This review contains spoilers
i'm going to reserve rating this game until later, for now this review is just going to be about MK1's story mode. usually it takes me a while to meditate on how i feel about a fighting game in totalality, but i do have thoughts i want to share about the narrative they're trying to craft.
okay so did they really and sincerely want us to not laugh at that one cutscene where they're about to do infinity war and then liu kang says MLK's "the arc of the universe bends towards justice" quote? there's such a definite point where this game's story goes from "self-serious and dramatic" to "tom and jerry x scooby doo crossover". on the one hand, it's fucking jarring and threw me off so hard. on the other hand, it's incredibly fucking funny in that way that you know NRS is in on the joke and wants you to laugh. it's disappointing that the tonal shift has to come out of left field due to me actually being relatively invested in a lot of these character stories that go nowhere, and i imagine this was a game meant to establish more than develop a setting.
i think my largest complaints come from the fact that, outside of the campy nature of the last like 20% of the game, the game is largely incredibly unfunny yet tries desperately to be so. i think i laughed one time (at kitana's reaction to johnny being like "OMG you're 1000 years old?!"), but basically every other joke fell flat or went on for too long. despite never having seen an MCU movie, so many lines made me go "MARVEL SHIT". the crowd of normies that NRS wants is obvious. either way, i was interested in seeing where the game was going to go with the switchup of liu kang and raiden but it kind of just. . . doesn't do anything with that? there's other fun character wrinkles, like sindel not being evil or having killed jerrod, or mileena managing to reverse her transformation that makes her tarkatan, but these are more treated as status quo than reveals. the game has these changes, but they're not played with in any significant way. like i said, it's more interested in establishing than developing.
beyond that, this story feels very safe in that it doesn't kill off any characters besides sindel (who will probably come back in a sequel, probably as DLC because "jerrod saved her soul", whatever that means) and capitalizes on the title being Mortal Kombat 1 so it can try and nab as many newcomers as possible. MK1 is so much more appealing as a title to an outsider than MK12, so i can't blame them. i just wish the story ended up having more of a point. things largely end where they start with only a few characters (raiden, kenshi) having meaningfully changed by the conclusion of the story. again, i get it, you want the lore and setting to be established without alienating newcomers that this game is invariably trying to wrangle in, but the story didn't need to feel so empty and nothing to accomplish that same goal. newcomers want to be impressed by your story, they will feel emotions for these characters if you establish the context and make the relationships clear. this was your opportunity to make newcomers care about longstanding themes in the series, like the rivalry between mileena and kitana. instead, it's acknowledged like once or twice and then nothing ever comes of it. no head, no resolution, it just fades into the ether.
and yeah, "at least the game looks good and fights are choreographed well", but this game very clearly wants to present as a movie in the same way that 11 did, and where 11 largely suceeded, 1 fails. i'll withhold some of my assholeish comments about frame rate chugging or some animations looking goofy because i would rather games look worse and dev teams be crunched less than the inverse. but there's more that could've been done here. we could've had more from this story, and resetting the timeline with this many differences had such fun potential. i feel ultimately this story fails to live up to what we could've had with this premise and these characters. it squanders so many characters that i wanted to know more about, like smoke, reiko, tanya, etc. and there's no large emotional beats that i can attach to. i said it in my review of X, but even having little frame of reference for the lin kuei/shirai ryu conflict, i still felt something when scorpion and sub-zero mended that wound. no such moment could be found in this game's story.
i would rank the modern MK stories as 11 > X > 1 > 2011 (god i fucking LOVE NRS's titling for this stupid series). 1 doesn't fall flat entirely, but it doesn't evoke many positive feelings out of me. NRS has been able to do better in both the entries above it having more against them (pre-existing lore, entirely new characters to introduce to newcomers and oldies, etc.), so i'm hopeful that this is just a misstep.
okay so did they really and sincerely want us to not laugh at that one cutscene where they're about to do infinity war and then liu kang says MLK's "the arc of the universe bends towards justice" quote? there's such a definite point where this game's story goes from "self-serious and dramatic" to "tom and jerry x scooby doo crossover". on the one hand, it's fucking jarring and threw me off so hard. on the other hand, it's incredibly fucking funny in that way that you know NRS is in on the joke and wants you to laugh. it's disappointing that the tonal shift has to come out of left field due to me actually being relatively invested in a lot of these character stories that go nowhere, and i imagine this was a game meant to establish more than develop a setting.
i think my largest complaints come from the fact that, outside of the campy nature of the last like 20% of the game, the game is largely incredibly unfunny yet tries desperately to be so. i think i laughed one time (at kitana's reaction to johnny being like "OMG you're 1000 years old?!"), but basically every other joke fell flat or went on for too long. despite never having seen an MCU movie, so many lines made me go "MARVEL SHIT". the crowd of normies that NRS wants is obvious. either way, i was interested in seeing where the game was going to go with the switchup of liu kang and raiden but it kind of just. . . doesn't do anything with that? there's other fun character wrinkles, like sindel not being evil or having killed jerrod, or mileena managing to reverse her transformation that makes her tarkatan, but these are more treated as status quo than reveals. the game has these changes, but they're not played with in any significant way. like i said, it's more interested in establishing than developing.
beyond that, this story feels very safe in that it doesn't kill off any characters besides sindel (who will probably come back in a sequel, probably as DLC because "jerrod saved her soul", whatever that means) and capitalizes on the title being Mortal Kombat 1 so it can try and nab as many newcomers as possible. MK1 is so much more appealing as a title to an outsider than MK12, so i can't blame them. i just wish the story ended up having more of a point. things largely end where they start with only a few characters (raiden, kenshi) having meaningfully changed by the conclusion of the story. again, i get it, you want the lore and setting to be established without alienating newcomers that this game is invariably trying to wrangle in, but the story didn't need to feel so empty and nothing to accomplish that same goal. newcomers want to be impressed by your story, they will feel emotions for these characters if you establish the context and make the relationships clear. this was your opportunity to make newcomers care about longstanding themes in the series, like the rivalry between mileena and kitana. instead, it's acknowledged like once or twice and then nothing ever comes of it. no head, no resolution, it just fades into the ether.
and yeah, "at least the game looks good and fights are choreographed well", but this game very clearly wants to present as a movie in the same way that 11 did, and where 11 largely suceeded, 1 fails. i'll withhold some of my assholeish comments about frame rate chugging or some animations looking goofy because i would rather games look worse and dev teams be crunched less than the inverse. but there's more that could've been done here. we could've had more from this story, and resetting the timeline with this many differences had such fun potential. i feel ultimately this story fails to live up to what we could've had with this premise and these characters. it squanders so many characters that i wanted to know more about, like smoke, reiko, tanya, etc. and there's no large emotional beats that i can attach to. i said it in my review of X, but even having little frame of reference for the lin kuei/shirai ryu conflict, i still felt something when scorpion and sub-zero mended that wound. no such moment could be found in this game's story.
i would rank the modern MK stories as 11 > X > 1 > 2011 (god i fucking LOVE NRS's titling for this stupid series). 1 doesn't fall flat entirely, but it doesn't evoke many positive feelings out of me. NRS has been able to do better in both the entries above it having more against them (pre-existing lore, entirely new characters to introduce to newcomers and oldies, etc.), so i'm hopeful that this is just a misstep.