I Did Not Purchase Mortal Kombat 1, Here’s Why
Jonathan…I love Mortal Kombat.
I know that the title above may sound like it comes from someone who does not, but allow me to provide some kontext (I’ll keep those jokes to a minimum I promise).
Mortal Kombat (2011 or 9 depending on who you ask) is a very special game to me. It was the first Mortal Kombat game that I really dug into and played the neatherrealm out of with my brother. I’ll never forget the shock I felt while watching the story mode play out and seeing Jax (one of my favorite characters) get his arms ripped off by Ermac. I won’t forget how satisfying it was seeing Liu Kang punch a hole in Shao Khan’s heart after he killed his best friend. How excited I was after the ending left me wondering what could come next. As a soft reboot, it was a perfect first step into the world of Mortal Kombat and its wild characters.
But it wasn’t just the story that I loved. Mortal Kombat 9 was the perfect multiplayer game for me and my older brother. We battled endlessly and forged a poetic rivalry between his Scorpion and my Sub-Zero, our favorite characters. When we weren’t battling each other, we were battling together against the CPU in tag ladders. Working together to battle an incredibly challenging Shao Khan at the top was always an exciting moment with tons of laughs, cries, and cheers after he was finally felled. Discovering new fatalities, trying to do a real kombo (this one doesn’t count, that’s what they are called in game Jonathan!), getting jump-scared by that weird monster in the krypt, learning Reptile, Stryker, Kung Lao, Cyber Sub-Zero and Kratos!?
If it wasn’t for Mortal Kombat 9 I would have never become that fighting game fanatic I am today.
Even today, twelve years later, Mortal Kombat is still bringing me and my brother together. He came over not long ago and wanted to try Mortal Kombat 11, since being a father of two young boys and having a demanding job, he has long since stepped away from gaming. Despite MK11 being so wildly different from 9, we still had so much fun. Seeing the joy on his face as he witnessed Spawn do a fatality, it made me nostalgic. It really was just like old times.
So as you can imagine I was more than hyped about Mortal Kombat 1. If you’ll recall, Jon, I believe I sent you a message like this:
Well actually…it is the exact message I sent upon the first reveal of Mortal Kombat 1’s gameplay. As you can see I was very excited. I really believed that this would be MY game. Mortal Kombat 1 would be the one game I would dedicate my time and effort to and try to be better at than I was at MK11 (which I was quite bad at). I wanted to see more, but alas all I could do was watch the trailer over and over. I couldn’t wait.
So…why isn’t in my hands? Why am I not playing Mortal Kombat 1 and am instead writing this article? What happened?
Well…there are three primary reasons as to why I ultimately have decided to wait on Mortal Kombat 1. I believe that walking through them will shed light on how I went from nearly pre-ordering the Kollector’s edition that costs more than $200.00…to not owning the game at all.
3. A Fatal Marketing Mistake
Marketing a video game is rough. There are so many games coming out, from big releases to large ones, that it becomes so difficult for the interested player to keep track of all the latest updates and reveals. The publisher/developer has to show off what features their game has as best as they can while also ensuring it gets as many eyes on it as possible. For many titles this is a crucial time to make sure a game is seen by as many people as possible. Mortal Kombat 1, however, is a massive name in the video game space. Spreading the word about a new Mortal Kombat was simple enough and it seems that much of the interested audience reacted with appropriate hype, including me.
The first reveal was in May of 2023 where it was revealed that the game would be releasing on September 19th of…huh.
Actually there was no year attached to it. But I mean…it just got revealed. There is no way that they mean September of THIS year, right?
But they did. Mortal Kombat 1 was to launch on September 19th, 2023. While this was not a bad thing by any means, it just meant that the MK marketing train had to start rolling pretty soon. Beyond just needing to start showing off the game more, they only had 3 months to show off as much as possible before the game dropped. Hmm…well that’s not too big a deal. I mean MK11 was reveled at the game awards of 2018, had a community reveal event on January of 2019, and released in April of the same year. It’s not like Mortal Kombat was stepping into uncharted territory. They’ve been here before.
