Jolly Kooperation.
I am so glad that Mortal Kombat 1 isn’t technically a reboot.
Spoilers for the ending of 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, I guess, but its main narrative concluded with Liu Kang – arguably the series’ main protagonist – rising to godhood and resetting the universe. MK1 picks up right where that story ended with Liu still ascendant.
Mortal Kombat has one of the most gloriously excessive and ridiculously meandering story continuity’s in video game history, and the way in which they closed it all out while still using it to lay the foundations of this reset feels both respectful to longtime fans and welcoming to newcomers. I like it a lot.
You’re probably more interested in how it plays though, right? Well I have good news. It’s a blast.
The venerable fighter is making a core change to the formula this time around with the addition of Kameo Fighters. This isn’t a tag-team kind of system where you fully swap control to the other character, but rather a summonable buddy who leaps in and strikes your enemy at the tap of a button. They operate on a cooldown so can’t be constantly spammed, but they can be fluidly fed into combos and also used to disrupt the offense of your opposition, including that of their assistant.
As a fan of the series since literally the very beginning, I was a little worried going in at just how significantly this feature would change things. Each new installment in a fighting franchise such as MK must walk a really delicate tightrope between changing things up enough to justify the new games existence and not alienating the playerbase who are so deeply in-tune with the frame-precise nature of how a fight or specific character feels.
I am in no way a competitive level player so I can’t speak from that perspective, but as a life-long casual fan of the series I was thrilled to discover just how damn fun and utterly seamless the addition of these conjurable assistants is.
The hands-on preview I was lucky enough to be invited to at Summer Games Fest only offered series staples Liu Kang, Kenshi, Sub Zero, and Kitana to play with, who could each be paired with Sonya Blade, Kano, and Jax respectively as Kameo partners.
Anyone who has played the last few entries in the series will feel right at home with the fundamentals of how Mortal Kombat 1 works. It’s just as fluid and brutal as ever before. During my half-hour session I was able to run through a short challenge tower against A.I. opponents multiple times, affording me the opportunity to try out each possible combination of fighter and Kameo. Each felt easy to pop off fun moves with but challenging to string those same moves together into combos as you’d expect. It’s still Mortal Kombat, and they’re not trying to reinvent the basics of how it plays.
With my personal skill level being as humble as it is I was only able to scratch the surface of how assistants can be weaved into your repertoire, but given that each of them performs consistently as they’re known to from previous game appearances, the possibilities for finding a Kameo fighter that either supports or plugs a gap in your particular playstyle are enormous. I can’t wait to see how the competitive community embraces it, because I really think we’re going to see some absolutely bonkers stuff as well as a hopefully more broad and varied meta at the highest levels too.
Ahead of the hands-on session we were given a short presentation that showcased a good bit more of the characters and their particular methods of ultra-violence than the playable build featured too. X-ray attacks and fatalities are just as ridiculous as you’d expect, and the snapping of bone, tearing of muscle, and slicing of flesh is more visceral than ever thanks to a soundscape that feels more unsettlingly and upsettingly crisp than ever before. This isn’t a game to play on an empty stomach, but also probably not one to play on an overly full one either.
I’m always interested in what NetherRealm Studios are up to, but I must say that I walked away from my time with Mortal Kombat 1 just absolutely ravenous to play more. On every level it’s feeling like the smart refresh that the venerable series arguably needed at this point, and as someone who imported and played a truly absurd amount of the PlayStation Vita version of Mortal Kombat 2011, the promise of a Switch port has me really excited too.
Between this and the recent release of Street Fighter 6, it’s a damn good time to be an old-school fighting game fan.
Mortal Kombat 1 will be available from 19 September 2023 on Windows PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, alongside Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5 and Switch.
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Mortal Kombat 119 September 2023PC PS4 PS5 Switch Xbox One Xbox Series S & X |
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