For all the things it did well, Mortal Kombat 1 had a pretty rocky start, exhausting title-numbering changes aside. With crossplay absent at launch, microtransactions bogging down every moment of gameplay, and a lack of final polish, it wasn’t in the best spot on day one. Some pieces of the package shined out of the gate, though, and for me the thing that helped the game sing despite those launch woes was the story mode. In completely resetting it’s universe and dropping us into a new, remixed world crafted by the actions of Elder God Liu Kang, the messy fiction of the Mortal Kombat franchise was given a fresh-start that led to a lot of genuinely fascinating and gripping story moments. I was hopeful that the large new story mode featured in the Khaos Reigns expansion would build off of all that promise and potential, but instead I was left feeling disappointed.
The modern series had built up a very Marvel Cinematic Universe style approach to it’s story full of multi-dimensional character variants and crossover shenanigans that, ultimately, served to reach the goal of giving us the completely reset universe we see in Mortal Kombat 1. The Khaos Reigns story picks up immediately after the events of this game’s ending, which had teased with rote multiverse fanservice that is briefly exciting, but ultimately served to distract from the new universe and main timeline characters that the game had spent so long getting us attached to. That khaos is thankfully reigned back in the opening moments of this DLC story, as we instead focus on interesting lore built up in the main game like Bi-Han’s transformation into Noob Saibot and the feud between the Shirai Ryu and the Lin-Kuei.
It’s an incredibly strong start… but then the plot takes a complete sharp turn early on when Khaos Havik appears, signalling yet another MCU-ification of the Mortal Kombat story mode. Instead of a primary focus on the established characters and our new narrative threads, things immediately turn into an Avengers Endgame fanservice-fest as we’re whisked away to Khaos Havik’s realm alongside a host of new fanservice-y character variants.
My issue isn’t that these moments are dull – they’re really fun, and as someone who’s grown up with Mortal Kombat I do love seeing callbacks and timeline shenanigans like these play out – but I would love for Mortal Kombat to grow up a bit. It felt like we were finally making progress in telling a new and meaningful story with the base campaign, but by the time the credits rolled on the barely three-hour long Khaos Reigns story mode, all I felt like we did was go on a fun yet fruitless filler episode adventure.
The other hefty part of the Khaos Reigns expansion is the promise of six new playable characters, but only three of them are available at the time of writing – Noob Saibot, Cyrax, and Sektor. I’ve never been a massive fan of the red and yellow androids, so Cyrax and Sektor being part of this expansion didn’t excite me too much. That being said, the way they’ve been reimagined both in terms of story and gameplay for Khaos Reigns is really interesting.
The robotic ninja duo are now woman warriors who wear augmented armour to do battle, instead of being full cyborgs. Their play-styles are also much more distinct than in the past, with Cyrax having a more fast-paced rush-down reimagining of her original moveset while Sektor has become a very ranged, projectile heavy kombatant.
Noob Saibot is the character I’m most nostalgic for of the three, but his visual design in Khaos Reigns has got to be the most bland and unimaginative interpretation of the smoke-slinging ninja that I’ve ever seen. Thankfully, his wild moveset is just as fun as was in past games, and I’m sure some costume cosmetics down the line will give me a style-swap for him that gets me way more excited to play as him.
As for the upcoming characters in the pass – Ghostface, Conan, and the T-1000 – I can’t say I’m all too excited about them. NetherRealm Studios has relied heavily on guest characters for almost all of their modern fighting game releases, but as these games grow and the list of untapped crossover characters thins, it’s way less exciting to see film and comic characters dropped into the world of Mortal Kombat when there are so many original characters I’d rather see in the roster instead.
The first character pass for this game felt almost too on-the-pulse with it’s pop culture crossover picks – does anyone even talk about Peacemaker anymore? By comparison, the crossover selection for Khaos Reigns is practically as far away from the pulse of pop culture as possible, with picks like Conan and the T-1000 feeling like desperate pleas to the players who are old enough to have been around since the onset of this franchise and even know who either of those characters are. Ghostface is a solid exception to this rule. The Scream franchise has had a pretty major resurgence in the last few years and strikes a chord with a pretty wide variety of people, and I feel like the character’s design fits the world of Mortal Kombat pretty well.
All in all, Khaos Reigns is an overpriced and underwhelming expansion for a fighting game that really needed a big win. Mortal Kombat 1 has been in a rocky place since launch, and I don’t see this expansion or the content it adds turning things around for this game for very many people.