Mortal Kombat 11 Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

3. A.I. Difficulty Spikes & Unwinnable Fights Vs. “Konsumables”

Inside the Living Towers, is some of the most horrifically unfair, unbalanced video game bullsh*t I’ve ever come across, and I’ve played a LOT of games.

Here, fights are just as much between each character’s equipped “Konsumables” as between two kombatants. Many times you’ll come up against someone equipped with auto-tracking missiles, a damage buff, maybe a storm of poison or a slowing ability - all of which only affects you.

You’re supposed to “fight back” by equipping these sorts of mods yourself, but ONLY if you thought to do so beforehand. Even then, you’re trying to manage launching your OWN barrage of missiles, globule of Reptile poison or swarm of Nitara bats by flicking the right analogue stick AMONGST the chaos. It only takes one or two of these complete clusterfucks for the whole thing to collapse in on itself.

This idea of “buffing” a fight was easily the worst part of Injustice 2, and it’s a shame NetherRealm have gone even further in that direction. The Living Towers should be the place you head after the story to grind out your favourite character’s remaining gear, but you can’t, without jumping through a series of annoying hoops.

You can’t even try a different Konsumable after starting a fight without restarting the whole tower, and some of these can be 12 fights long. That’s besides the fact that NO ONE was asking for this.

Who in their right mind is buying a fighting game to try and surmount a foe using an array of unblockable mods?