THE REVIEWS Episode 70: Mortal Kombat Mobile
When combat fighting and violence comes to the phone…
Ah, Mortal Kombat. What a spectacular franchise. Who from the 90s don’t know Mortal Kombat?
Well, for those who are unsure what Mortal Kombat is, lemme tell you. It is an American media franchise created by Midway Games, its center focus on fighting. Like any other fighting game, it has a full roster of characters for you to choose from to play. You can go against a player or a CPU, depending on what you want.
Different characters have different moves and skills, and you can activate them by doing the correct combinations. It first came out as an arcade game, where it was wildly popular alongside Street Fighter. I’ve never been in the nineties era, and it was banned in Singapore during that time, so I had to turn to the internet to find out just how welcomed this game is. For starters, the characters actually look kinda cool, and their moves are pretty awesome too.
Remember when I said Mortal Kombat was banned in Singapore? I wasn’t joking. Here’s an article, and it probably explained why it was prohibited here, but I’m going to say it anyways.
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, just like any other, right? Like Street Fighter? Tekken? King of Fighters? No. It was way more unique. Bold, if I could call it.
Mortal Kombat…had blood and gore.
Yeah, they’re known for their high levels of blood and gore in them, especially in the supermoves they call ‘fatalities’. Don’t get me wrong, I love some of the fatalities, like Liu Kang’s and Scorpion’s, but they were quite bloody, gruesome, and way too realistic. Back in the day, these type of things would call for some shock value. This game, however, was so appalling to some people that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) system had to be created, just so that any one who picks up the MK games know what shit they’re getting into. That was legendary, I ain’t gonna lie.
From then on, it spawned many ports of the game. From the Playstation to the Nintendo consoles and even to the Gameboy. THE GAMEBOY. It is everywhere. It feels like you’re playing the arcade machine at the tip of your fingers in your own home. It feels great. As time passed, the graphics got way better too. More high resolution and more detailed.
There were so many controversies surrounding this franchise, but that’s not the main point of this review. Today, I’m reviewing the mobile version of the game.
Mortal Kombat Mobile is a 2015 fighting game released by NetherRealm Studios in the App Store and Google Play. Unlike the console version, this game has a 3v3 fighting mechanic, similar to Injustice’s mobile port. It has a pretty huge roster of characters too, adapted from the franchise, such as Scorpion, Sub Zero, Sonya Blade, and more. There are even a few variations of some characters, and there are even some movie characters in the game. Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger, Leatherface, the three well-known horror movie figures, and even the Terminator is in this game, and god damn is he cool.
Naturally, this followed Injustice’s success for many different reasons. Everyone who played the Injustice mobile port loved it, and is interested in trying out the same thing in a new franchise. Mortal Kombat fans also flocked to it because they love anything related to Mortal Kombat. On top of all of that, the graphics are pretty high quality, and the gameplay is quite refreshing and unique. You even get to see the fatalities by each character, something Mortal Kombat is famous for.
Who wouldn’t love a game like this, right? Awesome-looking characters in the game, the skins for them are amazing, the mechanics are easy to understand, and most importantly, there are fatalities. Everyone’s favorite thing to see in Mortal Kombat. The game will be well-liked and survive for years to come, right?
Well, it is still surviving in 2024, no doubt. They pump out updates quite often. But is it still well-liked today?
Now, in no way is this game as bad as any Supercell game or Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery. So, in that case, why am I still making a review out of this? That’s because there are some flaws in this game, and I have suffered from some of them at the very least.
As the years pass and the game developed into a bigger one, there were many big incoming changes that were implemented. Firstly, some of the characters’ variations have different titles. Not much of an impact. They added new backgrounds too. Good scenery improvment, I suppose. Then, like Injustice and any other freenium mobile games, they made a new rarity: Diamond.
Of course, this is to amp up the game’s difficulty. To prove that Diamond characters are the shit, and this is where NetherRealm takes it to the next step. They add in a TON, and I mean A FUCKING TON, of Diamond characters in the game. Some of them with overpowered passives, and others that make you feel you’re better off using a Silver card. When the 2.7 update came, some Gold cards turned into Diamonds. And in true NetherRealm fashion, they put out UNREASONABLE BUNDLES to try and tempt you to buy them so you can get the CHANCE to obtain the Diamond character you want. For sure, it’s not guaranteed. I expected it. Some of these Diamonds are a pain in the ass to deal with in fights, but we’ll talk about that later.
