I wish I could unpack the competitive edge ofMortal Kombat 1’skameos, the fluidity of its kombos, or how new renditions of characters compare to their old counterparts, but I am awful. Lucky-if-I-win-one-match bad, usually because my opponentclearlyfelt sorry for me and wanted to hand me at least one round. My take wouldn’t be valuable. I use kameos to try and get out of kombo-locks, and I’m lucky if I remember a string of three buttons.
Mortal Kombat is one of my favourite games of all time, but even after hundreds of hours across myriad titles, I still suck at it. However, I’m not the only one. Plenty of us eat shit the second we hit ‘play online’, finding ourselves face-to-face with players who see kombos like Russell Crowe saw equations in A Beautiful Mind. We crumble under the pressure and end up stun-locked in a corner, desperately trying to remember how to summon Sub-Zero’s ice sculpture. Will it help? Nope. Will we feel good? Nope.
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So, here’s the one thing of meaning I can gauge from the pre-order beta for us scrubs, Mortal Kombat 1 feels great to play, even if you’re terrible. I felt the same way with the last three games, especially with a smattering of single-player options, and MK1 is continuing that trend. The towers are forgiving, even as you jack up the difficulty, and serve as meaningful sandboxes to try out characters. Kameos feel like tower modifiers from old games, only now you can kombo with them… not that I managed to pull that off effectively. They’re also free now rather than requiring consumables, always there to help out and make towers even more forgiving.
Seeing their fatalities adds another punch to finishing a match, especially asCyraxblows up the entire world. And getting to fight side-by-side with your favourites is a treat to see. I come to Mortal Kombat for all the hot people (read: Nitara,Reptile, and if I’m feeling freaky, Goro), the guts, the story, and feeling like a powerhouse. Online play makes me feel like a squeaky little mouse getting stepped on. The towers in the pre-order beta still capture that feeling, letting even the worst of us feelgoodat the games for once. Striking a balance between competitive and casual is something Mortal Kombat has always excelled at, and to see that remain even as things grow more complex has been unbelievably exciting.
When the game launches, we’ll also have the story and Invasions modes. The latter of which I can’t wait for. I’m a Krypt apologist. I 100 percented it across three platforms, hunting through its 3D Metroid-like levels for gear and loot, always in awe at new discoveries. Now, we have a board game with stories attached to look forward to, and even though it’s adopting a seasonal live-service model, I can’t wait to unpack an entire mode that lets you avoid the harrowing reality of online play, the truth of how awful you really are.
Instead, I’ll seewhat a multiversal Scorpion is up to, hunting for a reality in which his family survives as I move along the board, finding the likes of Kollector scalping collector’s editions on eBay. Maybe every now and then I’ll fight my mates or colleagues online, slowly filling my glass with more and more rum as the losses pile on, but for now, the pre-order beta and Gamescom reveals have re-assured me that there’s still a place in Mortal Kombat for us terrible, terrible fighters.
