Mortal Kombat 1 Can't Conceive of Restraint (Impressions Thread)

I've only had my hands on this game for about thirty minutes so the post that kicks this thread off is gonna basically start and stop at the subject line: this game insists that you play along from the word go in a way the previous trilogy often refused to. Aside from the handful of two-one-one single life story fights, last generation's MKs were pretty content to let casual players with a hint of ingenuity fumble their way through the story and arcade modes on Medium difficulty as though it were insisting you see what happens next. Canonical story beat or hypothetical character triumph, non-competitive MK hasn't really stood up for itself in a long time. As a definitively non-competitive fighting game player without local rivals to scrum with since the heyday of SFIV: AE, I'd wager that felt like a significant chuck of the "we've got a narrative, but also skull deformation tech" pitch that makes MK unique among fighters.

SF VI's World Tour, as hilarious and wonderful as it is, does hit a point where you've either built the right fighter, gotten the right amount of good or, in my case, found some moves you like but can't quite deploy appropriately and increasingly rely on healing items and damage buffs to progress, which distorts any misguided comparisons to the Yakuza franchise into unfortunate reminders that items are equally if not more important than mastery.

I've already said more than I thought I'd say, but the deal is this: even the Novice Towers think you know what you're doing. On Medium difficulty, I died on the second story mode fight. If I hadn't literally hit credits on MK11 Aftermath for the first time right before launch MK1, I might attribute this idea to rust. But unless there's some very subtle systematic shift I've yet to grasp here (which seems unlikely, given the only time I knew what MK11's meters were meant for was whenever Jeff would explain them to someone else) this game isn't afraid to show off its combo strings, demand that you quickly assess your matchup and engage with its balance.

Again, if I hadn't literally just plowed through the MK11 DLC and found its Medium difficulty pretty acquiescent until the AI insisted otherwise I'd probably not have hurried to write a quick thought about it that once again ballooned into a full idea. It feels silly I let that happen considering I'm literally in the first chapter of the story mode anyway. From where I'm sitting though, plowing through 4 hours of MK11 DLC years after being familiar with the base game and immediately finding this game to not be fucking around...it felt significant enough to comment on.

In large part because, honestly...this game might be flagrantly incredible. Maybe.

In case this might be considered a spoiler I figured I'd make a small little follow up comment during a break, but it's worth acknowledging that some of the story mode's early friction compared to past Netherrealms hits owes a lot to the, both obvious and novel, idea to disable all but the most fundamental skills of your fighter, presumably until they have their Super Saiyan moments. Even one of the fundamental buttons doesn't do what you'd expect. It's a decision that masterfully improves on their narrative ambitions, eases players into their brand of 2D combat while in either case gives the player something to look forward to.

It's simply dope, in other words.

Which made me think, back in the abstraction of a goof off mode like the classic Arcade tower, maybe I just needed to adapt to a subtly different rhythm, the way baseball batters spend spring training learning the latest pitching fads. But no, the third tier of a Novice Arcade tower juggled me to shame all the same. This game seems admirably adamant that you see it as it sees itself.

Which sucks, in other words. But I get the feeling it only sucks because I suck. So, to bring this Johnny Cage-ism full circle, it doesn't suck nearly as much as the AI is gonna suck once I don't suck and the AI is forced to eat my...uh...accolades?

I've got no good excuse for pummeling the story into submission in a single sitting, none at all. All I can say is that it's significantly convoluted and I needed breaks during the others.

Fun game.

I'm nearly halfway through the Invasions maps and I still don't really understand the Kameo system at all, honestly, and I only just realized that I probably should've been swapping characters a little more often than I have been. Not only because it turns out your "Invasions level" is separate from your character level, so everyone is leveling up whether you use them or not, but also because in the Tarkatan Colony you face a lot of enemies that are weak to Ice damage and I am absolutely shredding through it in a way that's very, very satisfying. In that sense it's nice that I have my go-to flow with Sub-Zero, but it makes me look back on some of the more frustrating parts of the other maps and wonder if they would've been just as easily shredded up if I'd paid more attention to the element system.

The game has its fair share of problems, namely that Invasions has some pretty stupid gimmicks meant to spice things up but really just make it intermittently more frustrating than it deserves to be.

But the combat just has such a nice crunch to it that even though I can tell I've barely scratched the surface of its more complicated juggles (and likely never will), I'm definitely gonna clear all the Towers for the epilogue chapters of each character's story and I look forward to the DLC characters.

Online is already a nightmare, though, which is a bummer since SFVI was pretty fun in the Battle Hub for about a month before it got loaded mostly with killers.