Remember Alliance Tokens? Ally points? If you’re old enough to the game, I’m sure you remember that players used to be able to add friends in the game, and in battles they could use their friends’ main characters to assist them with an X-Ray/fatality once per round. In the newer updates, this mechanic was removed completely and the pack became a free pack every 4 hours. This function was pretty nice honestly. It made me feel like I was playing a game with my friends, and now I’m back to being lonely in the game. It could’ve been a helpful feature with the hard ass difficulty battles this game came up with now.
Multiplayer. As expected with quite a lot of games with these type of multiplayer modes, there are bound to be hackers. Injustice and Injustice 2 faced the same issues, and MK Mobile isn’t any different. They fixed it now, so it’s not that big of an issue.
When this game ‘upgraded’, it changed from a game that can be played offline, anyhwere you want, anytime you want, to a game that can only be played with mobile data or WiFi. I get it that all the other crappy, F2P unplayable gamemodes you added to this game needs constant server updates, NetherRealm, but can’t you be like the Injustice mobile game? Injustice can literally be played OFFLINE.
Take example its challenge mode. Injustice, from time to time, comes out with challenge characters you can earn just by playing its 5 challenge stages, consisting of 63 battles. You can finish the stages offline, and then the rewards will come when you’re connected to the Internet. That’s how a good game works.
Hold up, doesn’t MK Mobile…have Challenge Mode too???
Yeah, I’m not joking. It works EXACTLY the same like Injustice’s. So, why can’t you make MK Mobile available to play offline? Like you can play the single player mode and the challenge mode offline, while all the towers shit and multiplayer can be played with an internet connection? The only reason I can think NeatherReam made this change is because they think these two modes alone might be boring. That might be true, so here’s my suggestion. UPDATE THE SINGLE PLAYER MODE. Injustice did it, so why can’t you do the same for this game, NetherRealm? I know I keep comparing this game to Injustice, but the latter is a prime example of how a fighting game can be done right.
Oh yeah, speaking of connecting to the Internet, if this game relies heavily on connection to play, then I guess it just takes some time to adapt to it. But god damn, you can’t even make your game function properly even when my ping is at the lowest it can be.
This shit appears a lot when I’m trying to get into the game. Like wow, I’m sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY WIFI ROUTER, WITH FULL WIFI BARS, AND YOU STILL CAN’T LOAD FOR SHIT? ARE YOU JOKING, NETHERREALM? Even worse, I could be playing a match and this happens. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MATCH, I REPEAT.
You think any game with this problem would pause and waited for the connection to reload to continue, but this game outright tells you FUCK NO. While this screen comes up, the opponent in the background IS STILL ABLE TO ATTACK YOU, WHICH MIGHT POTENTIALLY CAUSE YOU TO LOSE THE MATCH. WHAT THE FUCK, NETHERREALM? YOU UNFAIR PIECE OF SHIT. WHAT THE FUCK ON EARTH CAN YOU BE LOADING? MALWARE? VIRUSES? OR THE HORRIBLE MONEY DEALS YOU DISH OUT AT PLAYERS? CAN’T YOU BE MORE GENEROUS AND WAIT FOR THE MATCH TO AT LEAST END BEFORE SHOVING THIS ASS TWAT IN MY FACE?
If you get this screen while you’re fighting a hard AI, just quit the app and admit defeat. By the time the screen disappears, you would’ve already lost anyways. This joke company can come up with overpowered characters every update to try and get players to spend money on it, introduce game modes that either crash half the time or is just unbeatable unless you spend a truckload of money, and shamelessly come up with money-minded packs to entice people to buy, but can’t even fix a simple issue like this? Yeah, ‘dAtA cOnNeCtiOn rEqUiReD’ ‘pLeAsE cHeCk yOuR dEViCe’S cOnNeCtiOn sEtTiNgS?’ How about you fix your OWN servers’ shitty ass connectivity, NetherRealm?
You think that’d be the end of the bad points of this game. That’s when you’re wrong. I have yet to come to the worst part about this game.
Remember that I talked about Towers earlier? Yup, they are limited time modes that come one after another, and in each update there’s most likely two. Could be less, could be more.
They each consist of 200 floors of battles, and their battles get more challenging as you advance up, with modifiers to put you at an disadvantage. However, there are definitely better rewards as you win harder battles. At the very end of the tower, you are guaranteed a Diamond card at the minimum. Each tower has two difficulties; Normal and Fatal. As you can tell from the names, Fatal is harder and is more catered to veterans of the game, but reaps way better rewards.