Yes. They have. The big distinction between the two marketing directions, however, is that aforementioned community reveal. It wasn’t a demo for EVO attendee’s, it was a live-streamed event that showed off a tremendous amount of the game’s features presented by Ed Boon himself! The in-person and online audience was able to see how meter management changed, how krushing blows (that’s what their called) worked, the new fatal blow system, the ways you can customize your character, and even got to see some fatal blows and roster reveals! How do I know? BECAUSE I WATCHED IT WHEN IT PREMIERED!
Was an event like this truly essential for Mortal Kombat 1? No. I don’t think so. However, I think the campaign that we did receive was just…very poorly executed. Hence my argument for why a community reveal event or stream of some kind would be helpful in showing off what the game is and what it does differently than the previous one, especially since MK11 was quite a divisive game. That event never happened. So what did we get instead?
Piecemeal! So much of Mortal Kombat 1’s features were relayed to me via someone other than the developers. For example, after the first reveal cinematic trailer, Twitter was quick to break the news that the game would have a Kameo system in which players call assist characters to extend kombos, toss projectiles, or do other various assists. I thought the idea was very cool…but why was I hearing about it from some random Twitter account and not Neatherrealm Studios (NRS) themselves? I didn’t understand why they would prefer to not just show us the game themselves rather than have others just tell us. This sadly carried all the way till release.
Let me provide an example. August 23, 2023. About four weeks before the game releases. I sat at my job, feeling quite uncertain about Mortal Kombat 1. I had been hearing rumors of all sorts of things, secret characters, gear customization, the lack of a krypt for earning collectables and such. I had no idea what was or was not going to be in the full release. NRS had trailers for character reveals, sure, but none of them indicated what else was in the game outside of a story and battles. When this happens with my games, when it feels like the developers are actively avoiding showing me what is in the product, I get uneasy and start to get suspicious. I’ve been burned too many times by AAA games and their disingenuous marketing to not be.
And guess what popped into my subscription box on Youtube? This:
This video is a brief demonstration by Maximillian Dood that shows off one of the most important features in MK1, Invasions. This is the PRIMARY MODE where players will unlock characters, gear, fatalities, and other assorted collectables not available via other modes. And instead of having this mode revealed on a stream where the developers could walk me through how the mode functions, what to expect, and why it’s fun…I had to find out via another source. Now let me make something clear, I love Max. He and the entire Yovideogames crew are some of my favorite creators on Youtube. My gripe is with why NRS is making others reveal information about THEIR game to the general public when that’s their job. Would it really not have been better to simply make a video or something that connects immediately and directly to the audience that is interested rather than using a middle man? Max most assuredly would have reacted to such a video or stream, since he is one of those interested audience members.
I am willing to accept that maybe I’m wrong on this one, but I still just found it so bizarre that NRS refused to directly reach out to its audience and inform them about what features and modes were in their game.
“But there were tons of Kombat Kasts” I’m sure I will hear.
This is correct. For those that don’t know, Kombat Kasts are long form streams where some of the team from NRS demonstrates character movesets and shows off stages and such. When I write that, it sounds exactly like what I asked for, right? While showing off characters and how they play is cool (and essential/standard for marketing a fighting game for heaven’s sake) these podcasts never delved into other modes and features of MK1, something that other games in the same genre put a massive emphasis on. We did not know about invasions or gear until the eleventh hour for this game. We did not see gameplay for Shang Tsung (the pre-order bonus character by the way) or Reiko until LITERALLY ONE WEEK before release. I find that so baffling.
As a personal aside, I must confess that I honestly think Kombat Kasts…are a rather dull and boring way of showing off characters and such. I can’t help but feel like every time I watch one of them, so much of the stream is filled with Stephanie Brownback showing off a move or kombo while one of the other people on the panel reply with “Whoa, that’s so cool” to literally anything she does. It gets a bit boring when she says “watch this”, does something cool, and the reply is always “that’s so cool.” Yes. I know it’s cool. I really don’t need someone else to constantly comment on why it is cool that a character can do a move. I would really prefer Stephanie just break down the moves in an edited video much like Guilty Gear Strive does or have some sort of walkthrough of the game in totality a la Masahiro Sakurai for Smash Bros Ultimate.
And don’t even get me started on Megan Fox as Nitara as a marketing ploy.
