There were 2 reasons, why I was wanted to try out Aftermath.
- I wanted to see a Robocop Vs. Terminator battle.
- I wanted to see how a story expansion for a fighting game works.
Turns out there was another reason to check out Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath, the excellent voice acting by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung. But do all these reasons together make the latest Mortal Kombat 11 expansion worth picking up? Let’s find out.
Buy Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath On Games The Shop || PSN Store || Xbox Store || Switch store
Getting The Expansion
Anyone who never got “Mortal Kombat 11” in the first place is in for a good deal. You can get the original game and all the DLC for its original price of $60. If you missed out on the original $40 Kombat Pack with six characters (including the Joker and Spawn), you can buy “Aftermath” along with it for $50 total. Anyone who’s kept up to date buying these packs is essentially punished with the premium price of $40.
But it’s not as easy as buying the expansion on the online store and then logging into the game to start the quest. You have to go to the in-game store (Accessed by pressing R2 on the PS4 after launching the game), buy the expansion again (albeit this time it will be priced for 0.00) and then download it, before you can start playing it. You will have to do the same with all the characters too before you can use them in the battle mode. It’s a Rube Goldberg process and sticks out in today’s time of streamlined buying protocols that we are used to.
Story In A DLC?
Once you do start the expansion though, the complaining should stop. I think Nether Realm Studios has really nailed how stories can be told in a fighting game. Instead of dysfunctional and conflicting multiple endings focusing on 1 character at a time, Mortal Kombat (and by extension Injustice) games are able to tell a cohesive story by switching between characters as the game demands. They have reused the formula here too, adding somewhere around 3 hours of story to the original game. This time the story is told through Nightwolf (an indigenous representative of the Great Spirit), Fujin (the god of wind), Sheeva (The 4 handed lady with a tomahawk), Sindel, Shao Khan, and Shang Tsung (the devious necromancer). It’s a good spread, focusing on characters that had been added as part of updates after the original game was released. The game allows you to start the Aftermath Expansion independently, but if this is your first time, I highly recommend that you play through the original campaign as well, as that will make the pay off at the end of Aftermath even sweeter.
In typical Mortal Kombat fashion, the story is larger than life, over the top ridiculous, extremely gory, and yet believable in the MK realm. The Aftermath expansion picks up directly after the end of the original game, and kickstart what is essentially a Time-Heist, climaxing into 1 final (final?) epic battle like every Mortal Kombat game does. The expansion focuses on the villainous efforts of Shang Tsung, and how he predictably (yawn!!) tries to rewrite the entire history with him at the top. But it’s how he just can’t help but betray everyone that makes it fun to watch (yay!!!).
The story itself is really cut scene loaded and focuses heavily on Shang Tsung. Which is great, because Shang Tsung maybe the best character portrayed in video games this year so far. Voiced by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who played the character in the 1995 movie, has done an excellent job. You can almost hear the layer of disdain and the pinch of arrogance in the voice of the sorcerer every time he speaks. I mean Mortal Kombat already has The Terminator voiced by Arnold himself, and Robocop voiced by Peter Weller, yet they might not be the best thing about Mortal Kombat 11.
The cut-scenes are really high quality too, and really come alive on 4K, if you have a PS4. The gameplay also runs at 60 FPS (even on theSwitch), which is impressive for a game, where so many things are happening at the same time. It’s a high-quality output from a high-quality team.
But What About Robocop?
Honestly, it’s good for a few rounds. At least it’s fun to pit Robocop against The Terminator, which I did repeatedly. Robocop has a very predictable slow-moving move set, but there are some signature combos that involve him taking out his gun and pulling out his riot shield. It’s cool but Robocop wouldn’t be the character of your choice going into the towers. That would be Fujin, missing from the Mortal Kombat roster since Armageddon, the wind god move set has him flying and floating across levels with the agility that’s not normally seen in Mortal Kombat games. Sheeva, is back too, bringing along her stomp grapple which is so fun to watch.
The DLC also introduces new venues for battles and adds Kid-Friendly Fatalities called Friendship. Some of them are really hilarious, and its another time dump to go through all of them, and find out your favorite one. These updates are free however and are available to all owners of Mortal Kombat 11, irrespective of buying the Aftermath extension.
VERDICT
The cost is a little bit of a dampener, on the master class that Shang Tsung has pulled in Aftermath. If you had missed Mortal Kombat 11 the first time, this is a great time to pick it up now that’s it’s ripe with a more diverse roster and an extended story. For exiting MK 11 players, all I can say that its better than paying for just characters.
This is the kind of DLCs, we need more of. Mortal Kombat has already redefined narratives in Fighting games, they may very well be on their way on redefining how the expansion is made for fighting games too.