It is indeed a really distinctive gamemode when it first came out, because not even the Injustice mobile port has this at all. It is pretty unique, and it is quite fun…until you get to the later stages, specifically the last quarter of the tower.
To get things started, the AI in this game is ungodly atrocious. It is way too smart and overpowered for no aboslute reason. I don’t know if NetherRealm did this on purpose or it was on accident, but this is bullshit. Let me explain to you. The AI can block your attacks AT A SUPER RAPID SPEED FASTER THAN THE HUMAN REACTION TIME. Heck, I’d even debate it is faster than the speed of light. Like god damn, weren’t you on the floor just now, AI? How the hell are you still able to stand back up and BLOCK MY SPECIAL?
That’s not all. They can chain combos, making your character unable to attack AT ALL. It’s like the AI is using forbidden techniques to win the battle even though it is already more powerful than me. They could be chaining basic attacks, and then boom, they activate a special attack right after it. Even with your fastest fingers or keyboard warrior skills, you can NEVER block this special no matter what. And usually, this is what could kill your character.
They ALWAYS BLOCK. Even when you hit them with basic attacks after you used a special and they didn’t block it, they will block your basic attacks. It’s like their instinct. Once you finish attacking, they’ll unblock outta nowhere and you get hit instead, and reminder that YOU CAN’T BLOCK IT. The onyl way to hit them is to block their basic attacks and wait for an open opportunity to attack them. This is not a fighting game no more, this is just a turn-taking game now.
With all that said, I’m moving onto the Tower problem. With the AI being so broken, you’d think NetherRealm would a little easy on us and make then a little less overpowered. No, of course not. Why would they? If they did so, they wouldn’t be earning their income, would they?
For each Tower, they have Tower equipment cards that not only grants characters more sub-passives, but have increased health and damage when used in the specific tower, which is pretty helpful for the players…right?
They can either drop from the fixed rewards at some battles, or randomly drop in any fight. Getting the same one allows you to fuse them together, making it a higher fusion and thus giving more power to the character.
Take this battle, for instance. My team’s pretty decent, with a few fusions of the tower’s specific equipment cards. Most of them are Fusion 1 or 2, and each of my characters have at least one Epic Tower equipment equipped. Now, look at the opponent’s team. They have about the same stats as me. They have some equipment cards equipped, and their passives might work together, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I could usually get past the modifiers too as my characters are strong enough to finish them off in a short time. You’d think I have the winning hand here, right?
No. The moment I entered, I lost within thirty seconds. How, you ask? Good question. Let me answer that for you.
In hindsight, they look pretty normal, right? Erron Black as 100k health points. It’s a pretty small amount when I have Johnny Cage with 71k damage, right? With Tower equipment, that could go up to about 200k damage, so it should easily eliminate Erron, right?
There’s where the problem starts. The opponents have the Tower equipment cards too, so they gain the boosts too. However, unlike me, who only has max 1 Fusion 2 Epic Tower equipment card, they have the THRICE THE AMOUNT OF FUSION 3 OR 4 EPIC TOWER EQUIPMENT CARDS, WITH ONE OF THEM MAXXED. You know what that means? THEY GAIN A HOLY MOLY SIGNIFICANT BOOST TO THEIR STATS. Instead of the 100k stated on the stats, he entered battle with A FUCKING MILLION HEALTH POINTS.
The modifiers are Enraged and Berserkers, which means the opponents gain power at a faster rate and their basic attacks are tripled unblocked. You also know AI and overpowered go hand-in-hand, so naturally, my Johnny Cage got wiped out in THREE FUCKING SECONDS, EVEN WITH FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND HEALTH POINTS! Compared to them, my damage isn’t even close to theirs. When I hit them, it felt like I was just a small fry to them. However, when they hit me, I feel like they’re giants just stepping on me continuously.
Whenever I even tried to block, the opponents’ attacks are SOMEHOW UNBLOCKABLE, LIKE IT’S A 100% CHANCE! I CAN’T EVEN DEFEND MYSELF, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! It’s crazy shocking. Being in denial, I went to check out the opponents’ equipment loadouts. You would not believe your eyes even when I show you this next picture.
Take a look at this specific equipment card. Besides giving a huge amount of boost to the opponent’s own health, it boosts the team’s health too. Now, check the first two lines of this equipment out.
