Ed Boon went wild and added loot boxes for a thousand dollars!

The new iteration of the legendary fighting game was unlucky to come out in 2019. It’s not his fault that AAA corporations have taught the active gaming community to live in a state of treason. I would like this fact to be exaggerated and not exclude a bit of drama, but, alas. These are the times we live in. At some stage of its development, the industry clearly took a wrong turn, and I, who dropped out of its life for a year due to the call of duty, had to feel the entire difference in potentials in one moment and without anesthesia. Mortal Kombat 11 wasn’t ready. It’s no joke, but at the release he somehow managed to accumulate around himself the discontent of all currently existing topical categories. Result – custom Metacritic.

MK11 was accused, it seems, of all mortal sins, and so that it doesn’t seem like I’m exaggerating again, I’ll restore an approximate chronicle of events. Players were outraged that the faces of the female characters did not meet beauty standards, and their uniforms were very different from what was in the 9th part of the series, which, for a minute, was released almost 10 years ago. Now the sexuality of the characters, as shown for the first time by Scarlet, was hidden behind layers of clothing. And everything would be fine, but precisely indulging the warriors for social justice, SJW, played a major role in shaping public opinion. Then the minorities themselves expressed dissatisfaction, because the actress who gave the voice to Sonya Blade (Ronda Rousey), formerly a famous MMA fighter, at one time she refused to fight with a transgender. This, I dare say, did not please both the transgender people themselves and the aforementioned SJWs. Do you remember the news that all in-game content in MK11 can be unlocked for several thousand greenbacks?? And at the start it turned out that the difficulty of the towers of time was turned up to the maximum, and the farming of resources for new skins was reduced to catastrophically low levels. And as if this were not enough, the PC version of the game also did not start for a huge number of people, NetherRealm Studios accused of having brutal working conditions, but the entire Crypt of the game was dubbed one big loot box. Of course, nothing could be purchased there for real money, but this did not stop individuals from firmly declaring that this would be fixed after release and quietly.

Maybe, due to my hobbies for 2D chicks, the reproductive instinct asked me to live long and my optic nerves atrophied, but Sonya is sexy and beautiful?

It’s all sad. But don’t think that all the material will be devoted to arguments about tolerance and microtransactions and refuting the above madness. This will take too much time and effort, but you can invest it in more pleasant things. For example, in the game itself. But I want to convey a simple idea – all this negative information noise does not have a solid foundation and could only be born in the environment where it was born. In an environment where it already exists Battlefield 5, Fallout 76 and other AAA-cces projects, the entire creative focus of which is aimed at the in-game store. Yes, the Steam version of the game did not launch, but the developers quickly fixed the problem. The community pointed out that the rewards for the game were weak and the difficulty was prohibitive – this has been fixed. The rest is not even worthy of comment, and therefore I ask you to consider the topic closed.

M11K is still a fighting game

This means that at a fundamental level it carries within itself one glaring contradiction. On the one hand, the game can be safely called the most technologically advanced and expensive representative of the genre without any reservations, on the other hand, this genre is infinitely niche. And I’m sure that the developers were faced with the task of minimizing losses from the dual nature of the game. How to make it so that the average person can enjoy a gameplay that is alien to them? How to make a player stay in the game for more than a couple of days, what ways can you captivate him? Naturally, first of all you need to do something with the combat system. Rework it in such a way that it will not be so difficult for new players to get used to it, and give experienced fighters more scope for their implementation in an eSports manner. NetherRealm did it.

Reduced overall game tempo. If after a long stay in MK11 you return or MKX, or in MK9, then the question will certainly arise – why so quickly?? Even too much. The decision to reduce speeds might not please experienced players, but this will be only their first impression, because it hardly affects the conditional e-sports, but it has a positive effect on the stay of casual players in the game. In conditions of reduced gravity they will simply be more comfortable. For example, it has become easier to enter the necessary commands. This allows even the least experienced player to consciously, which is important, carry out simple combinations, to feel like he is in the process, and not a passenger in it, who does it beautifully, but accidentally. Yes, of course, some things will still be random, but the rest, whatever one may say, is a matter of experience. The most important point that I would like to note here is that getting this very experience takes place in a comfortable environment and is captivating. And the process becomes exciting when the player sees the progression – if he begins to succeed in what he intended, when he begins to understand the importance of such aspects of the gameplay as distance, speed of animations and hitboxes, when, in principle, the game becomes clear to him. MK11 has no problems with this at all, because the young fighter’s course available here is comprehensive. First, the player attends a training session, where the basics are explained to him, then he goes through the story mode, and then he goes to try his hand at the towers of time. This is enough to start understanding the game at the most basic level.

