Mortal Kombat 11 was a massive success, and it continued the trend of Netherrealm Studios going from strength to strength, be it Mortal Kombat or Injustice. Recent leaks and news have confirmed that Mortal Kombat 12 is in the works, and it is likely to come out this year. While its predecessor made strides in customizability, player choices, overall content availability and dozens of other things, it also had a few missteps.
Mortal Kombat 12 is set to release around the same time as some other heavy hitters, such as a new Street Fighter and Tekken installment. Because of this, it might do Mortal Kombat 12 some good if there were a few changes made from the previous title to help them outshine the competition
6 Shift In Playstyle
Mortal Kombat 11 was a very slow and methodical game in spirit. Defensive options such as breakaway, flawless blocks and armor options were all exceptionally strong. This made the game slow-paced and more mentally taxing with players poking and prodding a ton before committing to anything. In fact, with certain combos, players could be punished for hitting the opponent.
While Mortal Kombat has always had its own unique playstyle focused around footsies and neutral, a slight shift towards making defensive options weaker wouldn't hurt. Especially considering its one of the few big fighting games with a dedicated block button.
5 Less Focus On Zoning
While Zoning, and playing a projectile heavy game has earned its place in the meta of every fighting game, a lot of players feel the zoning meta in Mortal Kombat 11 was a bit too strong and a bit too prevalent. This also made the competitive scene a bit stale at times.
Perhaps with the way the roster shaped out in Mortal Kombat 11, there was always going to be a ton of zoning characters, such as Cetrion and Sindel, but one of the unexpected downsides of the variations and customization system was how every character had access to a ton of projectiles, some of which were just plain broken, this wasn't ideal but is probably a quick fix.
4 Bring Back Running
Mortal Kombat X is widely considered one of the best games of its generation in terms of the combat mechanics, and simply, how it feels to play. A big reason why was the use of the run mechanic, by forward dashing and pressing the block button. Running was effective to close the gap on enemies and catch them off-guard. Then, if players combined running with ducking, it helped them avoid a ton of ranged attacks and thus avoid the chip damage that comes with them.
Players could cancel runs into tons of different options and even had access to running combos. All of this added a welcome layer of depth to the combat of MKX and the feature should surely be brought back, even though it was removed for MK11.
3 No More Zombie Forms
To be fair, this has been a thing for a couple of games in the series at this point, but it is definitely for the best if Mortal Kombat 12 features as little of the revenant or zombie forms of the main characters as possible. Not only is the trope somewhat tired and worn out, it does a disservice to the developers that work on the visuals of the game.
Both MKX and especially MK11 had incredible graphics as the character designs, costumes and motion caption were all top-notch. MK11 was vibrant and easy on the eyes and a big selling point for the game was the all the customization players could do to the characters. The fact that a lot of the characters had their boring, gray revenant forms on display was a bit of a let-down. While its understandable they have story relevance, and human forms for all the characters were still available, its best at this point to move on from them.
2 Bring Back Other Game Modes
To be clear, Mortal Kombat 11 had one of the best story modes in any fighting game series, period. It felt like a high-octane action blockbuster and the DLC expansions were perfect too. Moreover, the character development, voice acting and everything else was all incredible. Beyond the story mode, however, MK11 didn't have much to do for online play besides exploring the Krypt and grinding towers.Previous entries in the series have had tons of other game modes and mini-games that Mortal Kombat 12 should bring back. While Konquest mode might be a tall order, it's a long time coming. The likes of Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat are also missed.
1 Combo Diversity
Mortal Kombat 11 had tons of options in terms of character customization and one of the strongest features in the game was the ability to mold characters to a player's own preference, by choosing what special moves they have. For example Sub Zero could be a jack of all trades, to an ice-ball spamming machine, to a slow and methodical pressure focused play style using ice traps. There were tons of diversity with how to approach the neutral game and how to shift a character's strengths and weaknesses.
Unfortunately, the actual combos itself were a bit basic. Aside from a few characters such as Kabal, MK11 had pretty basic and short combos, with predictable routes, and it made things a bit repetitive. Allowing for more combo extensions and better use of the stage environments could go a long way to improving this.
Mortal Kombat 12 is in development.