‘30% Opponent unblockable attack chance reduction’. This means that me, their opponent, has lesser unblockable chance. So, NetherRealm, I’d like to question you something. HOW ON THE FUCKING EARTH DO THEY HAVE 100% UNBLOCKABLE CHANCE IF NONE OF THE OTHER EQUIPMENT CARDS GUARANTEE THEM A CHANCE OF UNBLOCKABLE ATTACKS?!
‘25% Chance to dodge a Special Attack.” 25% means one out of four times, the opponent would dodge a special attack. We learn this in school. Probability. Yet, the people in NetherRealm can still fail at Mathematics, and come up with this bullshit that THE OPPONENTS CAN DODGE MY SPECIAL ATTACK EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME! If it’s every time, DOESN’T THAT MAKE IT A 100%, YOU ASSHOLES? THAT’S NOT 1 OUT OF 4 CHANCES, YOU FUCKS! WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR AI SO OVERPOWERED? SO THAT YOU CAN CHASE PLAYERS AWAY?!
Battles like these appear a lot in the third quarter of this tower, meaning Battle 151 to 200, and they make me rage a million times more than I could imagine. It’s not even a skill issue at this point, it’s just the AI being really unfair. The only way you can even beat these battles is if you spend loads of money on the game, or you swipe your parents’ credit cards, and you’ll probably get most of the stuff you need. People who make it look easy to beat difficult battles with an account you probably don’t have an idea of how it grew to be so big and powerful, they probably spent money to enhance it so that they can create content and beat the game easily.
F2P players, I’m sorry but you stand no chance in completing ANY tower unless you played this game for maybe half a decade. Even so, you’d only get a decent team, and you still might get whooped by the AI because of how strong it is. It’s funny how this game gives better rewards when you beat higher tier battles, but how are you gonna even get there in the first place if the game gives you shit and you have nothing to beat the difficult battles at all to get the good rewards? Some reverse backass progress, eh, NetherRealm?
Krypt. They introduced this new game mode during the 5.0 update, and like the Towers, it seemed really good at first. Not until you play it and the game starts crashing like a mad dog, even during battles. Ooh, spooky. How would you like it if you re-enter the game and realize all your characters are defeated and you have to restart the battle all over again to continue your progress, which causes you to use the revive potions the game gives very little of? Must be nice, NetherRealm. Have you even tested out your game before releasing updates?
To top all of this off, this game has one of the WORST customer supports of all time. They don’t give two fucks if anything happens to your account. Whenever you send a ticket, chances are you’ll just get an automated response and that’s the end of the case. Your account got banned for aboslutely no reason even though you did nothing wrong? Sorry, NetherRealm doesn’t care as long as they’re still making money from other players. Bugs? What the fuck are those? If NetherRealm didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. At this point, you’d have more luck hitting the lottery than getting a humanized response from them and for them to even do anything to solve the problem.
Like I said earlier, NetherRealm, you can make the AI so unbeatable and vexing, you can push out more overpowered Diamond cards every update, you can even come up with numerous fucking shitty money packs to bait people to buy so that their account can be better to beat the AI and harder content, but you can’t even fix the simple issues in your game like crashing or bugs, or even help innocent players who have problems with their accounts because your AI can’t detect shit well. You really are a money-minded company, NetherRealm.
Ever wondered why MK1 wasn’t so well received? Because it just sucks. You can’t even balance characters well, and the game is bland as fuck. Remember when you released the Switch version of it? It looked like ass. That’s how much of a damn you give to MK fans? Must be pretty low. A new standard, I suppose. And the price for this game? 70 USD bucks. People would think you’re extorting players’ money, like you’re conducting a daylight robbery. It’s really funny how MK1 is selling at a 50% discount shortly after release, from time to time, unlike when MK11 first came out. You know the game isn’t making much cash due to its lackluster quality that YOU put out. At least you realized it.
Shame on you, NetherRealm. You can’t even give us a good Mortal Kombat game anymore due to your greed for money. If you can’t fix shit in any of the games but still pump out more micro transactions, then you’ll be doomed to fall down one day. Wait until all the loyal MK fans stop playing your shitty games, and that’s when you truly suffer.
Believe me on that.
Author Notes
Oh man, this is my seventieth episode.
How time flies. My first episode was like seven years ago. Man, looking back at my older reviews, I got to see how much I grew as a writer and a person. I’m surprised I even came this far for my reviews.
Still, I’m grateful for all the support and the reads you readers have given me. As always, thank you for reading my reviews. I appreciate it, and I’ll see you soon.