After completing the training, you, of course, will not become a killing machine, but the information that is there should be enough to start a long and thorny path to greatness.

Old players who once actively played MKX will also have to get used to it, because a lot has changed. If you remember, earlier in the game it was possible to spend the entire scale, 3 meters, on a special special move, X-Ray, which took about 30% of the enemy’s health. This mechanic was reworked because it ended up being useless. What’s the point of using X-Ray, depriving yourself of the opportunity to save in a difficult situation, if you could inflict more impressive one-time damage from a combo, while maintaining the scale? Naturally, they didn’t use it on a serious level. In MK11, the scale system was redesigned, dividing it into two types: attack and defense; and the spectacular but useless X-Ray turned into Fatal Blow (FB) – the ability to deal a lot of damage in a match if you have little health. And you don’t even need energy. This works not only in words, but also in practice, because it allows you to change the outcome of the battle, even if the opponent has a big advantage, and the FB contest becomes a mandatory activity. Its presence or absence must be kept in mind.

Another innovation was Crushing Blow(CB). The bottom line is that some special moves or a series of attacks have a certain condition, when fulfilled, a lot of damage is inflicted with a spectacular animation of piercing the opponent’s insides. This is a very cool find, because the player now has small tasks that allow him to conduct a more effective battle with less resources, and specifically create the specified conditions. And on the contrary, the opponent should try to prevent him from doing this.

Interaction with the arena, unlike MKX, now requires one bar of protection. But the importance of such mechanics is emphasized by the corresponding, impressive animation.

To summarize the above, https://euromaniacasino.co.uk/ the combat system of MK11 has grown noticeably, becoming more understandable for a new player and deeper for an experienced player. Of course, this is still a very skill-dependent system that requires a large investment of time to comprehend, but, in my opinion, the developers did an excellent job of balancing the two contradictory principles of the game, mass and narrow focus. This does not guarantee, of course, that every player will like it and every player will find the strength to increase their combat power, but this is already specific to the genre. For very weak players who don’t want to understand, there is always Naruto Shippuden and dozens of other fighting games under the shonen license. Some are even good.

There’s still a story in the M11K

The plot of MK9 was interesting. It was interesting to watch familiar characters find themselves in familiar situations. But the key word here is “familiar”. Because, if you look at it objectively, then the story of the nine works exclusively for those who are already in the know – who watched the film, who played classic games and are basically familiar with Mortik. For a new player, the events there will mean absolutely nothing, and the character arcs characteristic of a simple narrative are either completely absent or poorly implemented. I will only note that part of the script responsible for the image of Kitana. There’s a buildup, there’s character development, there’s character action, there’s a conclusion. That’s why I consider Kitana’s story arc the best in the game, but it’s a one-time promotion.

MKX has grown significantly compared to the previous game, but was still weak. A little more than completely this was reflected in Cassie Cage. At the beginning of the game, the writers do their best to prepare the ground for conflict, and they succeeded, and then, and it’s a big mystery to me why, they simply forget about it. More specifically, in many actions, in many dialogues, Cassie appears before us as the current leader of the new defenders of the Earthrealm, but the problem is that she essentially fails to cope with her responsibilities. She’s a bad leader. Her comrades do not listen to her, she does not have the necessary knowledge and qualities. As a result, everything falls out of hands for the newly formed team. And how would a good screenwriter continue this arc?? He would put the character in a situation that would motivate him to become a good leader, which would give him the opportunity to study the enemy, coordinate with allies, learn diplomacy and become wiser. Instead, what happens happens, and her buildup remains hanging in the air. But, nevertheless, in global terms, the story now has a driving idea – the theme of family. And it is revealed through Sonya and Johnny. It is revealed very weakly and superficially, but in the previous part even this was not the case, so I consider it progress.

