I have been playing Mortal Kombat since the original in the early 90s, well when the bigger meaner kids were not hogging the arcade machine of course! So, to say I was excited when Mortal Kombat 1 was announced is a bit of an understatement. Having spent the weekend with the game thanks to the early access provided by the Premium Edition, I wanted to share my thoughts on the game.
The first thing we have to talk about is the campaign or “Kampaign” if you want to get MK about it. This is a sequel to Mortal Kombat 11 and Lui Kang has rebuilt the universe and the timeline is now completely different. Lui Kang wants the realms to live in peace and the Mortal Kombat tournament is designed to be about competition. However, Outworld is not as trusting of Earth Realm and the reason for this is that behind the scenes Shang Tsung and Quan Chi are stirring things up at the request of a greater power! It is awesome to see some of these characters that we have known for 30 years at this point performed in a different way.
As well as the campaign, you also have your standard arcade towers mode. Here you pick your character, a kameo fighter (a sidekick that you can use in fights), and select from one of a few different towers. This is how you get the story ending for each of the characters and these are done with some fantastic art. You have your standard towers that have different amounts of enemies to fight, but you also have an endless tower where you just keep going until you lose and if that is not a big enough challenge there is one more. You can do an endless tower, but without getting all of your health back at the end of each fight.
The most surprising game mode in Mortal Kombat 1 for me so far is the Invasion mode. This is a bit like an RPG where you pick your character and engage in a series of fights where you earn new stuff and stat points as you go. The first part of this has you going through Johnny Cage’s mansion which I found to be a great deal of fun. It is a mode I can see myself getting very invested in over time, especially as there is talk that they are going to add more and more content to this mode.
Going back to Johnny Cage, as a huge Van Damme fan, it is so awesome that they got Jean Claude Van Damme to play him in this game as one of his skins. There is a bit of history here as Johnny Cage was clearly inspired by Van Damme and Midway originally wanted the game to be about him. As well as JCVD, Megan Fox is also here as well playing the role of Vampire Nitara which is awesome. Mortal Kombat 1 looks great, but the gameplay here is just so much fun. It is the kind of fighting game that is easy to pick up and play, but it also has a level of depth that means those who want to take it more seriously can. Even though I have only played the game for a few days at this point, it is already one of my gaming highlights of the year.