--Shao Kahn, Mortal Kombat
The 2011 Mortal Kombat entry is not a remake of the original game, but a reboot of sorts that continues the story from an apocalyptic setting of Shao Kahn's impending total victory--and there is much to the game besides the story mode. While the story follows Raiden's time-transcending mission to alter the events of a traditional tournament that caters to the bloodthirsty, the sadistic, the misogynists, and the misandrists of the various realms created by the Elder Gods, there are two sets of Challenge Towers, one unique to the Vita edition, the Krypt, where alternate costumes and more can be unlocked, and, of course, simple fights between characters that can be customized away from the main story. Like Resident Evil: The Mercenaries on the 3DS and Paper Mario: The Origami King on the Switch, though, you cannot just start a new game or reset the unlockables on a new profile without deleting the entire set of save data. You have to get rid of all the save data by literally deleting the game icon from the PS Vita menu in order to restart it. Because the data is tied to the game cartridge itself and not a PS Vita system or a memory card, this is something that anyone obtaining the game this far after release might want to hear about.
Production Values
The production values of Mortal Kombat on the Vita are very uneven when it comes to the graphics. The story cutscenes look perfectly fine for a game ported from home consoles to a handheld system from the early 2010s, but the introductory animations before a fight, where the game has already transitioned from cutscene visuals to the actual gameplay graphics, can be downright awful even for an older Vita game. This is a system that was capable of much more, after all! At least the graphics in motion during the combat itself are much smoother and, thanks to the distance of the camera, less jagged or lacking in detail. To its credit, Mortal Kombat does have very fast story mode loading times, excellent voice acting despite some of the characters themselves having exaggerated personalities, and lots of content, so this Vita port is far from bad in its design. The short lead-ins to the fights are the worst part in this regard, islands of poor quality in a sea of otherwise competent production values.
Gameplay
Kratos is playable in this game only on PlayStation systems, right at home in the gratuitous brutality of the Mortal Kombat universe's ritual tournaments--but he is not part of the story mode. In the story mode, players must defeat opponents to proceed from one chapter to the next, the requirement being to become the victor of two out of three rounds when facing a single opponent or to simply defeat two tag-teaming opponents in one round. Each chapter follows a specific character as he or she faces challengers that fit their subplots while developing the larger story. Besides speed and agility, most characters play very similarly, just with different animations for their attacks. The basic moveset is all the same even as the environments change quite a bit. The new x-ray attacks, which can only be triggered when a three-part meter fills up as you land or receive blows, showcase some of the most diversity across how characters fight, with combatants like Kitana, Nightwolf, Scorpion, Sonya Blade, and Rain having their own personal twist to these more devastating attacks.
Random button mashing might very well be how many players would fill this meter up, though, since the controls can sometimes make characters move too little or too much in the lateral directions and since the opposing fighter might spam their cheapest moves even in story mode. Find the best low-effort moves to counter this or use on them and just spam them as well to achieve much faster victories. There is also more to advancing in the story than just seeing the next part of the plot and getting to another fight: competing story fights amasses coins for the Krypt, a cemetery-like area where the player wanders around in first-person and can spend these coins on new costumes and other bonus features. Finishing smaller, self-contained challenge missions for the first time in one of two Challenge Towers earns more coins. In the standard Challenge Tower with its 300 mini-missions that came with the original release on other systems, objectives like defending for 15 seconds without taking damage or landing 15 hits within 45 seconds must be completed to win. The bonus Challenge Tower levels are exclusive to the PS Vita port of the game (which did come out a year after the initial release on the PS3 and Xbox 360) and can involve the touch screen or gyroscope. Surviving a barrage of missiles for a set amount of time while touching the missiles to make them disappear, fighting as a zombified character, or slicing body parts as they are thrown up onto the screen not only earns additional coins, but it also sometimes unlocks bonus costumes.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Opening with a bold scene where franchise characters are dead on and around a ziggurat, Mortal Kombat shows Shao Kahn about to kill the pseudo-deity Raiden. Raiden manages to send telepathic messages to his past self so that he can ensure that events leading up to this "Armageddon" are altered enough to change the ultimate outcome. The game then shifts back to an earlier time where the beings in one of this universe's realms are not permitted by the Elder Gods, who are not the uncaused cause in Mortal Kombat lore (that seems to be the One Being), to conquer another realm without their champion(s) repeatedly defeating its greatest warriors in a fighting ritual called the Mortal Kombat tournament. interacting with everyone from Shao Kahn to the various dead characters from the introduction, Raiden does his best to prepare Earthrealm contestants for differing versions of the events in these prophetic visions from his own future consciousness.
Intellectual Content
Mortal Kombat as a franchise might not be known for its sincere exploration of any foundational or otherwise deep topics, though a game like this being made does of course naturally connect with the issue of whether violent content in entertainment is immoral to consume and if violence in art can "make" people engage in any particular kind of behavior (and it obviously has nothing to do with whether someone is inclined to be violent or if they would do so even if they wanted to). However, the story for this 2011 Mortal Kombat game is actually more complex and at times even more abstract than the reputation of the games might suggest. As an aside on how this game further deviates from misconceptions some might assume about the series, it even does handle its scantily-clad female character Kitana in a way that brings out her worldview, upbringing, and personality, rather than have her and every male character only focus on the sensuality of her body. No, not even the male characters universally fixate on her body and minimal clothing!
Conclusion
As one of the only portable Mortal Kombat games to be released as of yet (and I do have the eleventh game on my Switch that I will get to at some point), this 2011 reboot/sequel represents the series well on the Vita, with its lore that at times is asinine and at other times is more complex and even deeper than some might expect given the reputation of the franchise. There is an extensive set of unlockables, bonus missions, and Vita-unique features that make this a game that can be played for many hours without exhausting its content and a game that highlights the strengths of handheld platforms in particular. No, it does not focus on its premise in a way that confronts the moral and other metaphysical nature of this world, and the controls can be very unresponsive or difficult to master, but other than the lackluster graphics right before fights in story mode, there are no other wasted opportunities or deficiencies in this game.
Content:
1. Violence: In addition to the blood that should surprise no one, special attacks include a slow-motion series of two strikes where the camera zooms in and shows skeletal fractures with an x-ray filter.
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