The MK11 story isn’t even a step forward. This is a direct flight into space from the medieval era, because the level of writing has grown very significantly. And if there’s anything to nitpick about, it’s the gameplay inside the story mode, which doesn’t provide the player with anything unique other than choosing the character you want to kick the next enemy’s ass with. But it’s not even about the plot.

An important attribute of any fighting game is its roster. All 25 characters from the original roster appear in story mode in one way or another. At the time of writing, it was replenished with Night Wolf, Shang Song and Terminator.

The concentration of information given to the player by the plot is very high. And this largely affects such a concept as “interesting”. After all, if, for example, a viewer watches a film and does not understand what is happening in it, he is unlikely to call it interesting. In the opposite case, when the viewer constantly receives some details about the plot and the context of what is happening in his head is always changing – there is simply no time left to get bored. The thought process is always at work, and the viewer thereby remains involved in the process. MK11 has a lot of humor, a lot of references, a lot of characters and a lot of events. There are very few empty dialogues about anything, so the involvement works 100%, but if you take into account the production here, the quality of the choreography and the scale, the result is quite obvious. There are practically no people left dissatisfied with the story mode, if you turn to popular bloggers on Youtube. Even the most toxic people speak about him in a purely positive way. The effect of a bomb exploding is produced, first of all, by the production, but even if we discard all the obvious things, it turns out that the story has become clearly structured.

Even the Chechens were afraid of them!

I think Ed Boon is lying a little when he says that his favorite character is Scorpio. Hanzo Hasashi has plenty of time to come into his own again and his arc is well written, but it just so happens that Kitana is in the game. And if I praised her arc in MK9, then here she has an even greater effect. I’ll tell you how it works. When Kitana first appears, it becomes clear why Shao Kahn created her clone, Mileena, in the first place. It turns out that Kitana never showed herself as a leader, and her adoptive father did not want to give power to such an indecisive daughter. And now, it seems, a cool buildup, the player roughly understands what should happen next, but no. This information is given very casually, and it is not perceived as a full-fledged foundation for further events, unlike, for example, the already mentioned Cassie Cage in MKX, where the information was given almost directly. And when Kitana’s chapter begins, and she gradually begins to reveal herself as a leader – you don’t even realize it, because the emphasis is all shifted somewhere to the side. “Wow, Jade was kidnapped, she’s being tortured by Scarlet… Wow, Shiva has changed a lot… Wow, it turns out the Tartakans have females!» This all leads to a rethinking of the context at the climax, when Kotal hands over the reins to Kitana and names her the new Kahn of Outworld. But it’s true that during the entire reign of Kotal, he failed to reconcile the warring races of the Outer World, but Kitana succeeded, and indeed, she used her ingenuity to deceive Scarlet and save Jage, but in reality, she proved herself to be an excellent diplomat in the dialogue with Shiva and Baraka. Result – Kitana becomes the new ruler. The most important thing that I would like to note here lies in two things:. Firstly, the twist hits hard and is a complete surprise, and secondly, all past events, it turns out, were leading up to this. This is really very strong screenwriting, and in such simple plots it’s also easy to end up either banal or simply implausible.

In the end, the story gains such powerful momentum that it resembles a real anime with an epic epic at the end, with mergers of megazords and conflicts on a cosmic scale.

But you need to understand that Kitana is far from the main character of the whole story. Its plot carries ideas of unity, and unity in MK11 is one of two driving ideas. And I could talk for a long time about all sorts of details about how cool the story mode functions, but I’ve already spoiled enough. Therefore, I will limit myself to only general phrases, but take my word for it. The plot is deep, in the context of an action movie, of course. The directing is excellent. The cameraman can be seen trying to use the playing space to surprise. Sometimes it even works out. The acting is believable. MK11 was the first in the series to use Motion Capture technology for facial animation. It looks very impressive and greatly influences immersion in the story, because it’s not the character models who are running and jumping on the screen, but, after all, the actors.

M11K is still a service game

By game-service I mean that the game is focused on online, and therefore needs constant support from its players. Updates are still being released for MK11, the entire first pack of DLC characters has been announced, which will appear soon, but if everything goes well, then the first pack will be followed by the second. For example, the Terminator T-800 in the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and new tournament variations for each character were recently added to the game, which made staying in the game even more interesting and the combat system wider.

