One of the most graphically beautiful games at the moment is often really disgusting: We fought the first battles and tried out bloody fatalities in Mortal Kombat 1 for you.
No idea about fighting games? No problem! That’s definitely how it was for me when I recently got/needed to play Mortal Kombat 1. Because when you’re the only member of a games editorial team who flew to Los Angeles on the other side of the world for the Summer Game Fest Play Days, there’s just not that much choice.
And so I unabashedly button-mashed my way through a handful of brawls in Easy mode. Yes, those games journalists and their lack of expertise again! But hey, no one can like all genres equally. Give me a car in Rocket League and I’ll storm heaven for you!
Because I clearly lack expertise, I won’t be able to tell you below whether Mortal Kombat 1 feels really awesome for fighting game experts. But I still have a few things to say about the reboot of the series.
The one-man show comes to an end
Mortal Kombat 1 is a reboot, the story (surprisingly motivating in the predecessors) takes place in a new universe and all the familiar characters are redesigned including minor adjustments to their abilities. Above all, they get support in every fight: so-called cameo fighters bring themselves into the action at the touch of a button and can be worked into your combo.
When I played the game on PlayStation 5, I called characters like Jax, Kano and Sonya to my side by pressing R1. Once they’ve made their appearance, I have to wait a short time for them to be ready to go again. However, they are always at my side for Fatal Blows and Fatalitys.
Four fighters were playable in the demo, plus the three cameos mentioned. In the finished game, you will also be able to mix the two rosters as you wish. With Kitana, Liu Kang, Kenshi and Sub-Zero, developer Nether Realms Studios has concentrated on fan favourites for the time being; the full version, scheduled for 19 September 2023, will of course contain even more warriors.
Next-Gen, but hello!
According to Nether Realms, Mortal Kombat 1 has the most open combat system in the series. It’s all about players finding their own style and expressing themselves with the attacks, they say. What can be said: The attacks are undoubtedly spectacular, are controlled with enormous precision and flow smoothly into one another.
Even as an absolute beginner, I notice when fighting the AI and watching my fellow players at the other face-off stations that there are a lot of ways to play each character, defend against certain tactics or create a surprising twist in the battle.
Hard to miss, even as a noob: Mortal Kombat 1 looks fabulous. The textures are crisp, the attacks (especially the extremely bloody fatalities) are spectacular, characters are bathed in vivid blood effects as the fight progresses, and the backgrounds are bursting with detail.
Single drawback: Apart from NPCs and rubber ducks bobbing on the water (!), there are hardly any dynamic elements in the beautiful background graphics, they remain completely static in contrast to the combat action.
Mortal Kombat 1 will be released on September 19, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S
Editor’s Verdict
I did my best, but it was nowhere near good enough! If Ed Boon, who was present in the room, happened to look at my TV while we journalists were playing Mortal Kombat 1, he might have grabbed his head in bewilderment. But well, I don’t write the articles here for Ed, I write them for you. And from my unique perspective I can say at least one thing with confidence: Mortal Kombat 1 is fascinating even for a fighting game idiot like me!
Graphically, there’s probably nothing better at the moment, nowhere else is the fighting so buttery and rich in effects. The cameo fighters bring a new touch to the fights and the slightly changed moveset of the playable characters met with broad approval, at least among the journalists present (many of them with more fighting game expertise than me). In 2023, a year not exactly lacking in competition, Mortal Kombat 1 should at least have the biggest wow factor. I’ll leave all further judgements to the GameStar testers, who clearly know more about the genre than I do.
