After 857 hours spent playing 8 RPGs this year, I'm finding solace from open world burnout in the most curious of genres

2025 is over the halfway mark, and I made the questionable decision to count up how many games I've managed to play in the past seven months. Apparently – not counting the many, many indie games I've dipped a toe into along the way – I've rolled credits on 13.

Of that baffling number, eight are RPGs. From Avowed to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Final Fantasy 16, I've put my emotions through the wringer in the name of experiencing some beautiful storytelling, vast open worlds, and the most momentous video game soundtracks in history. The not-so-minor snag in that otherwise fulfilling plan is that I am now suffering from the most aggressive form of RPG fatigue I've ever known.

Dry spell

My transactional relationship with RPGs is plain as day: I get to play a huge, detailed, time-sink of a video game, and I give it every ounce of my emotional energy in turn.

The result is that July has left me paralyzed by choice in the face of so many new games, yet wracked with numbing anxiety at the prospect of playing them. Enter my saving grace, Mortal Kombat 11.

I downloaded it on a whim. It was a Friday, and I was heading over to a friend's place that evening. His PS4 had just gone bust, so I offered to find something on Game Pass – the easy choice being Halo Infinite – and bring my Xbox with me. But while browsing the subscription service for the first time in ages, half-heartedly adding games to an ever-growing backlog that I certainly won't be clearing this year, the thought of diving into an online multiplayer FPS with a bunch of strangers while in this fragile state made me want to barf. A cursory flick through the local co-op section would soon reveal the perfect antidote.

Mortal Kombat 11 is a gory, violent, button-smasher of a fighting game that I've long admired from a distance. Specifically, all the gnarly fatality compilations on YouTube. I love me some overkill, and what could be more over-the-top than punching a guy's brains out through the back of his skull? It sounded like just the stress relief I might need to repair these frayed nerves. 48 gigabytes and two hours later, I was sitting on my friend's sofa and loading it up for the first time.

Round One

The comforting thing about jumping into a new game with an equally dubious friend is that you're both total beginners. We made the questionable decision not to waste time on the tutorials (it was 10pm and I am passionate about my Cinderella bedtime) and jumped right into a local co-op session.

It took me about three matches before I realized that you don't need to hammer A to jump in Mortal Kombat 11. Pushing the left joystick in upwards diagonals is, frankly, a marvel in simplicity, allowing me to put all remaining brainpower into testing out button combos and squeezing them into my short term memory where possible.

This proved a bit of a pointless venture when I realized that swapping characters means new combos to memorize, but that irritation quickly faded once I settled into a peaceful, toothy rhythm with my fighter-of-choice, Baraka. I've only just noticed that he's labelled an "antagonist" in the Mortal Kombat franchise, but in a way, all of them seem pretty antagonistic to me when I'm getting curbstomped through a cross-dimensional portal by a Black Panther-meets-Dr. Strange hybrid.

My friend and I sat there revelling in the joys of flying fists and bloodshed for what felt like five minutes. It turned out to be a full two hours. By then, I was well and truly hooked – even though I was cheating a little by looking up fatality combos. I've yet to uninstall Mortal Kombat 11 despite my Series S's meager memory already bulging at the seams. Instead, playing it each night has become something of a ritual.

I find a strange, dissonant serenity in it. Each punch brings me closer to nirvana, each satisfying spine snap heralding the return of my sanity as I revel in utterly heinous acts of video game violence. Is this the stress relief I've been missing out on after all these years spent sidestepping the perils of multiplayer games, wilfully ignorant of their cathartic properties?

It seems so. At the very least, I'm no longer flinching from playing anything that's not Hades 2 or The Sims 4, so I'm calling this a knockout victory. Whether I'll ever try out the online multiplayer component of Mortal Kombat 11, on the other hand… let's not get too hasty.

Check out all the upcoming Xbox Series X games yet to come in 2025, from Borderlands 4 to Octopath Traveler 0.