Mortal Kombat 11 GS review revision: now 9/10

GameSpot has posted its revision of Mortal Kombat 11 and upped its review-in-progress score from 8/10 to the settled 9/10.

Review

Yea, sorry brah, don't agree with that at all. I think it's actually pretty fucking badly designed, which is what really matters in a fighting games - the mechanics

All the production values mean nothing when your gameplay is objectively mediocre.

- Terrible animations that betray the feedback

- Generic character mechanics almost universally shared, just minor variations

- Extremely bland backgrounds

- Bland ass soundtrack (remember all those fucking amazing soundtracks in SFII? Try remember one in this game)

- Ex/Supers with animations that go on far too long

- Mobile grind mode in a £50 game

- A terrible port that costs £50

- Unbalanced as hell, might as well be called "go Scorpio or Noob Saibot"

- Bugs, bugs bugs

- Terrible UI design

The list is pretty endless really, look past the production values, it's actually a middling at best game.

Fully expecting Samurai Spriits to score lower for lack of awesome cutscene content or "how the hell do we do difficulty properly" towers , but very little doubt it will shit on this dumb ass spam fest when it comes to the stuff that counts.

I remember street fighter 2 excellent soundtracks

beside Street Fighter 2 is so much better than Street fighter 4 and 5 its not even funny.

They need to revisit Days Gone and put up or shut up about wanting politics in their games.

Literally every stage soundtrack can instantly be remembered 25 years on.

I can't even remember what I was fucking doing 25 years ago, hell, can't remember a week back. But I remember that. It's testament to the quality that it can instantly evoke a response such as this. Masterpiece? Yea, sure. Absolutely.

MK11 soundtrack is garbo. You'll forget it as soon as you go to the next menu screen.

For its time. it was like best game ever on genesis. I was too young and i was blown away by it. after than Street fighter lost magic. they added combos and power in a street fighter game when its all about simple fighting.

was never a fan of mortal kombat. i always though it was trying to be edgy.

They need to stop doing reviews, altogether. At least ones done by Americans.

Too high for a fighting game for children.

@jg4xchamp: Oh hi troll.

What up waste.

Besides the fact that 2011 MK9 is still the best....

And it's odd to like a game that is not meaningfully improving..

The game is still a 9 experience... if you have never played the series before it's a 9...

Well anyway that settles that as far as I'm concderned.

A 9 is always just the game of the hour IMO, no more nor less... gam e reviews have never been more complicated than that.

@ghosts4ever: SFV is the best SF to date, I know you have shitty opinions and all but come on.

lol no it isn't.

You have less defensive options, they killed DPs, crush counter>v trigger>50/50 makes high level play a volatile mess, the games patching has been all over the place with certain aspects and limitations being impossible for characters to overcome, ombo paths are more rigid and limits expressive play, the neutral game has been gimped to shimmy or don't shimmy. Yes they course corrected on the defensive, bull shit ultra combos, overly turtly OS fest that was Street Fighter IV, but they over corrected and threw the baby out with the bath water. You at least saw the gap between high level players of certain characters and mid level cats.

That's not something you could levy at Third Strike, or either Alpha 2 or 3. And frankly when it comes to depth of play, 4's still going to have more than 5, even if it has questionable as **** shit like characters being absurdly safe on sweeps. It's a good fighting game, it's certainly better than MK or Killer Instinct n the like, but held up against any of its predecessors and there are measurable things it does worse.

Also doesn't help it's cause that Under Nite n Koiheme, two low budget as **** anime fighters do street fighter's shtick better than it does. And given Arcsys Granblue game is more of a footsies game, even with some of their short comings on FighterZ, I'd trust that game to offer more even with its simplification, because at the end of the day that studio made Guilty Gear.

For a game with a draconian grind for skins and fatalities, poorly optimized ui for some reason, and the PC and console versions are different games among many other problems, a 9/10 seems like the score was bought. It could be fixed since the core system isn't bad, but 9/10 for the state it is in right now?

