Mortal Kombat 1 recently dropped new trailers during their panel at San Diego Comic-Con that revealed the fighters for its Kombat Pack 1, featuring Omni-Man, Homenlander, and Peacemaker; as well as the Umgadi trailer, which confirmed the return of fan-favorite characters Li Mei, Tanya, and Baraka. With the excitement for Mortal Kombat 1 going strong, I wanted to discuss some aspects of the game that have me excited to return to the bloody world of Mortal Kombat.
The main gameplay mechanic that is being hyped up for Mortal Kombat 1 is its Kameo system, which allows the player to have another fighter as an assist. The kameo system seems to have been a more elaborated implementation from mechanics that were featured in both Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat 11, which featured towers in which you could get quick offscreen assists from other characters. differs Mortal Kombat 1 expands on this gameplay mechanic by allowing the assist to do more than a single move, as well as being featuring the Kameo more prominently in grabs, fatalities and crushing blows. Each Kameo has different moves that can be used to different ways such as enhancing combos, zoning out opponents or saving you from a bad situation. One of my favorite Kameo moves is the creative use of Scorpions iconic spear, a move that has always been used offensively to pull his opponents towards him is now an assist that pulls his ally out of danger. Kameos seem to be the backbone of MK1 and they allow for a more creative combat system that seems to be more free flowing than the one featured in MK11.
Even though Mortal Kombat 1 continues the story from MK11 it is essentially a reboot for the franchise, a new starting point for most characters, and thus characters that have been in several past titles are now different, whether its from a story perspective or a gameplay perspective. A good example would be Mileena, who in past titles is characterized as a clone of Kitana who is combined with Tarkatan features, but now Mileena is Outworld royalty, being the actual sister to Kitana, and her Tarkatan features now come from a virus. From a gameplay perspective, a character that has been reworked is Johnny Cage, who has lost the use of his green energy, which used to give him the ability to throw projectiles, and has now been replaced with a meter mechanic which allows him to cancel special moves into special moves, a very uncommon mechanic in fighting games. The reworking of characters brings a breath of fresh air to the franchise and while the whole roster hasn’t been revealed yet I’m excited to see what characters they bring back and play around with their new tools.
A big problem with the last couple NeatherRealm Studio games has been their emphasis on zoning and slow gameplay that didn’t leave much room for expressive combos. The developers seem to be aware of these concerns and with Mortal Kombat 1 they are addressing these past issues in a few different ways. MK1 seems to be giving every character more combo strings than ever before in the modern 2D era, and one of the ways in which this is possible is by bringing back air combos, which allows combos to become more free-flowing and it also lets the kameos to be used as both combo extenders and combo enders.
Mortal Kombat 1 seems to be heading in the right direction when it comes to creating a fresh entrypoint into the franchise that will also excite lifelong fans of the franchise. The Kameos seem to be an exciting adition to the franchise due to their versatility in gameplay and how they allow for fan favorite characters to come back, even if they arent playable. The gameplay also seems to be heading in the right diection as they are listening to player feedback and understand that slow, footsies focused gameplay is less appealing than fast paced combo heavy action. We still have a few months till Mortal Kombat 1 launches on September 14, but from the footage that has been released I cant help myself from believing that Mortal Kombat 1 is gonna be a bloody good time.
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