So, how does Mortal Kombat 11 perform on Nintendo Switch? Well, that’s a surprisingly complicated question. Let’s take a (very early) look.
That’s right, friends. The much-ballyhooed new installment in the Mortal Kombat franchise is almost upon us. It’s so close, we can almost smell the salty breeze that’s left behind when a player is decimated with a fatality.
RELATED: Mortal Kombat 11 Online Beta First Impressions
Switch fans in Europe will have to wait a little longer. In a delay only affecting that system and region, it’ll release on May 11th. This will give us time to ponder a question that many fans have been demanding an answer to: how does the Switch edition shape up?
If you’ve been keeping track of the Switch version’s progress, you’ll know that… well, there darn well hasn’t been anything to keep track of. It’s never a good sign when a developer opts not to provide any gameplay footage, and that’s been exactly the case with the Switch port of MK 11.
As NintendoLife reported early this month, Ed Boon assured fans that the game would run at 60 FPS on the hybrid handheld, but that’s all we have really heard in the run-up to release. Assurances that things were “looking great” weren’t really going to cut it, Boon. Nor were trailers showing a couple of cinematics and a few fleeting seconds of actual gameplay.
It wasn’t until April 17th that NetherRealm released some decent footage of the game in action on Switch. Sadly, now that we’ve finally got some solid details, it seems that they may have been right to keep things on the down-low.
As Twisted Voxel reports, YouTuber Kofi received an early copy of the game, and their verdict is rather mixed. On the plus side, Kofi is happy to report that the game is "lit" in handheld mode, but it’s when you dock your Switch that things get a little murkier:
A mixed bag, all in all. Yes, the very fact that Mortal Kombat 11 is playable anywhere and everywhere is a fantastic thing, but is that portability worth the compromises? That’s for the player to decide. After all, as for performance itself, there’s really no telling until Digital Foundry weighs in on the matter, and a visual downgrade was inevitable (as the gamers of Reddit are already discussing).
Should you buy the Switch edition, then? From this very early discussion, it sounds like one of the major factors is whether you’re more of a docked or handheld Switch player.