That and they still do strings really fucking stupid, in how far in advance you have to throw your inputs in to get your combo off or string out. Shit better fighting games, specifically anime fighters do smarter. In that they have you do stuff in advance a bit, but not overly buffering to a comedic level. NRS takes the concept that fighting games are a spiderweb of RPS loops, and then proceeded to forget that fighting games have scenarios you can create to limit the options to create more consistent set ups n scenarios. But we're talking about a studio who has the most money in the genre to work with and thus the most money to throw at graphics, but objectively has the shittiest animations of any big name fighting game.

NRS is a joke.

Yeah, GameSpot suck at doing reviews (among many other things). Their staff is basically a bunch of non gamers, as you can see in their reviews, articles and videos when they play games and podcasts when they talk about games. I bet MK11 could be seen as a 9/10 for those who don't really play games and don't have things they can compare with.

MK9 was a 7/10 in my opinion (maybe an 8/10 on a good day) and was the best MK game in years. I really liked it.
MKX fucking sucked compared to 9, but still got a great GameSpot score.
MK11 also sucks compared to 9, from what I've heard, and gets a superb GameSpot score.

GameSpot staff are laughable.

I couldn't careless about GS review scores over MK11 cause I'm having lots of fun with the game as it is.

Days Gone is not a 5/10....from what I've seen and reviewers that I trust and go to. For once, I agree that it's not a 5/10 game whatsoever. Perhaps it's best if Gamespot get's a professional reviewer to take another look at the game and review it again or by different reviewers opinions is what I personally like to see here on Gamespot.

@davillain-: it pisses me off bc FC5 and The Division 2 caught flak for having no political stance.

Days Gone has a clear political stance whether that be how Bend Studios feels or just how that character is written that infuses the political view...it’s there and it’s heavy on one side.

Thing is....it’s not Gamespot’s side which I would believe to be left or some form of social justice side...so it might be a case of “we want politics” but really saying “we want our politics”.

Do people still make purchase decisions based off GS reviews? Those poor souls.

oh shiz, where you been?

It's an easy 7/10. Bland, generic, but functional, and perhaps entertaining if you don't want anything new in your games.

Heck, AC follows the bland formula and gets high scores.

Yeah, GS is blacklisted as a valid review site for me now.

@Bread_or_Decide: I can see a 7 but for me it’s an 8.

I figured this game would be a 7 or 8.

It didn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s fun.

“I bet if they re-reviewed sea of thieves it would get a 9!!! So that’s what the game’s real score is! A 9!”

-xhawk

@onesiphorus:

I totally agree with that. A solid 9/10 from me too! It's hard to imagine how any fan of Mortal Kombat could NOT enjoy a perfectly good game like MK 11.

Haven't made any arrangements of picking up Days Gone, I got too many games I'm trying to complete and this is a winter sale or next year pick up. Even I happened to be a fan of AC games from time to time.

Off this sinking ship. I came back to put down you dweebs in honor of Devil May Cry 5 saving this medium.

Did you confuse MK with Smash and Pokken?

@that_old_guy: Yep never trusting this site again after this crap. Days gone is great! MK11 I will pass after all the crap dlc, 'woke' plot line and creeping feminism.

I don't like people that downrate games because of their racism and politics. You can see she couldn't' stand Deacon looking at his wife's ass and that he was a white guy. As she said on twitter. Bullshit san fran politics need to die. So sick of this. Where did these people come from? This site used to have dignity. The reviwers Greg Kasavin, Van Horn , Navaro, and others back in the 2000s were great. Lately all professional reviews have been crap, and ideologically driven, non gamers.

DMC5, bringing gaming back to gaming. I dig it.

I don't think I've seen a child play either Smash or Pokken ever. Mortal Kombat however..

All reviews are pointless you can play a 5/10 and have more fun than an 8/10. It's all about just taking a chance.

@Midnightshade29: Wow so its gotten to the point that we can't even look at out significant others bodies? This reviewer needs to be let go, what a load of shit.

I'd rather go back on play MK Trilogy (PS1) or MK2 on SNES. LOL

I'd probably give it an 8, I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I could really do without the mobile game-esque bullshit though, it'd be nice if all that was gone. It feels too close to a paid mobile game.

At this point I'm waiting for the XL version of the game next year, all the dlc included at a cheaper price. Picked up Injustice 2 Legendary Edition on black Friday for under $20.

