Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough of the klassic champion tower with Sub-Zero, using Scorpion as the kameo character. Mortal Kombat 1 was released in 2023. Following on from the events of Mortal Kombat 11’s Aftermath DLC, MK1 reboots the story and has Liu Kang starting off a new timeline.
The main new gameplay gimmick are the kameo fighters. After you choose a character, you then get to choose a kameo character. Kameos act as assist characters, who can be called on during a fight to perform a move. When a kameo character is called on, it drains the assist meter, which will gradually start to fill back up as the fight continues.
Speaking of the gameplay… I don’t like it. This game has a problem I have with most modern fighting games, which is an over-emphasis on long combos. It’s like everything has to play like Marvel Vs. Capcom these days. I played this online and it’s constant pop them in the air, bounce them off the ground juggle combos galore. If you like that style good for you, but personally I can’t stand it.
Another problem are the controls: I cannot get some of the back, forward moves to come out consistently at all. Sub-Zero’s slide is especially bad for this. I thought maybe it was just my execution being bad (I only have a default Xbox One controller, for what it’s worth), but when I looked it up I saw lots of people complaining about this. I did try changing controller settings in the options menu, but it still didn’t help.
In terms of single player, this is the easiest modern Mortal Kombat I’ve played, the CPU input reads a bit but it’s nowhere near as bad as the 2D games. Surprisingly the final boss is just Shang Tsung -not some special version of him either, it’s just regular Shang Tsung. Compared to Shao Kahn, Corrupted Shinnok or Kronica he’s really easy.
The violence is as high as ever. Is it really necessary anymore? It’s just stupidly funny at this point because it makes no sense. Sub-Zero’s fatal blow has him stab through the opponent’s skull with an icicle among other things, but they just get back up and keep on fighting. The fatalities and brutalities are just as gory as in the last few games. The friendships are gone and there are no stage fatalities, but animalities make their return to the series.
The most controversial thing to me isn’t the violence, it’s the game’s file size: nearly 180GB! Nearly a fifth of my Xbox’s hard drive space is dedicated to this game alone. Another thing is the credits: they go on for around 15 minutes. More than a movie’s! Just look at how many studios worked on this game.
Playthrough of the klassic champion tower with Sub-Zero, using Scorpion as the kameo character. Mortal Kombat 1 was released in 2023. Following on from the events of Mortal Kombat 11’s Aftermath DLC, MK1 reboots the story and has Liu Kang starting off a new timeline.
The main new gameplay gimmick are the kameo fighters. After you choose a character, you then get to choose a kameo character. Kameos act as assist characters, who can be called on during a fight to perform a move. When a kameo character is called on, it drains the assist meter, which will gradually start to fill back up as the fight continues.
Speaking of the gameplay… I don’t like it. This game has a problem I have with most modern fighting games, which is an over-emphasis on long combos. It’s like everything has to play like Marvel Vs. Capcom these days. I played this online and it’s constant pop them in the air, bounce them off the ground juggle combos galore. If you like that style good for you, but personally I can’t stand it.
Another problem are the controls: I cannot get some of the back, forward moves to come out consistently at all. Sub-Zero’s slide is especially bad for this. I thought maybe it was just my execution being bad (I only have a default Xbox One controller, for what it’s worth), but when I looked it up I saw lots of people complaining about this. I did try changing controller settings in the options menu, but it still didn’t help.
In terms of single player, this is the easiest modern Mortal Kombat I’ve played, the CPU input reads a bit but it’s nowhere near as bad as the 2D games. Surprisingly the final boss is just Shang Tsung -not some special version of him either, it’s just regular Shang Tsung. Compared to Shao Kahn, Corrupted Shinnok or Kronica he’s really easy.
The violence is as high as ever. Is it really necessary anymore? It’s just stupidly funny at this point because it makes no sense. Sub-Zero’s fatal blow has him stab through the opponent’s skull with an icicle among other things, but they just get back up and keep on fighting. The fatalities and brutalities are just as gory as in the last few games. The friendships are gone and there are no stage fatalities, but animalities make their return to the series.
The most controversial thing to me isn’t the violence, it’s the game’s file size: nearly 180GB! Nearly a fifth of my Xbox’s hard drive space is dedicated to this game alone. Another thing is the credits: they go on for around 15 minutes. More than a movie’s! Just look at how many studios worked on this game.
