Mortal Kombat 1 is a new and innovative entry in the beloved fighting game franchise. It not only
reboots its own universe for the 2nd time, but introduces new features and brings back old characters and gameplay, while also reworking it. The gore factor was amped up a lot and it’s a little scary how good it looks and how brutal it is. The game offers a new and in depth combat system, while also being welcoming and being easily picked up by new players.
The combat has been significantly improved, especially since after its latest entry, Mortal Kombat 11. 11 was extremely slow paced and kind of downgraded the combat, story, gear, and most of its game modes.
Thankfully, Mortal Kombat 1 completely revamped the combat mechanics, and made it very experimental, while also keeping a variety of fast paced combos. Air combat was brought back and allowed players to create and maintain combos while being in the air. Cameo fighters is a new system introduced into the series, they allow you to stun your opponent, break from combos, and even create unique and advanced combos. The gear system was brought back from 11, and was thankfully really dumbed down, because in 11 you had to constantly play the game and grind on gamemodes just to get a couple pieces of gear.
The towers gamemode was brought back, where you can fight a tower of opponents and get a unique ending for a character and unlock a reward. Invasions mode is a completely new gamemode. It’s a mode that will change based on the seasons, and allows you to explore stages in a board game style, and have unique encounters with characters from the roster. Mortal Kombat 1’s roster is one of the best rosters we’ve had since the first reboot. Since everything has now been rebooted, it gives the game a chance to completely change character’s stories, while bringing them back with a whole new look. This game brings back characters such as Havik, Ashrah, and Reiko, who haven’t been playable for almost 20 years, and have a completely different style of combat that’s adapted to its new system.
The story for Mortal Kombat has always been extremely complicated and linear, despite how simple the basic concept of it is. In this game, Liu Kang creates this universe, and expects it to be peaceful. Although, it clearly doesn’t go as planned, because of interference from another timeline. So all the bad guys have the same role they previously played. Most of the roster is made up of heroes, which is surprising. Previous villains such as Mileena, Reptile, Geras, are all now heroes in this timeline. Most of the campaign is based on Mileena becoming empress of Outworld, Shang Tsung does stuff to prevent that and Liu Kang brings together a group of champions for the Mortal Kombat tournament. Mortal Kombat 1 brings a lot of new origins to the characters. Tarkatans are no longer their own race, but are now victims of the disease Tarkat. Raiden is no longer the mentor for Liu Kang but is now the student. Mileena is no longer a clone of Kitana but is now her sister. Scorpion, Sub-zero, and Smoke’s story is completely redone, they’re all brothers now, seeking for the betterment of their clan, and part of that goal leads to more conflict in the story. They did Smoke kind of dirty, he’s one of the most underrated characters and he barely had any contributions in the story. All 3 of them got great voice actors to play their characters, who have also done other great work. Nitara is actually voiced by Megan Fox, who does a really bad job at voice acting unfortunately, because the delivery is really stale, but she’s also barely in the game.
Unfortunately, I think the game does lack a bit of content, once you beat the story, invasions, towers, and online play are all that you have left. Though, they are going to be adding way more characters coming up, such as guest characters like Homelander from The Boys and Omni-man from Invincible. So it is exciting to see what more they’re planning on doing with the game.
