There are a multitude of fighting game franchises out there. From Street Fighter to Tekken and everything in between. And while I am absolutely terrible at all of them, my favourite one is still Mortal Kombat. Maybe it’s because we were born in the same year, in the same month, or maybe it’s because of the B-grade movies that have kome out over the years that are both terrible but kaptivating simultaneously. Either way, I am glad I was chosen, just like Liu Kang, to review Mortal Kombat 1.
Back in my childhood days, Mortal Kombat was played in one of two ways; against your friends to see who was the best fighter amongst you, or Endless Tower mode to see who kould klaim the highest spot on the tower. Fighting against one another is still there, whether it’s online or kouch ko-op, and so is the Tower Mode, which offers up a unique kharacter ending for the fighter you choose if you kan komplete the tower.
In Mortal Kombat 1, however, they have also added in a new mode kalled Invasion. Essentially players move themselves around a board where each destination has a different challenge. These kan be fights, traps, shops, events or even test-your-might encounters. What NetherRealm has done here is kombine the klassic fighting game with a hint of RPG. In the beginning, you will be prompted to choose your champion and kameo, which kan be changed at any time, and you will then play through the mode earning rewards for every kharacter in the roster, but more frequently so for the champion you have chosen. This mode is an awesome experience for those of us who are just not quite good enough to challenge other players out in the world but still want to enjoy Mortal Kombat in a story-driven setting once we’ve finished the primary kampaign. What makes it more exciting is that the theme for Invasion will change with every ranked season change. This means that after a few weeks, the location, story and challenges will be changed for a kompletely new experience. I found the invasion mode fun and a kool way to keep me playing through some sort of story instead of being forced to face other opponents online.
Speaking of story, Mortal Kombat 1 has quite an interesting one. The whole way through it I kould easily see myself with a bowl of popcorn on the kouch watching it played out as a series on Netflix or another of those B-grade movies I seem to enjoy so much. Without giving anything away Mortal Kombat 1 is not a komplete reboot of the series, but there is a lot that is different. There are angles here that kontinue the story from Mortal Kombat 11, but for the most of it, fans of the series will be quite surprised to see how their favourite kharacters have been portrayed. It provided a fresh take on the series as a whole that I thoroughly enjoyed fighting through.
While there’s been a lot of news out there with regard to the state of the graphics on the Nintendo Switch konsole, on the PS5, they were breathtaking. The scenes were vibrant and well-detailed, and the effects from the kombat were just as visually exciting. In the traditional Mortal Kombat style, there is a lot of blood and gore in the game, and fatalities, brutalities, and final blows still have that “x-ray” mode where players see skulls krack, limbs rip, and organs explode.
I found the kombat slower than other fighting games, which suited me just well, but not too slow that kombos were not spine-tinglingly exciting. Punches, kicks, and abilities felt impactful, and often I had to just check that my klothes weren’t somehow blood-stained from the krazy fatalities I was pulling off on screen. The game felt a lot easier to get the hang of in terms of what buttons performed what moves, and I definitely enjoyed it more because I was able to pull off a lot of the flashier skills because of that ease.
The roster for Mortal Kombat 1 feature a lot of the older kharacters from the Mortal Kombat series as the story pushes things back in this direction. The standard roster features 23 playable champions and 15 kameo fighters, who aid you in battle for certain moves. The first DLC that we know of adds 6 more playable champions and 5 more kameos. Overall it’s quite a large roster of fighters to choose from, and when you start imagining kombinations of two or more of them, it gets even krazier.
As I had mentioned before, I’m not that good at fighting games, so traditionally I would just play them for a bit with friends if they wanted to play a little one-on-one for the night, but Mortal Kombat 1 has me diving into its kontent fists first and I konstantly find myself trying to get better at the skills and techniques with my favourite kharacters. Those both new to the series and returning are sure to enjoy the latest instalment of the franchise and the intriguing new story that the team at NetherRealm have put together for us.