NetherRealm Studios and WBIE have been busy with Mortal Kombat 11 for some time now. The base game originally launched back in late April of last year, and has seen a steady stream of DLC kontent since release, including the Aftermath expansion from five months ago. Now, just in time for next-gen, comes Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate, or what I call Ultimate Mortal Kombat 11 as a nod to the days of MK3 and UMK3. Anyway, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate (MK11U) is packed, though not complete, with a massive amount of MK11 goodness. Purchasers get the base game, Aftermath expansion, and both Kombat Packs. Plus, if you get Ultimate on PS4 or Xbox One, you get a free update to next-gen, which features enhanced 4K visuals and faster load times.
I’ve had the privilege to review both MK11 and MK11: Aftermath on PS4. Since Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate builds upon those, I’ll treat this article as a supplement to those previous two review articles. That said, I was excited to try out what is arguably one of the best fighting games ever made on my shiny new PS5. Plus, seeing Rain back, who was one of my favorite characters going back to UMK3, was a treat. The return of Milenna felt overdue as well, though I never cared to play as her, and recall so many tough battles against her way back in MKII. And then there is the inclusion of John Rambo, which was a surprise to me, but a welcomed one. Battles between Rambo and Terminator are wild, and it’s hard not to cheer for Rambo against really any enemy for that matter. My favorite character for MK11 remains Noob Saibot, but Rain has been a lot of fun. Rain has some excellent ranged attacks and I’ve always liked his character and background for some reason. All of the ninjas in the MK universe are cool, but he’s definitely in my top three. Rambo has some cool attacks with his bowie knife and bow and arrow, and I love his leopard crawl where he gets down prone.
With this latest Kombat Pack, MK11U features thirty-seven playable characters, a pretty staggering amount. Granted, it’s no sixty-six characters like you can find in a fully unlocked Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but that’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison, either. I can’t really find a bad character in MK11, by the way. I find myself curious to play at least thirty of the bunch, which certainly was not always the case with MK and never the case in any other fighting game franchise. Many times in the past I would hone in on one or maybe three characters, but the last few entries into the series have really opened up the door for me to bounce between several different characters.
Ever since MK vs DC Universe back in 2008, the ability to perform character special moves has become so much easier and more consistent. It’s that reliable, easy-to-remember-and-execute gameplay that has been a favorite feature of mine of the MK series ever since. Still, learning combos with the base movements is vital for success and the animations are so cool that pulling off effective combos with or without special moves is a lot of fun. I have seen videos, by the way, of Rain doing 350+ damage by doing combos counting up to like fifteen hits. This is a level of skill that I don’t have the time to dedicate to obtain, but, suffice it to say that MK11 does a great job of being accessible and fun for newcomers, but also very deep for those tournament-seeking class of players.
Speaking of depth, I still find myself spending time in the Krypt. Gone are the days of it being a 26×26 grid that you didn’t really explore at all; the Krypt is a whole other game mode in and of itself. I recently stumbled upon the final resting place of Kenshi, which was a cool bit of lore to come across. The Krypt has been updated with new unlockable items related to the new characters, too. I should mention that my Krypt progress, as well as my game stats and all of the other parts of my Kombat Kard were downloaded from WBIE to the PS5 version of MK11U, which was great so that I didn’t have to lose all of that previously obtained progress.
Other than the three new characters, the super fast load times and beautiful visuals are about all that Ultimate has to offer. I will say that it’s a shame that just days after Ultimate was released there came word of yet more DLC for the game (the 1995 movie skin and voiceover pack) which is of course not included in Ultimate. I have had some friends lament some frustration over how monetized MK11 is, and I absolutely see where they’re coming from. It’s not a business practice I like to see because we’re used to games having a final, all inclusive edition released and we just don’t have that with MK11. Maybe we’ll see a Komplete Edition like there was with MK9. Regardless, you can’t really go wrong with MK11U if you’re looking for a superb fighting game on current or next-gen.
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