The Best Mortal Kombat Game Offers Everything A Gamer Wants From The Series
Choosing the best Mortal Kombat game is no easy feat, but there are definitely a couple that stand above the rest.
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Mortal Kombat is one of those rare franchises that has been in the pantheon of best fighting games since the arcade era of gaming. The over the top violence and gore immediately set it apart from contemporaries like the Street Fighter franchise. With the infamous fatalities causing overprotective parents everywhere to clutch their pearls, plenty of kids were happy to empty all of their quarters into the MK cabinet to get a glimpse of the carnage. Now, nearly three decades later. there have been 18 Mortal Kombat games, including spinoffs. Choosing the best Mortal Kombat game is no easy feat, but there are definitely a couple that stand above the rest.
To choose the best Mortal Kombat game, you first have to divide all the games into two categories — the arcade Mortal Kombat games and the home console titles. For 2D fighting games, there are few things more satisfying than duking it out at an arcade with a group of friends and plunking quarter after quarter in to keep the party going. That being said, it’s hard to beat the convenience of being able to play from your couch. That’s why I’m cheating a little and picking two, with one of them being a little better of an experience overall.
The best arcade Mortal Kombat game has to be Mortal Kombat II. Released to arcades everywhere in 1993, Mortal Kombat II took everything about Mortal Kombat and made it better. The original game certainly gets props for the concept, but the execution wasn’t quite there. Games like Street Fighter II were superior in mechanics to the original Mortal Kombat. While there was certainly a novelty to the game and the characters looked cool, it didn’t have the same competitive draw that the finely-tuned Street Fighter series had. That was all fixed in Mortal Kombat II. The fighting mechanics were improved, making it a fun game to master. New characters were added that would become series staples like Baraka, Jax, and Kitana. It still had those fatalities that everyone wanted to see. As far as 2D arcade fighters go, Mortal Kombat II can definitely be in the conversation for the best of all time.
So, now that Mortal Kombat II has received the praise it so rightfully deserves for launching the franchise into the stratosphere of pop culture, what’s the best home console Mortal Kombat game? And realistically, what is the best Mortal Kombat game overall? That honor would have to go to the latest entry in the series, Mortal Kombat 11. Released in 2019, Mortal Kombat 11 is NetherRealm Studios putting everything it has learned into one perfect, gory package.
You see, until 2011 the Mortal Kombat series was in a bit of a rut. The last proper entry in the series up until that point was Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe in 2008, which was a cool concept but was part of the 3D-fighter era of Mortal Kombat games, making it feel not quite like the tone of the rest of the franchise. Plus, the presence of superheroes made the game have to bump down to a Teen rating, removing a lot of the signature gore and fatalities that have become hallmarks of the series.
In 2011, NetherRealm Studios would right the ship, rebooting the series, bringing it back to 2D, and creating Mortal Kombat for the PS3/Xbox 360 era. They improved their fighting game chops with the release of Mortal Kombat X and the great Injustice series of fighting games. Finally, the summation of their efforts led to the release of Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019, and they created arguably the best Mortal Kombat game of all time.
Mortal Kombat 11 has everything that you could want out of a modern Mortal Kombat game — great fighting mechanics, stellar graphics, brutal fatalities, and awesome characters. But that’s not all you get. It has a plethora of ways to play, including story mode, online multiplayer, Towers of Time, Klassic Towers, and Krypt. There are new characters that fit perfectly into the universe. The story dives deep into the world of Mortal Kombat. Plus, you get the benefit of DLC since it’s on modern gaming consoles. Mortal Kombat 11 delivers in a myriad of ways, making fans of both retro and new Mortal Kombat games happy. That’s why it’s the best Mortal Kombat game out there.