In customization mode you can customize a lot of things. Starting from style icons to individual special moves.

I want to convey one idea here – fighting games cannot help but be services, because the gameplay is competitive and sessional in nature. Therefore, there is nothing bad in the fact that the game contains some mechanics designed to hold the player’s attention for more than ten hours. Moreover, when the essence of these mechanics is not to constantly suck money out of users’ wallets. All that can really be bought above the main price tag is new characters. The rest can be obtained quite simply, no matter how trivial it may sound, by playing the game. And there is no that famous grind, there are no loot boxes, there is no store where the player could buy everything by entering his credit card number. And this is the most important thing in understanding the local progression system. The one who plays better or plays more gets more. I think that’s fair.

M11K is still not perfect

In the final part I would like to be a toxic gamer and highlight some complaints about the game.

Despite the fact that there are no loot boxes, and money is unlikely to speed up the discovery of in-game content, there is still the question of the randomness of the progression system. At the release, in fact, players also expressed their dissatisfaction with this aspect. And they can be understood. Why does a player need crafting recipes, aids, some art materials, skins for Jax if he wants to get a specific item for a specific character?? The funny thing is that the solution to the problem lies on the surface, and by giving the opportunity to make purchases for individual items using in-game currency, both developers and users would benefit. Some would not receive a ton of negativity, and given that the store is poor, this would hardly promise losses, others would not have to pour out this negativity.

You can customize your character’s entry into battle animation and post-battle rejoicing animation. But first, new options need to be opened in the towers of time or the Crypt.

What exactly is there to discover in the game?? The fact is that formally MK11 has a lot of skins and various customization elements, but in reality there are 2-3 unique images per character. Everything else is colors. This system generates strange cases where a skin of normal rarity, white or green, can look prettier and more attractive than a conventional legendary one.

Where to spend the accumulated currency? The problem stems in part from the two claims described above. Having discovered the necessary things for your favorites, further waste of resources becomes pointless, because there are very few interesting images or things, and it is not possible to buy specific things. Plus, it turned out that Crypto does not work in the long term. Yes, you can, of course, open cheap chests for 2k gold and constantly update their contents, but in practice it turns out differently. Having opened plus or minus all the content there, you will feel that your progression in it has stalled. The problem is partially solved by the Altar, where depending on the offering the reward falls, but this is not enough.

Not everyone managed to return from the dead. Ed Boon, bring back Mileena!

There is such a thing as a matchup. It characterizes the combat features of specific characters. For example, if you play as a zoner who relies exclusively on ranged attacks, and the enemy takes on a character against you who has the ability to easily overcome your zoning, the matchup is not in your favor. And understanding these matchups, you can roughly imagine the target list. In general, the fact is that earlier, even before the introduction of 3 tournament variations, the difference between the conditional S+ tier and low-tier was strongly felt. All this has led to the fact that at tournaments and online they take, plus or minus, the same characters. Only time will tell how much the new variations will change the situation. But we can definitely say that some characters have already sparkled with new colors.

Online MK11 is fragmented. The world already has Street Fighter 5, which includes cross-platform, and I must say that the ability for players on different platforms to fight each other shows its best side. I can’t imagine what exactly is the barrier to implementing such a system in MK, but so far users Switch’s I’m truly sorry. Everything is very bad there online. It can be said that he doesn’t exist at all. Recently, while visiting the stream of one such player, I was very surprised when he could not find an opponent in any of the modes in an hour. On a day off. In the evening.

M11K is a unique project. The man who has been leading the parade since the 90s has managed, over the course of a long journey, not only not to lose what the fans loved about his creation, but also to multiply all its advantages many times over. Photorealistic sprites have become Motion Capture; blood, cruelty and dismemberment have never looked so impressive anywhere; the gameplay has become as comfortable and understandable as possible, and therefore is perfect for anti-cafes and epic fights with friends at the house; and the writers… Well, they never existed, and now they have appeared, showing the entertainment industry how to really write, and that even the narrative format of 1vs1 fights and the huge number of characters is not a problem for dancers who know how to use their legs.