Few long-running series have reinvented themselves for the modern era as successfully as Mortal Kombat. Since the 2011 reboot found a fresh yet familiar formula for its brawls, and finally made some sense of its sprawling lore, each new entry has had its own distinct and exciting identity, from X’s explosion of new characters to 11’s clash of past and present. So the question is, what’s Mortal Kombat 1’s new take on the series?
NetherRealm has pitched this as another feels more entrenched in the series’ past than ever, struggling to iterate on its core systems or to tell an accessible new story. It’s a fun fighting game, but it’s the weakest of the s, and it’s disappointingly lacking in the series’ true greatest asset: personality.
