Mortal Kombat 1’s Stress Test Was a Punishing Intro to the Series

Let’s address the elephant in the room here. Up until this weekend, I’d never played a Mortal Kombat game. Yes, yes, cue the gasps and pitchforks in the comments section. I’ve always sat back, appreciating friends unleashing brutal fatalities on one another and frantically mashing out combos on controllers, but for my own fighting fix, I’ve gravitated towards the Tekken series. Having got an invite into Mortal Kombat 1’s stress test this weekend, though, I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about.

And reader, my ass got handed to me fight after fight after fight. Having realized that immediately hopping online might not be the wisest decision as a complete newcomer, I opted to try out the single-player ‘Tower’ mode to find my footing. I did what everyone initially does when checking out a new fighting game — I pored over the extensive move lists teeming with combos, tried to remember a few, and then proceeded to button mash through my first fight. It did not end well.

Button mashing is never really a recipe for success. Realizing I’d have to put some more time into my approach here, I went back to the move list and studied them once again. Lo and behold, with a little more thought behind my button presses, I secured a victory. And then another one, and another. Before long, I was king of the tower, having left a pile of sliced and diced bodies courtesy of Sub-Zero’s satisfyingly gruesome fatality in my wake.

The Online Stress Was Real

Next, it was time to head online and see how my newfound Mortal Kombat skills held up against other humans. This… did not end well. Chances are, if you played against someone on Mortal Kombat 1 this weekend and thought “this person is not very good,” you played against me. Oh and for the record, Kitana is horribly over-powered in the right hands and I never want to fight against them again.

So yes, I lost. I lost a lot. Over and over again, to the point I began wondering if I was cut out for the uber-brutal iconic fighting series. That was until one fateful fight that saw me take it right down to the wire. A cheeky little assist combo with Sub-Zero and Kano had me whittle Kitana’s health down to a mere sliver. This was it, the first dub was inbound. And then Kitana unleashed a Fatal Blow, stabbing Sub-Zero in the head and then proceeded to humiliate me further by turning my ice-cold boy into a bloody pulp with her Fatality. Wonderful.

But deep within my hours of blood-soaked pain lies some of the magic of Mortal Kombat 1. Despite being severely outplayed, I was still having a great time. Combos felt suitably hefty and satisfying as I watched my opponent’s health bar swiftly shrink. There’s a sickeningly impressive level of detail in Brutalities, Fatalities and Fatal Blows that make them difficult to take your eyes off, even if it spells out another match lost, and the more I fought with Sub-Zero and my next favorite boy, Kenshi, the more I learned their strengths and weaknesses.

We don’t talk about how my W/L record ended by the time the weekend came to a close, but I will say that latency was kept to a minimum and the online gameplay was largely flawless. It’s a promising sign of things to come when the full game releases in September, though how extensive the Stress Test was in comparison to the waves of players hopping in on launch day remains to be seen.

Mortal Kombat 1 Has Earned the Series a New Fan

It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies, though. Despite my largely positive impressions with Mortal Kombat 1, there were a few rather annoying issues, including how one player managed to pin me up against the wall with Kitana and proceeded to juggle my health bar into oblivion. Was there an element of skill here? Sure. But I can’t say it was the most enjoyable match I took part in this weekend.

Similarly, I struggled to really make use of the assist characters in a meaningful way. Despite assist character combos being specifically noted in the move lists, the ones I used with Jax and Kano never really felt all that impactful. Perhaps this will change once the full roster opens up and I have more time to spend with them in the final game, but I was left feeling they were more of a gimmick than a significant addition to the core fighting action.

All in all, as a newcomer I had a great time in Mortal Kombat 1 this weekend. I’m eager to dig deeper into the roster, really get to grips with the assist characters and implementing them into combos, and learning more about my best boys and how they play into the single-player story when the full game drops in September.