It’s been forever since I’ve actually played a Mortal Kombat game, and I only had this one come across my radar because my kid had picked it up for their Playstation 5. We often will play a lot of video games together when I go back to visit family throughout the year, but I didn’t expect this to be the one they were so interested in! I guess that’s what happens when your kid becomes an adult 🤷🏼♂️
The gameplay on the PS5 was absolutely stunning and the flow of the game felt extremely well. On the Steam Deck, there were definitely alterations made to make it work better on the hardware. You could tell that the models had their quality decreased and it was noticeable when you’d go from gorgeous cinematic cut scenes, then the characters would switch to a slightly blurred version of themselves and you knew it was about to switch to kombat. I don’t remember seeing that as distinctly on the PS5, but I also didn’t play much of the story mode on it either. There were noticeable slowdowns in some of the cinematics as well, but they never appeared to be tied to any particular set of circumstances such as draw distance or polygon render count or anything like that. I also had issues where the cinematics in between fights would get so long that the screen would start to go darker like it was about to enter sleep mode. I got in the habit of flipping the thumbstick every so often to prevent this.
As far as the game itself goes, the story is good, but gets a little weird towards the end. Not necessarily in a bad way, but more so in a this feels like a left field moment. I did, however, truly love the amazing combinations of characters that get thrown at you at one point. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I took on Shao Zero and Stung Lao and thought that it was a missed opportunity at some creativity for the players. Imagine being able to combine 2 and 3 characters into one and being able to play as them. Especially if you made it like a traditional RPG skill tree where you had to earn the various skills of each character. Complete with the pros and cons of dual and triple classing. Ah, the possibilities.
I’ve finished the story mode, so I’m marking it as Komplete 🤣 but I still want to play through the Invasions mode so I see it popping up on my deck for months to come.