3.5/5 ★ – nldemo's review of Mortal Kombat 1.

This will be another quick review, as I don't feel there is THAT much different to say from MK11 (and i'm short on time). - MK1 is difficult to score as it excels so much in certain areas, but lacks in others. - MK1 was a confusing name, but it represents a much needed restart of the game's timeline from all the crazy time traversal and other things going on in previous games. - The voice acting, models, animations, combat, everything is great. The story cut scenes are great. The story is a blast to play through solo or passing a controller back and forth with a friend, and the difficulty is perfect for a casual player. - In the end, NetherRealm did not go hard enough with resetting the timeline. This was a really good opportunity to simplify things down, and start small focusing on the tournament again. However, the tournament ended almost as soon as it had begun, and instead the focus went massive scale again mimicking recent games. Despite this... - They did a good job of resetting expectations. Eg) Are Scorpion and Subzero both friendly brothers now? Raiden is the earth's champion, and Liu Kang has swapped places now serving as the god of fire and protector of earth and the timeline. - The ending climactic payoff was actually pretty insane and worth it. Definitely felt like a smaller version of an MCU payoff ( you know, when the MCU was still good ) ... - The Johnny Cage house board game seemed pretty cool, but I have not played much of it. - The customization seems limitless, but I have not played enough multiplayer to really mess with it (I don't care to either). - The most exciting thing about this game pre release and continuing to this day is the DLC roster. I can't wait to play as Omni Man, Homelander, and Peacemaker. So far, only Omni Man is released and we've seen Peacemaker's trailer. BOTH look amazing and perfect. But they are coming out too slow... a little bit less than one per month. By the time the kombat pack is done coming out I'm not sure how much interest I'll have remaining... - Personal HLTB ~7 hours