@raining51: What makes 9 better? I love 9 but people are making it seem like the MK2 of the series.

I'm loving the game way much more then 10 story wise and gameplay wise it's growing on me. UMK3 will always be the goat when it comes to gameplay. The only thing I don't like about 11 is the grinding the patch makes it much better but it's ridiculous you still got to earn 30,000 soul fragments to unlock something in the Krypt. I really love all the little animations in this game it's very slick the intro's and victory animations and the fatalities and brutalities are all very good. I'm actually enjoying this game more then RE2 remake and DMC5 it's just more fun for me.

Classic lineup, classic mechanics with some tweaks paired with great presentation and best-in-genre story mode. Not perfect, but it played to the series' strengths.

Now they're adding all that multiple stances trash, that seems to be NRS' idea of depth, which made the series irrelevant in PS2/Xbox era to begin with.

SFII soundtracks were legendary. Street fighter III soundtracks were the best of SF imo. And Third strike is the best Street fighter as well.

Also I agree with @uninspiredcup about this game -- especially about the animations and the graphics. They are aiming for realism while using strange and stiff animations that aren't close to principled martial arts, and the graphics on fireballs and long range attacks camouflages them due to some negligence. Capcom's classics really should be a roadmap for every fighting game as far as animations go, especially the Vampire series.

I thought MK Deception was the best which had so much content packed into a game with no DLC, Chess combat, tetris combat a really good conquest mode with rpg elements.

Cows are in a MK thread asking for Days Gone to be re-reviewed lol.

Cows are not taking the DG review very well, makes me happy inside :)

I was street fighter 2 fan back in days but and i remember kids were crazy for MK for being too edgy.

@X_CAPCOM_X: By "Vampire" you mean "Darkstalkers"? Because when I think "Vampire" series, I think World of Darkness (Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter, Werewolf).

I like the MK series but seriously burnt out by it have no plans on buying this yet.

He's right, at least on the PC side. It may be 20 somethings playing, but they seem to have the mind of an angry 14 year old.

RQ spamming, tea-bag spamming, pulling from a match as soon as they get beaten. In the space of a week 2 people have send verbal abuse on Steam.

At this point i'm really not sure why i'm even playing it. it isn't enjoyable and doesn't reward intelligent play.

Just hammer your dial-a-combo and get incomprehensibly animated mix-ups. Or spam the shit out of your 0 cool-down zoning. Or spam your almost instant tele from anywhere on the screen, someone even thinks about jumping, literally anywhere, they are getting it.

Donno how people can consider this shit fun.

I just check as well, certain characters like Devorah, you have absolutely nothing to combo as a punish if a player simply spams a fast-start-up, fast recovery move over and over.

For example, go into training mode and use Liu Kangs F333 string over and over ending in a low attack or block and try beat it. There is absolutely nothing she can do but jab back, with the chip damage being almost equal to the jab damage. You have 0 combos and basically 0 options outside of that. None of your other moves will hit him either thanks to pushback most of the time and such a fast recovery your only mid-attack being too slow.

How the hell is this good design?

Just recently finished the Story mode in Mortal Kombat 11. It was pretty damn epic and I really enjoyed it. Really dug the whole timelines thing with all the callbacks and references to previous games and stuff. The whole thing was quite well done and felt incredibly satisfying. I’m really hoping that whatever ever Capcom’s next fighting game is they take notes from this one and have an equally excellent story mode to it as well.

@nintendoboy16: I’m bad mouthing MK as a fighting game, because all of its appeal is a child’s understanding of fighting games.

Smash Ultimate is at least moving in a good direction. Outclassed by melee, but gooder than shitty ass brawl and correcting the mistakes of Smash4.

Pokken is a solid fighting game.

NRS games have bad strings, a shittier fireball game, no or very little hit stop completely crippling the concept of hit confirm, and the shittiest animations in a 60 dollar fighting game to name a few.

This is Cups punishment tho for ducking old man Champ in the ass whipping he would have got in anime fighters like FighterZ and Guilty, after old man champ took his Ls in street fighter with grace n integrity.

Cup, buy n play Under Nite you piece of shit