As a result of this really disjointed marketing push for Mortal Kombat 1, I couldn’t help but feel my excitement that I once had in that DM I sent Jon slowly morph into a sense of concern and suspicion. I felt less confident in pre-ordering it and now I am fully abstaining from a purchase until further notice. It’s crazy to think that a marketing campaign that was supposed to get me to buy MK1 actually had the opposite effect on me and made me refrain from going all in on a pre-order.
And sadly post release…I can’t help but feel I may have made the right call in some ways.
2. Invading My Interest, Evading My Investment
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: fighting games need to be real games.
If you’ll recall Jonathan, we had a discussion in our articles last year about free to play fighting games and how this genre can better keep players engaged so that they continue to play long after the release and thus get the most out of their experience. You questioned why fighting games were not as popular as other competitive games. I responded by saying that I believed that fighting games needed to be more feature rich with engaging modes and modifiers to make the game feel like a “real video game”. You and me mostly agreed that these games need to have more things to do to keep the player interested in continuing to play even after the honeymoon period has ended.
Time seems to have proven us correct. Allow me to bask in this validation and list the ways fighting games have expanded on their features.
- Street Fighter 6 truly dedicated itself to making engaging and interesting modes and content with World Tour allowing players to make their monstrosity of a custom character and traverse the streets of Metro City and battle bizarre enemies and train under the greats. Beyond that, there is a sprawling arcade with classic games, rewards to earn through fighting passes, wacky match modifiers, and team battle for friends to squad up and duke it out with each other.
- Tekken 8 looks like it is taking much the same approach but pushing a much more fleshed out version of it’s story mode and shining a spotlight off the clash between Kazuya and Jin. There is promised to be a slew of wild costumes and customizations to add to characters and even a new player avatar mode that comes with its own set of customization tools and options. And after a long wait…TEKKEN BALL IS BACK!
- Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, despite being a much smaller game in awareness and scope as the previous two I mentioned, is looking to go above and beyond to hook a new audience by adding an insane amount of new content like: a three part playable story mode, some crazy party game modes played with chibi styled versions of the playable characters, and brand new characters to play as.
It seems as though the theme of upcoming fighting games is to actively chase that casual audience by filling their game with engaging and fun content to partake in outside of just hopping online and fighting some random online warriors.
Now in regards to Mortal Kombat 1’s single player offerings, I think we have a very mixed bag here. On the positive side, Mortal Kombat’s story mode seems to be as refined as ever in this iteration. The story is interesting and mostly engaging though it takes a bit to really get going. Despite that, the story mode looks incredible from a visual standpoint and each character gets a fair amount of screen time so that fans new and old can learn who is who and what each one of them is capable of. From the playthroughs I have seen, it looks like the story gets pretty wild towards the end and goes in some very unexpected directions, which is sure to please many fans. From my layman’s eye…this is a pretty great mode to journey through and is a worthwhile single player feature to have.
Alright, so what about when the story is done? What else can players do? Well I mentioned an invasions mode and even linked a video to a pre-release demonstration above. As we have come to learn post-launch, this is the primary mode for earning new gear, costumes, and even characters! With so much to earn by playing this mode, it would only make sense that this mode is where a fledgling fighter will be spending their time after the kredits roll on the story mode. As a result this mode is practically the second course or side dish to the main story mode of the game.
So is the mode worth it to get lots of goodies?
From my research, yes!
Is it fun and engaging?
From my research, no.
After watching some gameplay and really diving into what Invasions is, I must say that this mode seems dull, repetitive, and not particularly interesting. There are things worth praising though, for example, the developers did their best to jam pack lots of secrets and hidden goodies into these areas that require the player to use their brains and might to get to the rare treasures locked away. Also, it really does seem like the developers tried their best to make each fight truly different and weird to spice things up. Despite the clear effort that went into this mode, let’s face it, this is just The Towers of Time repackaged to look like something new. The Towers of Time were online exclusive arcade ladders that required the player to fight in a certain number of battles to reach the top and claim the frequently updated rewards for characters. And would you believe it, they were often criticized for being a bit dull, repetitive, and not particularly interesting.
