Mortal Kombat 1 (PC) - Review
by Daniel Parker , posted on 20 October 2023 / 4,204 ViewsVGChartz Verdict
8
Great
This review is based on a digital copy of Mortal Kombat 1 for the PC
More Articles
Honestly, high praise saying it's the best MK game. 3 was great for it's time and 9's revamp really helped the game get back into being top tier fighting games. Lack of Krypt (did I read that right?) is a shame. I mainly played towers and messed around there in 11. I've yet to pick up MK1, might do if I have a lull in games I'm playing
I didn't realise that MK1 didn't have any new characters at all until recently, discussion of how different big fighting games treat legacy characters over on Tekken reddit (Lei, Eddy and a Chang not being in T8 apparently, I'd rather them than half the roster it has), yet T8 only has rumoured 3 new characters. SF6 has like 7 or 8 out of only 22 characters. A shame they couldn't create someone completely new here.
Monetisation as well in any WB needs scrutinising. They are one of the worst offenders but seem to mostly be ignored in discussion about it. Of course they are no where near modern Blizzard but still. The lack of battle pass is a god send, wonder if the makers put their foot down there. Battle Passes in fighting games are pointless, add a new character, charge $5 them and people will pay, it's real and wanted content. BPs are not.
Overall, great write up. I'm glad to hear the gameplay overall is good and I didn't understand the idea of Kameo fighters at first but watching people play I do, it's about shoring up a characters weakness.
Right - The Krypt is gone. From my perspective, there's only four good MK games in the series. UMK3, MK9, MKX, and MK1... MK11 was so-so...
I don't mind MK1 not having any new characters. It's not like we see Ashrah or Nitara in every game. As for Tekken, the story is a bit different there.
They have character stats. Namco knows full well which characters aren't being used, and Tekken 7 had to work with an extremely low budget, considering how much of a failure Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was, sales-wise -- the game itself was the best Tekken during it's time, though.
Anyway, it was stated why Lei wasn't brought back. No one used him, and he took the design work of creating two characters. This was clearly stated and that Tekken 7 would be Lei's last bout if players didn't use him... And, well... no one used him. I don't know that this isn't the case for Julia, but honestly. I never see her being played either, and it doesn't help that Leo has the same fighting style.
I love the Tekken 8 roster, but... All 5 of my Tekken mains are in the game so I have no reason to complain.
Also, Tekken 6 was two different games. The original Tekken 6 released in 2007, with 4 new characters: Leo, Bob, Zafina, and Miguel. Tekken 6 on console was actually the Bloodline Rebellion update which included Alisa and Lars. The console version dropped the Bloodline Rebellion sub-title because the vanilla version of Tekken 6 was arcade exclusive.
That's why we have Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection for home consoles - specifically because the vanilla version released on PS2. It's simply called Tekken: Dark Resurrection on PSP, because the vanilla stages are missing, due to there being limited storage on the UMD.
The version of Tekken 7 that we have is actually the Fated Retribution version, but again, there was no console version of the vanilla game.
Tekken 8, however is the vanilla version, and it will be released on consoles. So, Tekken 8: Wicked Revenge, or whatever they end up calling it will have that title when the game updates.
Fighting game characters are usually $8 these days, though. I agree that battle passes are not for fighting games. It's not even good for Overwatch 2. It works in fortnite so well because fortnite is actually giving good value if you level the pass to 100, and has additional rewards if you go farther, like exclusive character recolors that realistically, you're not going to see a lot of people use very often, if ever. The other thing working for Fortnite is that you play as one cosmetic avatar character. You don't have characters of different stats and abilities like you do in Overwatch or Street Fighter 6.
Thanks for the kind words, though. I really did enjoy this game or I probably wouldn't have bothered with the animated gifs... lol. They took a lot of time.
On the last bit, the scene with the guy at the bar was great stuff, saw that on a streamers gameplay. Very funny.
On the rest. I can understand many things, The character usage thing to me is an excuse, looking at the rumoured (and announced) character list. It's hard to be played a lot when characters like Lei and Julia are locked behind paywalls but even then, certain characters from T7 aren't being bought back when Shaheen and Claudio are? Raven even? We are losing all kickboxers and Muay Thai fighters in exchange for 2 Kazama, it's the same moveset practically. Where's the brawler? Of course, maybe the new ones are. Who knows.
Don't get me wrong, what they are offering in T8 is amazing, T7's extra content, it's customisation was extremely lacking compared to 6. So have to a special online lobby, story mode, Tekken Force, Tekken Ball, fuck tonne of characters? Looking forward to it.
But I'd again, give up half the roster for Lei, Eddy and a Chang and a few more new characters, even if those character have similar movesets to old characters.
Plus playing the Beta is bloody hard when 2 of your mains aren't there yet and the other 3 aren't in the game anymore. :P
As for MK1 DLC, I hope they do a expanded story mission like MK11, that was a great way to do DLC in general. The character lineup is nice none the less... needs a Noob though. ;-)
returning to the beginning.