Mortal Kombat 1 story-mode completed: My thoughts

I was there when the original Mortal Kombat hit arcades in the 90's. I, like almost anyone else that ever liked arcades, dumped a lot of coins into that game and consequently MK1 (the original) is likely the one and only time that I was actually good at anything Mortal Kombat ever released.

The games have gotten much more complicated to the point where I wasn't really all that interested in playing them but MK:1 was released on PS-Plus and my girl was interested in playing so why not?

We went through the entire story campaign which was interesting at times but suffers from a flaw that I think cannot be avoided and that is that there really isn't any sort of variety that they could possibly provide along the 2-3 hour journey of finishing them!.

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First off, from a casual gamer point of view, this game is actually a lot of fun. I never even bothered to learn a fatality, if there even are any of those (I'm honestly not sure) but there is a move built into the game that you can use once per round that lets you get some of that animation fun into your gameplay simply by holding down two buttons that are the same for each character.

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When you activate this your duo will effortlessly carry out a pretty fun-to-see animation sequence that does a lot of damage and levels the playing field, so to speak, if you are getting worked over at any point in time. This is something that pisses off veteran or expert players because it requires zero skill to pull it off and unless you are in a stupid position at the time that you activate it, it is going to hit almost all the time and cannot be blocked by the opponent.

Maybe there is a way to deactivate this in the settings. I have no idea because I never pursued it since I like it.

My major gripe with the story mode would probably be that the story is rather nonsensical and relies on a multiverse plot that can be anything they want it to be without any regard paid to lore or sensibility. This is a Marvel tactic of sorts and to me I kind of lost interest in it seeing as how at one point or another everyone in the game is both on your side and against you and this is made possible purely by the notion of a multiverse.

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I get what they were trying to do here: They are trying to get you to try out all the characters that are available in the base game by forcing you to switch to a new character every now and then. This is both frustrating and kind of good, depending on what kind of a player you are. You can hit the select button at any time to see the moves of whoever you are controlling should you want to play around with the special moves.

However, me and my girl got a laugh out the fact that you can pretty dependably just mad-button-mash your way through nearly all of the fights with out much pushback.

At the end of it all we kind of joked about how my girl's move of choice was the standard "throat punch" and she would dole them out regularly and often defeat boss characters by doing little else.

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Is this fun? Well yes and no. It's just fine for a couple of people that want to hand the controller back and forth to have a go without concerning themselves a great deal with combos or even knowing really any of the special moves and in just two sittings we went the entire way through the story.

At the end of it all, and even though we did watch most of it, neither of us really had any idea about what the story actually was. Liu Kang is good guy and Shang Tsung is bad guy - nothing particularly novel going on there.

At times you play as Shang Tsung for some reason that I don't remember, so you can have a look at his moves as well such as cloning whoever you happen to be fighting at the moment.

The graphics are good, there is a lot of blood and gore, and it is reasonably entertaining for people who are not interested in memorizing 137 moves for each player. For the people who are super advanced and interested in truly mastering the game, there are tutorials that talk about blocking and the right duration of a particular attack to counter anything in the game and to the people who took the time to understand that intricate system, kudos to you! I have nowhere near enough patience or free time to do something like that.

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When the final battle that involves a massive army vs. another massive army happens, it is kind of entertaining because it is fast-paced and all fights are best of 1 instead of best of 3 so it keeps things moving.

All in all, this was a fun little diversion for me and my girl to play for a few hours and we enjoyed it. There are a lot of complaints from expert players about how this game deviated from the MK standards (whatever that means) and since they have a lot more experience in the franchise than I do, I'll go ahead and say that they are probably correct.

For me, just having something that looks good and keeps moving be on my screen for a couple of novice players to enjoy was a lot of fun but since I have no interest in getting completely destroyed by an 11-year old in online multiplayer this is likely where I will bid this game adieu.

If you have PS-Plus membership tier of "Extra" or higher you get this game for free and IMO, it is worth a look. I can't really say that it is anything particularly noteworthy though.