Beyond simply replacing the Towers of Time (although not really), NRS also replaced the Krypt. The Krypt was essentially an in game store front where you exchanged kurrency of some kind to get costumes, gear, or other kinds of cool extras. This mode was at its most robust and detailed in Mortal Kombat 11, where the player could freely explore Shang Tsung’s island to discover all sorts of treasures and secrets. However, all that has been merged into Invasions mode. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing…it just feels as though the team wasn’t given ample time to come up with something truly special for players to unlock things from.
From what I have seen, the only reason players are doing this mode is just to unlock stuff. That’s it. There is sadly no further consideration for longevity or ensuring that players have a special experience in this mode. I can certainly see the potential of a mode like this, but as it stands it feels too limited in scope and creativity. You play this mode to get the skin you want or a piece of gear and then…you’re done. While I have heard that NRS plans to update this mode with more areas and challenges, players are more excited for the new potential gear and collectables rather than the fun of playing more Invasions.
Say what you will about Spirits mode on Smash Ultimate Jon, but at least that game had a a whole RPG system, spirit types to add some strategy to battles, a fairly beefy skill tree, and lots of references to games and characters to keep things at least somewhat interesting.
Speaking of gear and skins, I must say that we have another mixed bag. The skins, pallets, and gear items are very high quality. There are lots of cool collectibles to earn for your selected character, just like in the previous game. However, MK1 has made tangible improvements to the previous system…but also notable downgrades. On the positive side, MK1 has added a progression system to each character, allowing you to “level up” your character and earn rewards in the forms of customizables allowing for players to earn items simply by playing the game online. This is an improvement from MK11, where it was rather difficult to earn items for your character when it was unclear exactly how to earn skins or where the skins were available.
On the negative side though, we have even less to ultimately customize than in the previous game. Let’s use Scorpion as our example. In Mortal Kombat 11, if I wanted to customize Scorpion in a visual capacity, there were numerous ways of doing so. Firstly, I could customize Scorpion’s mask, spear, swords, skin, and even his intro animations and outro animations. There are lots of cool options for me to express myself via Scorpion’s visuals. In Mortal Kombat 1, however, I can customize Scorpion’s mask, skin, and taunts (his end of round animation). You can also customize the colors of your kameo fighters, but this is a clear step down from what we could alter in the previous game. Quite a disappointing development.
In conclusion, yeah…it’s a mixed bag. There are certainly some welcome new additions to add some flavor to Mortal Kombat and even improve upon what we had in MK11. However, there is this strange feeling that those additions came with some unforeseen cost and that other features or customizable features would be scaled back or simply outright removed. It somewhat ties into that feeling of concern I had during the game’s marketing period where I felt as though the developers didn’t WANT me to see what I could or could not customize or what the single player offerings were like outside of story mode. This could all be speculation on my part, most certainly. Yet, I cannot help but feel as though the reason we weren’t really given details on how in depth the customization and gear system would be in this game until the release date was because it simply isn’t as deep as we hoped. When compared with its contemporaries like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 7 & 8, these options for customization feel lesser.
As it stands Mortal Kombat’s marketing and single player modes have left me…konfused (yup, I’m cashing one of these in), but, all this matters little in comparison to the actual game mechanics and the kombat itself.
So how does Mortal Kombat 1 play and does it save it from itself in my eyes?
1. It’s Fun…But is it Wrong to Want More?
Mortal Kombat 1 is a fun game. There are no disputes about that in my mind. Despite my previous quarrels and complaints that I listed above, I genuinely believe that Mortal Kombat 1 is a fine game. The characters all look fantastic and seem to have an incredible amount of depth and style. The kameo system is a really interesting addition that adds a whole world of strategy to battles. The fatal blows, brutalities and fatalities are as brutal and shock inducing as ever.
Mortal Kombat 1 is fun.
But I think it could have been more fun.
As I was swept up by my new found excitement for MK1’s release, I decided to submerge myself into some classic Mortal Kombat content on YouTube. You know, for old time’s sake. I decided to watch some guys play Moral Kombat 9. They decided to play the game in a 2v2 format, a feature that is truly unique to MK9. With four players at the ready, they began to jump, punch, and kick in all of the bloody glory that was MK9 just as I remembered it. Suddenly, one of the players did something that I had completely forgot was possible in this game…they called an assist. They didn’t swap the other player in, they specifically called an assist. It hit me. I had a momentous epiphany just then:
The kameo system is a substitute for MK9’s 2v2 wildness.
