Sometimes it can come across as if I don't understand what it's like to have a love/hate relationship with a video game, but I've had that experience for 2 years and that experience is called Mortal Kombat 1.


It all started in 2023, the first teaser of the game had people talking even though it was just sand from the hourglass. At the time, we were still calling this game Mortal Kombat 12.

The next trailer came with the clock going from 11pm and skipping 12 to go to 1. Meaning this game would be called Mortal Kombat 1.


Finally the full teaser came out and it looked so great, you saw kung Lao, Raiden, the fields, and Shang Tsung wrecking everybody until Liu Kang stomped his chest and hit him with a double dragon fatality.


The graphics: 8/10
The graphics is probably the first thing that burns me about this game, the CGI looked so good and when you play this game it's like what happened? Prior to mortal kombat 1, most of the in-game graphics didn't look that different. Xs graphics looked like the CGI, and so did mortal kombat 11s.

We got a new camera angle here, but the overall texture quality and look is worse than Mortal Kombat 11. As it would turn out, this game was running off the injustice 2 engine with no trace of mortal kombat 11s code whatsoever.

Each character got 3 costumes in this game and I don't like any of their designs. You have new era(default) Union of Light(character mastery.) and Order of Darkness(invasions)

Each costume was either underwhelming or over designed, like Reptile's Union of Light costume is hideous.

You can buy premium/klassic skins but they would run you anywhere from 5 to 10 dollars because of dragon Krystals, you could also earn these from character mastery but it was nowhere near as generous as it was in Mortal Kombat11.

Sound: 5/10.
This entry has the music that feels like they're trying to be all cinematic for their lackluster story mode and it just doesn't work.

They also put way too much emphasis on celebrities being voice actors. Here's John Claude Van-Damme as a Johnny Cage Skin, Here's Robert Patrick playing t1000, and Megan Fox is playing Nitara, she has the worst delivery in the entire game but celebrities am I right?


They also for whatever reason couldn't get Arnold and Anthony Starr for Conan and Homelander and had to get soundalikes for them.


Addictiveness and Depth: 4/10

The big gimmick of Mortal Kombat 1 this time around is Kameos. They're assist and have two main functions: ambush and summon.

You can still attack with an ambush, while a summon forces your character to stop until their Kameo finishes their attack.


Each Kameo also does a different job. Kano and Stryker are safety and pressure. Got a move that's -23 on block? Just press the direction and assist button to call out the grenades or knives and that special move is either safe or in some cases plus on block.

Kung Lao and Tremor are hard to blockable Kameos, they can have a low attack going while you do an overhead, usually a jump 2 or jump 3 in most cases.

Sub Zero and Frost eat projectiles, they counter zoners.


And to that effect, it all seems well on paper right? Liu Kang and Kung Lao doesn't play the same as Liu Kang and Motaro. Lao and Goro doesn't play the same as Lao and Sektor.


The problem really came along when Homelander got released at the end of Kombat Pack 1. If you were to play Kombat League right now, you'll probably face and lose to Homelander Ferra because it's simple and optimal.

He's a grappler and Ferra keeps his 50/50s safe while he also dishes out up to 40% per launch off a command grab.

So other pairings got dropped because if they can't beat Homelander Ferra who's running the game, they're not viable.

Mortal Kombat 1 has had a lot of infamy by its community for having a mickey mouse meta and in its current stage, the game is heavily reliant on safe 50/50 vortexes.

So depending on the matchup, you could lose one interaction and just not be allowed to play further.


There's also the content that's missing, every prior Mortal Kombat game had lobbbies and rooms. This game didn't have them.

This game also has a terrible Wi-Fi filter, you have to manually decline every bad connection you see where as if I compare it to Street Fighter 6, the game will only find me wired players to fight up against.

There's also no online practice in-between matches, so you'll be looking at the background a lot while the game searches for someone to hopefully not decline you in ranked or kasuals.


The offline is barebones too, no krypt this time around. What we got was invasions, a bad version of Smash Ultimates World of Light. You pick a character going from point A to point B doing meaningless fights that do nothing except raise your character mastery a bit.

They're also full of bad gimmicks, some fights will have armor, or attacks that will one round you without warning.

There also used to be Mandatory Survive stages, where you go back and forth trying not to get hit by a wall of projectiles.

There was 8 seasons total and characters would either get a titan boss fight or didn't get a season entirely. I think Kenshi missed out.


Towers didn't come back until year 2, and they missed the point. To get rewarded with skins, you needed top rank in a Rat Race or Race Against Time as they called it.



So the online experience is infuriating and the game isn't very good for single player either.



Story: 0/10

They continued the multiple timeline garbage that people didn't like about Mortal Kombat 11 and did a number of changes that the community hates with a passion.

Examples include:
Kuai Liang the second Sub Zero is now Scorpion
Hanzo Hasahi the former scorpion is just a little boy that Tomas(Smoke) found.
Bi han is Sub Zero again, sike, Khaos Reigns came out and wanted $50 dollars for a very anticlimactic story expansion and Bi Han is Noob Saibot again.

The story mode also does a very poor job at showcasing how Kameos work, most of the assists you get aren't playable outside of story mode and they lack a launcher, an ambush, or sometimes both.


Difficulty: 4/10

The real challenge lies in the online matches. Once you learn a team and the bread and butter combos, the AI will not adapt well to Mortal Kombat 1s mechanics. It will always fail to block a Buzzsaw hard to blockable for example.



Overall: 4.5 l/10

I don't recommend anyone play this or buy this. A lot of people including myself only stuck around with Mortal Kombat 1 because A: we were told that it would have "years of content." And B: That the game would get better with balance patches, and it's only gotten worse and more infuriating.

If you already have this, free up the 100 plus GBs that this game is asking of your console. A lot of that space is because of the cutscenes and invasions, and as far as I know the Xbox is the only platform that'll let you uninstall those two modes once your done with them.


That is it for now, later.

Aaaand it did it again.

My entire post/rant/review on this game gone up in invisibility.


Local Mods :

Trash can this please. I don't know why this is a thing.

Edit:
Managed to edit the review back in. Should be good now.

I've had something similar happen to posts when I use certain symbols (like ^ sideways), something about the new post functionality makes it glitch out

Do you have it on a word document or something? There must be something in it that is causing it to glitch out

I don't.. I was typing this whole thing out on mobile and inputted the plus sign in one of the sentences.

And to make matters more confusing, I hit preview posts several times before I submitted to make sure I didn't lose anything and then I submitted it.


There was also a few times I had to back click on my phone because my fingers would end up hovering to another page, but I'm still not sure if there's anything there that can help y'all reproduce to figure out what happened.
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