After Netherrealm shook up their release cycle by releasing Mortal Kombat 1 after Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, many were curious as to what the team would do to follow up the polarizing title. It seems that the team isn’t quite ready to move on from this iteration of the series just yet. They’ve followed up with an expansion of sorts, aptly named Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns.
Khaotic Story
The story follows the cliffhanger ending in Mortal Kombat 1. It’s Scorpion’s wedding day, and the Lin Kuei clan led by Sub-Zero heads an attack on the exiled ninja, along with returning cyber ninjas Cyrax and Sektor. This is quickly stopped before the emerging menace of Titan Havik makes his appearance with his band of Khaos-infused kombatants, forcing the cast to make a trip to the timeline of Khaos to bring Sub-Zero back and stop Havik from spreading his unique blend of Khaos across the Mortal Kombat multiverse.
The story lasts around 2 hours and has a heavy focus on the “newly” returning Mortal Kombat characters Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot. While this was expected, it does lead to some iffy writing which has quite an effect on the whole story. There are a few sections where you also take control of Tanya and Rain but as a rule, the above-returning characters take top billing and destroy any illusion of power scaling in-universe.
The Khaos Realm and its unique take on characters such as World War II Johnny Cage was great. This helped redeem the otherwise rather safe reboot of Mortal Kombat where characters didn’t have many or even any differences than in the previous timeline. Titan Havik is a fun main antagonist too, albeit one who seems to confuse chaos for Anarchy.
Sadly, the whole story also has that unique stink of a filler arc rather than being the next big continuation of the story, which is something that the previous expansion for Mortal Kombat 11 managed to avoid. Rather than trying to build anything meaningful or even set up for an eventual proper Mortal Kombat 1 sequel, the writing and action lend themselves to a more “Marvel Cinematic Universe” style of quick popcorn-consuming battles, cheesy one-liners, and pushing players to that next “oh snap” moment rather than spending any time establishing its lore. You’ll see the cast wander into the Khaos Realm and within minutes they’re already in a coliseum, then in a maze that constantly changes. While an excellent idea for individual setpieces, this is all then just glossed over with stuff like a teleporting dragon that whisks the cast into the final act quicker than Shao Khan can call you weak in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
Kurious Price Point
While it seems somewhat redundant to talk about the story in a fighting game, there has been a bigger push for grander stories in fighting games in recent years and Netherrealm Studios have always been at the forefront of the cinematic single-player modes. Sadly with Mortal Kombat 1 and now Khaos Reigns, I feel it’s safe to say that titles like Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 have overthrown the Kings and Queens of Kombat in this regard. Netherrealm decided to lean into cheap thrills for casual fans rather than build on what was once the best world-building and story within the genre.
Another reason I’ve chosen to talk this much about the story is that it’s the main focus of the pack; instead of just putting out a slate of reasonably-priced DLC character packs, the only way to access them is by buying this $50/£50 expansion. I believe the intent was for it to be justified with the inclusion of this new cinematic story, but this begs the question of the player if they want to spend nearly the full price of a new AAA game for a subpar story that they’ll likely play once just to get what they can out of this high-priced release.
So if the story isn’t your bag, or even if you’ve found a spare couple of hours, what else is there to justify that hefty price tag? Well, you get 6 new characters and a couple of new stages based on areas in the story such as Khaos Coliseum and the Maze of Khaos.
Kharacter Packs
On the character side of things, you get the returning Cyrax and Sektor who have now become less robotic and are genderswapped in this alternate timeline. These two are a joy to play and have both classic and new moves, though I personally found Cyrax slightly more fun to play as than Sektor.
The amusingly named fan-favorite character Noob Saibot makes a return and plays pretty much exactly how he played in Mortal Kombat 11, only sporting what I would consider quite a bad character design. He’s still somewhat of a dark ninja but has a usual almost nun-like headpiece and the only real shock value he brings is in a story twist that won’t catch any old-school Kombat Kid off guard.
Later in the year, you’ll also get access to 3 guest characters: Conan The Barbarian, Ghostface from Scream, and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. It’s a shame these characters weren’t available at this expansion’s launch as this makes the package feel a lot more like an overpriced down payment for content in a game that I’m not convinced I’ll even be playing by the time these three release.
Verdict
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns doesn’t do much to try and convert the crowd lost by the lukewarm base release of Mortal Kombat 1. If anything, it exacerbates the issues, featuring a rather inconsequential story and tying the only way to get the new characters to this overpriced DLC package. There was a vague hope that this expansion might make the game feel a little better, to make it that little more fun and flesh out the cast in a meaningful way. And while the character additions we have are fine, I have to imagine delaying the guest characters to later dates will exacerbate player drop-offs.
Sadly, even with this DLC content, Mortal Kombat 1 is still the weakest of the big fighting game releases it competes with these days. This expansion just adds to the feeling of Mortal Kombat 1 not living up to its potential. Much like the base game which did little new aside from the Kameo system, this expansion just doesn’t do much to shake things up either. While not a complete Fatality, this isn’t quite the Mercy Mortal Kombat 1 needed, and as such has made me even more apprehensive of spending any more time with Liu Kang and the warriors of Earthrealm.
WAIT FOR SALE ON MORTAL KOMBAT 1: KHAOS REIGNS
If you enjoy Fighting games, then perhaps you’d like our review of Tekken 8 or Guilty Gear -Strive-.
Many thanks go to Warner Bros for a PlayStation 5 review code for this title.
Pride of utopia & greatest thing ever, I found the One Piece, Collected the Dragon Balls & won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in one night, it was quiet for me that night! Follow me on Twitter @powahdunk