…Okay? But, that doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, so what? The game has really fun mechanics, a faster speed from the previous game, and fixes a lot of overwhelmingly strong defensive options that made offense in MK11 such a risky act. The kameo system adds a lot of cool variety to combos, neutral, and even fatalities. So is there really a problem? In the grand scheme, no…but I can’t help but feel as though this approach is a sort of two steps forward but one step back sort of situation.
Ever since MK9 and MKX, players have been asking for a game that felt similar to those games. Fast, frantic, and incredibly unbalanced. Characters in these games can be some of the most aggravating opponents to fight with highs and lows, lefts and rights, and throws coming at you with insane speed that could lead to 30–40% of your life being stolen. These games are not perfect by any stretch, but they do allow for some incredibly wild moments. Similar to Marvel Vs Capcom or Blazblue, Mortal Kombat seemed to attract an audience that knew full well their game was crazy…and loved it just as it was. Mortal Kombat 11, on the other hand, made a conscious effort to step away from that flavor of gameplay. Incredibly powerful defensive options, two bars of meter that filled regardless of player input or action, an overall slower pace, and a krushing blow system that rewarded a very rigid play style. In many ways MK11 is better than its predecessors, but in many other ways it failed to reach the same heights.
Speaking personally, I have no undying allegiance to either style of gameplay. While I also found MK11 to be a bit stale, I think some of its ideas were interesting, like separating defensive and offensive meters. On the other hand, MK9 is such a wild game with some of my favorite characters in the series, as well as having what I think were some of the most perfect combo structures. Mortal Kombat 1 seems to be this ideal blend of all three games, taking different aspects from all three and mixing them into its own Kombat. However in doing so, I think the developers heard players requests…but maybe missed the point of what was being asked. As a result, Mortal Kombat 1 feels wholly unique to other games in the franchise, yet also surprisingly uninventive.
Mortal Kombat 1, feels good. As I said at the beginning, this game is fun. But it could have been more fun. While it think the kameo system is quite cool…wouldn’t it have been better to simply make this game a true tag team fighter? After all, fighting games often times lack a good way to play the game with friends outside of just beating each other up and having a 2v2 mode could give four friends a way to hang out and learn the game form each other. It also could have added more variety to the battle system as with the addition of a 2v2 mode, you could have three different ways to play: 1v1 with no assists, 1v1 with assist, or 2v2. This could have allowed people to duke it out as they please, with those who aren’t a fan of assists or tag games, able to play it just the way they used to. This also could have added some diversity to tournaments allowing for players to squad up and show off what a dangerous and well organized team is capable of.
But as it stands…there is only one way to play MK1.
Is this a dealbreaker? Of course not. In conjunction with my previous gripes and a bit of foresight as to the other fighting games on the horizon that seem to incorporate more features, I can’t help but feel…hesitant when considering purchasing the game. I mean, within a few months, we will be getting Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Tekken 8, Under-Night In Birth 2, and more updates to Street Fighter 6 and KOF XV. I want to play MK1, I really do…but I just feel like I should wait until the game refines itself into a version of itself that feels more worthwhile. After all, it seems as though many other players have already joined together to make a list of requested features in MK1 that NRS will hopefully take to heart.
In Konclusion…
I find myself at a krossroads (c’mon Jon you know that was a good one) when it comes to Mortal Kombat 1. I went from feeling the highest levels of excitement during its initial announcement and reveal to have those feelings replaced with a sense of trepidation and ambivalence. It’s rare that I can feel disappointed in a game when I haven’t even played it. Heck, there were a number of issues and details that I didn’t even go into! That terrible Nintendo Switch port, the upcoming Kombat Pack full of characters I don’t care about, and the plethora of glitches and bugs causing some real issues for dedicated players.
As of right now, only time will tell if I’ll actually make the trip to Gamestop or hover over to the PSN shop to actually purchase the game or not. There is certainly a part of me that wants to, but there is a equal portioned side of me that doesn’t.
Either way, I’ll let you know if or when I do Jon.
After all, what fun would playing a new fighter be if I didn't get to battle my favorite kombatant?
Had to get that last one out of my system.
-Your friend, your rival,
Blake
