Platted That! – Mortal Kombat 11
“You see, he freezes this guy, alright and he explodes. I could see his guts and everything… Almost lost my lunch.”
Platted That! (trademark pending) is back with one of the best selling games of 2019. Mortal Kombat 11 builds on the foundational legacy of one of gaming’s most ionic franchises with tightly tuned mechanics, high replayability, and incredible visuals and character design. NetherRealm Studios has begun to entice players back into the game with DLC, starting off with Shang Tsung. The original series’ villain is back and being performed by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who fans will recognize as Shang Tsung from the 1992 movie. While players are checking out the soul stealing sorcerer in the trial tower or through the season pass “kombat pack,” now would be a great time to get the Platinum Trophy as well.
The Platinum Trophy for MK11 is pretty grindy, but thanks to a large character roster and a few new mechanics, the grind is pretty enjoyable. This is just a quick break down of some highlights to keep in mind while pursuing the Platinum trophy.
Getting Started
The best way to get started in Mortal Kombat 11 is by swinging through one of the best tutorials the series has offered. The tutorial system is broken up into three tiers of increasing difficulty, plus some character tutorials that will teach you special moves and some basic kombos for each character. Finishing the character tutorials unlocks a unique skin for each fighter, and finishing all the tutorials will unlock three trophies and a Shao Kahn announcer voice. The harder tutorials had some bugs on launch that have been adjusted, but they are still difficult. Some sequences require incredibly specific frame timing, like down to a few frames in the window to block, recover, and attack. Persistence is really the only key here, and honestly these tutorials might be the hardest part of the plat.
A few more trophies require participation in the online modes of MK, including the AI battles, the King of the Hill matches, and the kasual versus mode.
For AI battles, we reccomend loading up that menu and grinding out the daily fights against a friend. Players pick a team of three fighters to square up against other teams and can be sped up to breeze through. Better rewards unlock for wins, but just completing 25 battles will pop the trophy.
The King of the Hill matches only need “participated” in. Boot it up, set yourself to AFK if you don’t want to fight, and when the end-of-round prompt lets you, reward ten respect points to the victor. The kasual versus matches require players to fight against other players. Honestly, the worst part of these are the trolls and anger management drop outs who will inevitably scream at you regardless of how fair or cheesy you fight. I popped into a private party for these and ended up actually having a lot of fun.
The trophy that requires the longest time kommitment is “Master of Time,” and requires beating 250 challenge towers. These unlock kosmetics and konsumbales, which can make some towers easier, or make impossible towers probable. Be sure to use konsumables often to unlock that respective trophy. While 250 towers will certainly take some time, MK11 allows players to use AI characters to complete most towers. If I’m at home working or puttering around the house I’ll let the AI put work in, just checking in to hit continue or to load up a new tower. When you’re playing, make sure to perform Brutalities as often as possible, because they are groteusquely fun to watch and the AI won’t perform them as often and you need 100 to unlock the judgmentally titled “Psychopath” trophy.
There are three trophies related to finishing the story mode, and damn I cannot praise the story mode enough. Mortal Kombat has never looked better, and the voice acting is top notch. The ending gets pretty bonkers, and it is hard to imagine where the series might go from here. But it is incredibly fun and satisfying. Mortal Kombat has maintained a really impressive quality and cohesion in nearly thirty years of games, and this latest one lives up to that impressive legacy. Enjoy the ride.
Cleaning Up
After marathoning through online fights and towers, there should only be a handful of trophies left. Depending on how many characters were used in the other modes, there might be a lot of trophies left that require performing two fatalities with a fighter. While fatalities are locked by default, entering the correct button prompts will still trigger a fatality, and they can be found online. For the fatalities and the next three trophies, I found it way easier to use my second controller to start a dummy match and perform them there. The “Disco’s Not Dead” and “Oh My Days” trophies require players to switch stance (L2) and duck a bunch during a match. Pretty easy. The “Total Disrespect” trophy requires players to equip a specific ability for D’Vorah under the Kustomize tab, and then defeat an opponent with it. It’s not very difficult but they don’t have the ability equipped by default.
Other than those, the only remaining trophies might be related to running around the Krypt and unlocking stuff. The only difficult one of these might be”Skull Kabob” which involves impaling a head on the warrior shrines in the Krypt. When the game launched, there was a bug that let players unlock these within twenty minutes. That has been patched. Sad. Instead, players will receive a head after performing fifty fatalities on a character. There are some unique skins and gear offered. Organically, after fifty or so hours in game, I’ve unlocked well over half of the heads, but you’ll only need 1 to get the plat, and that shouldn’t take very long at all.
And then you’ve Platted That! FLAWLESS VICTORY.
As always, we want to know what you think! Has Mortal Kombat 11 swept you off your feet and then used a pop-up kombo to melt a third of your health? What plat are you working on? Be sure to check out our recent podcast episode about the unsung gems at E3 or our brand new, 100% weeb trash Neon Genesis Evangelion rewatch podcast.
