Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns review — Methodical Madness

Khaos reigns in the new Mortal Kombat 1 expansion, or so the title tells me. Everything seems to be in order to me! The Khaos Reigns expansion adds a new story mode and six new kombatants to the game. Despite being a reboot, MK1 did surprisingly little to shake the series up. Rather than disrupting the status quo, Khaos Reigns continues the conservative gameplan while pretending to be crazier than it actually is. This methodical brand of madness adds some worthwhile kombatants, yet fails to meaningfully refresh the game.

Take the new story mode: anyone familiar with Mortal Kombat for the past decade plus knows exactly what to expect at this point. A movie, essentially. Each chapter focuses on a different character, hurdling them through a series of cutscenes broken up with fights against the AI. I previously noted that this rigid formula wore thin a few games back, but it’s popular, so it’s back again. It will come back after this, too!

Movies live and die by how entertaining they are to watch. If you’re going to tell a story, it should be one worth telling. In MK’s case, leaning in on fun moments, kool characters, and fleshing out the world in a way that matters can overcome even the barest of plots and stiffest of dialogue. MK houses a unique setting that mixes mysticism, technology, and all kinds of krazy concepts into something that often proves more than the sum of its parts.

Khaos Reign’s story isn’t worth telling. While the narrative picks up directly where the main story left off, it comes across as a contrived filler episode of children’s cartoon…with slightly more dismemberment than usual. I’d say that this approach doesn’t fit MK at all, but MK has been a children’s cartoon, so I’ll settle for saying I don’t like it. Between the poor direction of the cutscenes, lack of progress for any of the main characters, and egregious amount of time spent on things that don’t matter, the whole experience feels like something cooked up to fill time rather than tell a real story.

The heart of the Khaos Reigns story explores the fracturing relationship between Mortal Kombat’s iconic ninja duo, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and their now competing ninja factions. Newcomers Cyrax and Sektor help flesh out the moral divide while the later inclusion of Noob Saibot theoretically exacerbates the situation to its breaking point. Sounds great! So what if I told you that stuff barely matters?

Instead, most of the story revolves around an excruciating middle section about multiverse variations of characters fighting a multiverse variation of a bad guy in a multiverse variation of the world the game is supposed to take place in. These multiversal developments drag the main characters into a cartoonish dungeon full of boobytraps and commentary from the bad guy, who watches their trek unfold from a magic screen while twirling his non-existent mustache. Lots of strange things happen here, yet I couldn’t tell you the point of any of it.

Basically, the new story boasts the same strengths and weaknesses of MK1’s original story. Everything that develops the new setting of the game seems interesting, yet it all gets undermined and overtaken by Mortal Kombat’s current obsession with alternate timelines. However, this time around the multiverse hijacks the plot in a way that feels especially lopsided. Round 1 of MK1’s story at least kept the spotlight on the “main” universe for most of its run. Round 2 shifts things over almost entirely to multiversal madness after the first chapter.

I just can’t care about the relationship between Multiverse Rain and Multiverse Tanya no matter how much time the game spends on it. I can’t even remember what Rain and Tanya’s deals are in the actual MK1 universe, so how can I invest in versions that won’t matter the second this story mode ends? Why am I supposed to care about Multiverse Havik as a villain when the real Havik seems entirely unrelated to this plot? Why not just have this same plot with the actual characters instead of all of this irrelevant multiverse fluff? Who are the MK team writing this stuff for? How come everyone seems to just stand around and let the bad guys do easily preventable things instead of trying to stop them???

The story mode format itself left me scratching my head in confusion. Much of the middle section builds up to a dramatic encounter with Noob Saibot, a character with personal connection to basically all of the main ninjas involved with this plot. Yet you don’t fight him with any of those people. You fight him with Multiverse Tanya – not because that’s the most dramatic matchup for the narrative, but because Multiverse Tanya was the last character whose “turn” it was in the rigid story mode structure. Since MK1 fears breaking the rules, you end up with a flat, meaningless fight rather than one that could have been better with virtually any other matchup.

Look, whether your name is Martin Scorsese, Roger Ebert, or XxHellFireScorpionFan87xX, everyone knows deep down that Mortal Kombat is the highest form of cinema. It pains me to say that Khaos Reigns is not cinema. It’s barely even a movie. While this story technically moves things along for the characters, the actual dynamics between Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and everyone else remain virtually unchanged from the opening cutscene to the end. This story seems to exist less because the MK1 team had a great idea and more because they know people like story modes so they needed to throw together another one to sell this DLC. Story mode is supposed to be the trick that always works, but this time it simply does not.

You know what does work? Ninjas. Khaos Reigns launches with three new kombatants: Noob Saibot, Cyrax, and Sektor. All ninjas, robot or otherwise. If anything will always work for MK, it’s the ninjas. This is not a criticism. Ninjas represent exactly what makes MK kool – simple appeal, mysterious designs, and distinct powers that showcase the breadth of MK’s universe. While their roles in the new story may be underwhelming, these characters bring a nice sense of dynamism to the roster.

Noob Saibot returns with both a sponsorship from Monster Energy and an extensive bag of tricks. Noob’s shadow attacks shoot out a doppelganger that can keep opponents in check from a distance in all sorts of ways. When he closes in, he can easily mix up the opponent for bigger damage. It’s surprisingly easy to create different setups and combos with him, like having a shadow Noob charge up a projectile for an approach, or using a well-timed Kameo and teleport to convert stray hits into combos. He’s a very versatile character with a big learning curve thanks to all the different ways you can use his shadows.

Cyrax matches Noob’s versatility with a heavy emphasis on setups to suffocate her opponents. Her gameplan primarily revolves around laying bombs across the battlefield that can be used to trap the opponents in loops of offensive pressure. From projectiles that leave opponents defenseless to teleports to confuse them during an explosive assault, Cyrax can do a lot to keep people guessing. All of her nuances take some getting used to, but the reward seems well worth it.

In comparison to her kolleagues, Sektor keeps things relatively straightforward. Her arsenal of missiles, guns, and a flamethrower provides her with some excellent zoning tools. On top of that, Sektor has tools like a teleport and projectile counter to shut down the tools of competing zoners, making her dominant in the long range game. With a float move that can be used for some nasty mix-ups with kameos to balance out her approach, Sektor stands out with a solid and easy to grasp gameplan.

To summarize, all the new characters are great! I like their redesigns and they’re all fun to play. If I had any criticism of the robots – and it’s really not their fault because modern MK games do this with everyone – I hate how the game constantly shows off their faces. Gender Swapping the robots from male to female doesn’t matter to me. Being a cool robot ninja should take priority. With prior iterations, you barely got to see what they looked like underneath their masks at all. Their human forms were irrelevant beyond being a fun tidbit in endings or alternate costumes. MK1 removes all mystique from their ninja robot premise by constantly removing their masks for pre-battle dialogue, cutscenes, fatal blows, fatalities, whatever. Lame!

Three more characters will be released at a later date: Ghostface from Scream, Conan the Barbarian (of the Arnold Schwarzenegger variety), and the T-1000 from Terminator (of the not Arnold Schwarzenegger variety). Gotta be real – none of them sound appealing to me. I play MK for the MK characters, and while they did a great job with those picks, I can’t say the same for the collaborations thus far. If MK needs to oversaturate itself with as many guest characters as it does multiverses, none of these choices would be near the top of or even within a 100,000 mile radius of my list of candidates. That said, they could still be fun to play, but that determination will have to wait for a future discussion.

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