I write this as someone who is bad at fighting games but feels strangely compelled to play their story modes, so take everything I say with that grain of salt.
The past few Mortal Kombats have inhabited a schlocky, campy B-movie vibe that haven't been the deepest of stories but have mostly been fun. With how the previous game ended (along with its DLC) and the possibilities it represented, I was keenly awaiting to see what they chose to do with this new outing.
Unfortunately, they chose to do nothing meaningful with the premise until maybe the last 30 minutes and by that time, I was very much over the game. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised - this is very much the world that someone like Liu Kang would create - one with a very limited imagination of what could meaningfully be different. Insert the pithy saying about how when your only tool are your fists, you treat every problem like a skull waiting to be pulverised.
This extends to the cast of characters and even the violence in the game - it all feels a bit rote at this point.
- We're going through the motions of all these x-ray bone breaking special moves because, well, we did it in the last game so we need it here too. Even as someone who occasionally enjoys a gory fatality, these mid-match effects have grown tiring for me, slowing down the paces of a match for no real benefit.
- We have most of the same characters because it would be weird if we didn't have them. Which is a real shame because, as mentioned, the last thirty minutes shows a different world that would have been a lot more fun and dynamic as a player. Perhaps this is because more sweeping changes to the roster and gameplay would have greater implications on competitive balance but I do wish they had found a way for the single player content to be more varied.
The new Invasions mode seeks to deliver this variety by introducing stages with random modifiers but these felt more like chores than anything which made the game more fun to play. Invasions is a big playground designed to eat up my time in conjunction with the daily and weekly challenges for minimal cosmetic differences. I could see this being a lot of fun if its iterated on in future seasons, with more emphasis on player empowerment rather than dealing with weird stage debuffs or other things which aren't really explained well in the UI, but as it is today, I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my free time.
Speaking to positives though,
- the new actor for Shang Tsung really steps up and does a great job of being smarmy in the best ways. He had big shoes to fill and I think he mostly does a great job with what he's given.
- the environment details are pristine and helped inject some life into a game I felt was quite sterile.
- I appreciate there is some meaningful variation in the Asian-themed cultures shown in the game - Mortal Kombat has fumbled this in the past by painting with a very broad stereotypical pan-Asian brush. I was worried based on how similar some of the characters looked in trailers for the game but they've mostly executed on subtle differences of details in clothing and character design in a way I appreciate.
All in all, this game suffers from coming out in the same year as Street Fighter 6 which dared to try some new, fun things and while it didn't all work, it was a breath of fresh air. I'm here wishing for a different timeline where Mortal Kombat 1 was less of a whiff.
The past few Mortal Kombats have inhabited a schlocky, campy B-movie vibe that haven't been the deepest of stories but have mostly been fun. With how the previous game ended (along with its DLC) and the possibilities it represented, I was keenly awaiting to see what they chose to do with this new outing.
Unfortunately, they chose to do nothing meaningful with the premise until maybe the last 30 minutes and by that time, I was very much over the game. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised - this is very much the world that someone like Liu Kang would create - one with a very limited imagination of what could meaningfully be different. Insert the pithy saying about how when your only tool are your fists, you treat every problem like a skull waiting to be pulverised.
This extends to the cast of characters and even the violence in the game - it all feels a bit rote at this point.
- We're going through the motions of all these x-ray bone breaking special moves because, well, we did it in the last game so we need it here too. Even as someone who occasionally enjoys a gory fatality, these mid-match effects have grown tiring for me, slowing down the paces of a match for no real benefit.
- We have most of the same characters because it would be weird if we didn't have them. Which is a real shame because, as mentioned, the last thirty minutes shows a different world that would have been a lot more fun and dynamic as a player. Perhaps this is because more sweeping changes to the roster and gameplay would have greater implications on competitive balance but I do wish they had found a way for the single player content to be more varied.
The new Invasions mode seeks to deliver this variety by introducing stages with random modifiers but these felt more like chores than anything which made the game more fun to play. Invasions is a big playground designed to eat up my time in conjunction with the daily and weekly challenges for minimal cosmetic differences. I could see this being a lot of fun if its iterated on in future seasons, with more emphasis on player empowerment rather than dealing with weird stage debuffs or other things which aren't really explained well in the UI, but as it is today, I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my free time.
Speaking to positives though,
- the new actor for Shang Tsung really steps up and does a great job of being smarmy in the best ways. He had big shoes to fill and I think he mostly does a great job with what he's given.
- the environment details are pristine and helped inject some life into a game I felt was quite sterile.
- I appreciate there is some meaningful variation in the Asian-themed cultures shown in the game - Mortal Kombat has fumbled this in the past by painting with a very broad stereotypical pan-Asian brush. I was worried based on how similar some of the characters looked in trailers for the game but they've mostly executed on subtle differences of details in clothing and character design in a way I appreciate.
All in all, this game suffers from coming out in the same year as Street Fighter 6 which dared to try some new, fun things and while it didn't all work, it was a breath of fresh air. I'm here wishing for a different timeline where Mortal Kombat 1 was less of a whiff.