Mortal Kombat 1 is a blast, but needed more time to cook
In Mortal Kombat 1, Liu Kang rewrites history in the hope of creating a kinder, gentler Mortal Kombat tournament. In its second major reboot of the 30-year-old fighting game franchise, developer NetherRealm performs a similar trick, unburdening itself from the complex lore of nearly a dozen games.
Mortal Kombat 1 is also a fresh start mechanically; NetherRealm’s last game was incredibly complex, with each of its dozens of fighters having multiple variations. The studio has pared its roster down to 22, along with the pre-order bonus of the long-running villain Shang Tsung. Additionally, there are 15 Kameo Fighters — a subset of characters that can be summoned to aid a main character in battle. Those Kameo Fighters pull double duty as a major source of nostalgia; classic versions of characters like Kano, Sonya, and Jax, and deeper cuts like Shujinko and Darrius, can all hop into matches with a button press to extend or break combos.
NetherRealm pushes the Mortal Kombat series forward graphically, with its most lux visual presentation yet. Character models are intricately detailed, and many fighters have been given impressive makeovers — particularly those that featured prominently in the “3D Era” of Mortal Kombat, like demoness Ashrah and the ninja Reptile, who was done particularly dirty by games like Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Backgrounds in fighting stages are gorgeously detailed, brimming with character, personality, and in one notable case, the horrifying gore of Shang Tsung’s torture laboratory.
When the fighting starts, Mortal Kombat 1 feels immediately familiar, especially if you’ve been playing NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat and Injustice games over the past decade. MK1 is still that established brand of
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