Mortal Kombat: Aftermath Review - "Your move creep".

By Sam Coles:

Mortal Kombat has come a long way, from its edgy inception back in the early 1990’s to the more story driven experience we got in Mortal Kombat 9 onwards. So if you were to tell me that a fighting game was getting a story expansion I probably would have laughed at the absurdity, but here we are with Mortal Kombat: Aftermath for MK 11. Is it a worthy addition to the base game? Yes to a certain extent.

Mortal Kombat: Aftermath continues straight away after the ending of Mortal Kombat 11, where Liu Kang who is now a fire god and protector of Earthrealm has defeated Shinnok’s mother Kronika. Time itself is now in the hands of Liu Kang under the guidance of Raiden who is now a mortal after transferring his power to him; however Shang Tsung alongside with Nightwolf and Fujin turn up to stop Liu Kang as he may doom time itself. Shang Tsung explains that Liu Kang cannot reset time properly without Kronika’s crown, which was destroyed in the fight between the two. What transpires is a DC Comics style multiverse tale, where Shang Tsung goes back in time before Kronika has the crown. However the story makes more sense compared to DC’s multiverse plot and is straight forward and well written, well written for Mortal Kombat.

The story is well paced and yes it clocks in just over 2 hours, but it is as long as it needs to be if were any longer it would feel dragged out. I know this may be a pain due to the expansion’s price which even I think is pushing it a bit, but the extra work to produce the extra cutscenes is astonishing with the facial animations yet again producing a high amount of detail from subtle grins to the twitches in cheeks. Netherrealm have shown they are a force to be reckoned with when pushing technology and this is within the fighting genre.

What else do you get with this expansion? Well if you get the collection oh I’m sorry I mean “Kollection”, you get access to three new playable characters as well as the previous downloadable fighters. The three new characters are Fujin, Sheeva and Robocop and no you did not misread that I indeed did say Robocop. Now you can live out the R-Rated fantasy of The Terminator and Robocop smashing seven shades of shrapnel out of each other.

How does each character handle? Well let’s start off with the unstoppable law enforcing cyborg Robocop, as you would expect is extremely slow. He is a powerful character but I will be honest he is not fun to control or play with, his move set relies mostly on powerful strikes which I understand given his character but he is not that useful against most of the roster of Mortal Kombat 11. Sheeva is a nice addition she is and always has been a more faster and less powerful version of Goro, but like in the older games her air stomp move is easily spammed and is a cause of constant frustration. Finally Fujin is a great all-rounder similar to his godly brother Raiden, with the exception of that he wields the power of wind and not thunder and lighting.

Overall the new additions are fine; I feel Robocop is a fun yet gimmicky addition as he just doesn’t feel that useful in most fights. I like the call backs to the first film with his one liners and Fatalities, but I honestly do not seeing myself using him that often besides the novelty factor.

Mortal Kombat: Aftermath was a nice surprise as I wasn’t expecting a story expansion for a fighting game; it added more layers to the existing story with the return of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa from the Mortal Kombat movie reprising his role as Shang Tsung. However the new characters are fine, with Robocop being a gimmick rather than a useful character, and also at the time of writing the price for the expansion is rather high considering the content oh I apologise again I mean “Kontent” you get. I recommend it, but only if you find it in a sale.