1. Mortal Kombat 1 (PS5)
I've always been a big Mortal Kombat fan, however, I feel like the series has been the best its ever been since 2011's Mortal Kombat (MK9) when Netherealm Studios chose to heavily invest in MK's story mode while giving the player fun, engaging gameplay. While I will admit that MKX wasn't amazing, and MK11 certainly improved things from its predecessor, I was definitely ready for the story to take a new direction, which is why I was pretty excited when MK1 was announced and it was revealed that it would be resetting the MK timeline from the very beginning. I finally got around to playing MK1, and while the game started out very promising, it really all well apart in the end, at least in terms of story.
I'll go ahead and rip the bandaid right off. MK1's first, second, and third acts are pretty good overall and definitely deliver on creating a new, alternative timeline for the MK characters that we've all grown to know and love. Unfortunately, the game's fourth and final acts introduces something that pretty much killed whatever interest and investment in the story I had and took a hard right turn into absolute ridiculousness. I won't spoil anything, but what i will say is I wish all professional writers would collectively swear off including any sort of multiverse crap in their work. It destroys continuity and removes any stakes or established rules, and pretty much just establishes "anything and everything goes." Some people might enjoy this, but for me it's just lazy and absolutely stupid. MK1 is a victim of modern multiverse think which ruined what was otherwise a great story up until it was introduced. Unsurprisingly, I found the ending of the game completely anticlimactic as a result of this too. For MK2, or whatever they call the next game in the series, I really hope Neatherealm just sticks with a cohesive story with no multiverse or alternate timeline crap and sticks with it. As for the gameplay, it's on par with MK11's albeit with a few new mechanics, most notably the tag assist system which has a second character provide brief assistance to provide an additional attack, set up extended combos, or move cancel. I'm not a fan of this time of mechanic in other fighting games, and I wasn't in MK1. I'd much rather have a fully fleshed out tag team mechanic that allows you to just swap between two fully playable characters. Still, MK1's tag in mechanic does nothing to take away or add to the gameplay, it's just sort of an unnecessary feature that was just sort of there for me. Visually MK1 is pretty amazing looking, and aside from some aspects of the game just not feeling very Mortal Kombatish, the visuals were about as good as they could possibly be. Audio is mostly good, however no really memorable tracks and the occasional spotty voice acting holds MK1 back from being as good as it could have been in that department. Despite my grievances with MK1, I still found it it be an enjoyable, new entry in the MK series. It's just too bad the story really had to shit the bed at the end, which significantly dampened my enjoyment of the game once the end credits rolled. Here's hoping things are fixed or at least greatly improved in the next game. (1/1/24) [35/50]
