019, including Nintendo Switch. The game has been re-packaged twice in the time since it launched, first as Mortal Kombat: Aftermath Kollection, and then as Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate, with each successive version containing more content (though those who bought prior versions could of course pay for that content separately as DLC. However, no matter which version of the game you get, expect to do a lot of grinding or pay for microtransactions to unlock most of the game’s content.

When it comes to how this game looks on the Nintendo Switch, the word that comes to mind is “compromised”. In short, the Nintendo Switch version of the game is damn ugly, featuring some pretty horrible aliasing (especially in Krypt mode) as well as nasty framerate issues in spots, plus there’s an odd sort of shimmering with some characters’ hair. It’s a shame too, because these graphical issues aside, Mortal Kombat 11 is a pretty well-presented game, with its story mode in particular featuring tons of engaging cutscenes with superb voice acting.

As for the gameplay itself… this is Mortal Kombat, all right. This entry in the series introduces “Fatal Blows”, a special one-time high-power move you can do when your character is at low health. There are a few other additions here too, like “Krushing Blows” that add extra damage on to special moves. However, at its core, this is still more or less the same Mortal Kombat gameplay series fans are used to. And while this time around, the game does provide players with a whole slew of customization options… but of course that goes hand-in-hand with the mess of microtransactions I mentioned earlier.

One note regarding online play. The matches I played in online seemed good, with a solid connection, but it’s clear that at this point there aren’t many players in the lobbies, as matchmaking kept insisting on pairing me with opponents who were way, way out of my league. Unless you’re a Kombat veteran or have friends to play with locally, there’s not much for you here.

Finally, a bit of a warning to those looking to get the game and considering whether to get it in digital format or physical. This game is a massive 20GB-40GB in size depending on just how much of the expanded content you’re looking to get. This is deceptively hidden in much of the information Nintendo provides on the game, which claims the game is only 6.54GB (this was never really true – the game had a 15.9GB day one patch upon release). Don’t expect buying a physical cartridge to help either, as the game cartridge for Mortal Kombat 11 is only 8GB big and only contains the initial 6.54GB, meaning that even those who buy the physical version will have the majority of the game sitting on their MicroSDXC card or Nintendo Switch’s internal memory. Because of this, I do not recommend this game to anyone who has not already bought a sizeable MicroSDXC card.

In the end, Mortal Kombat 11 on Nintendo Switch seems to have issues in every corner beyond its core gameplay. Between its terrible graphics, absurd microtransactions, lack of variety of online opponents, and massive file size, there’s little here for anyone save for fans of the series who absolutely need to play the latest game on the go. Everyone else is better off keeping their distance from this one.

tl;dr – Mortal Kombat 11 is the latest hyper-violent game in the long-running Fighting Game series, and while the core gameplay remains intact, the graphics are an ugly mess, the online lobbies are too empty to provide evenly-matched opponents, and the game is overburdened with microtransactions. Unless you’re a die-hard series fan with no other platforms to play the game, leave this one in the krypt.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}