Fired up Mortal Kombat 1 for local competition

The title makes it sound a lot more competitive and serious than it actually was. What really happened was that I was talking to a friend about favorite gaming memories and she mentioned that she really like Mortalk Kombat. I seemed to remember that one of the latest versions of the game, or more than one of them, was available for "free" on the PS-Plus Extra subscription that I have so I went home and checked and sure enough, both MK11 and Mortal Kombat 1 were part of the library.

I was not at all interested in memorizing 2000 moves like I would have done in the past so I made a deal with her that both of us would go into this game blind and I promised that the first time she saw it, would be the first time I saw it as well.

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So what is really going on here? It's not a remake of the original game and it has been so long since I bothered to play this or any other fighting game that I was totally in the dark about who most of the characters were. There was a story mode and what not but we just jumped straight into local 2-player competitive mode and then set to hitting random-ass buttons frantically hoping that something would happen.

After 20 or so fights we accidentally would make something happen that was interesting but mostly it was a bunch of kicks and punches with some lightning or something like that which would happen completely by accident.

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The graphics are pretty damn intense on this, especially when you consider that the last time I played any of these was when arcades still existed so yeah, it was a while ago. We didn't know any fatalities and I actually kind of surprised myself when I was able to recall some very basic special moves for a couple of characters that were part of the original line up. Liu Kang, Scorpion, and Sub Zero were the only characters whose moves I could recall at all. We both agreed after a couple of rounds that nobody should be allowed to play as Sub Zero because the freezing thing is kind of full of crap to people who don't know what TF they are doing.

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It was really cool when by pure happenstance one of us would hit some buttons that would fire up some sort of animation sequence that was really gruesome and a extremely well done as far as the animation is concerned.

We both were basically just relentlessly pursuing with flying kicks and punches and victory was completely random as neither of us had any real strategy and probably damaged my two controllers a bit in the process.

I did end up letting her play a bit of the story mode when I took a break and even though it is precisely this sort of thing that long term fans are ripping apart online but I actually kind of liked the story. This is coming from a guy that will skip almost any cinematic that he encounters in any game too.

There seems to be other methods of improving your skills if that is something you are interested but me and my friend made a pact that we would never practice this game and every time it is just going to be us figuring things out as a team or not at all. I didn't pay anything for the game though so I don't really care.

I did see why they are giving it away though.

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There are a ton of playable characters in this game though and for me I didn't know who most of them are. They have a few characters that are not traditional MK characters such as Homelander from The Boys and whatever that also Peacemaker.

You CAN click on them and that was when I found out probably why this game is offered for free. When my friend clicked on a still locked character the system automatically presented us with an option to add the extra characters and they did it in a sneaky way because if I hadn't stopped her, she would have spent $70 of my money to upgrade it. Not cool Midway or whoever makes this, not cool!

I will never play this game online against strangers because I have seen how absolutely toxic that online community can be. I will only play it with my friend and if she wants to, she can continue the story mode if she wants. I haven't been a big fan of fighting games for many years due to the extremely competitive nature of them, but I can say that if you or a couple of friends want to get together and be completely clueless and get a very nice visual display while you are doing it. MK-1 is actually a lot of fun.

As far as whether or not it entertains long-term fans of the franchise the word I am getting from many online forums is that the fans hated this game and are very angry at the devs for how they made it. I'm cool with it!