Highlights
- Mortal Kombat 1 feels familiar to past entries, but could have benefited from more changes in its characters and setting.
- Street Fighter 6's major new features and innovations could inspire the next Mortal Kombat game to impress fans.
- Modern controls, similar to Street Fighter 6's, could be a selling point for the next Mortal Kombat by reducing frustration and streamlining gameplay for casual players.
After four years without a NetherRealm Studios game, it feels good to have a new Mortal Kombat making the rounds again. Mortal Kombat 1 is the latest entry in the American fighting game franchise, and it marks the second soft reboot in Mortal Kombat’s continuity. While this has changed a lot about the characters and setting, the experience of playing Mortal Kombat 1 feels similar to past entries. Competitive fans are still digging into the mechanics and Invasions mode is an interesting take on the Krypt, but MK1 could have benefited from changing more than it did.
Evidence for this can be found in Street Fighter 6, which only predates MK1 by a few months. The divisive era of Street Fighter 5 spurred Capcom to develop something that would draw players back in, and by all accounts, it succeeded. Introducing major new features like a 3D online lobby, and even things that have appeared in Mortal Kombat like an open-world story mode and custom fighters, Street Fighter 6 feels like what the aging franchise needed. However, like SF6 borrowed from MK, the next Mortal Kombat could seriously impress fans by honing in on one of Street Fighter's own innovations.
Modern Controls Could Be The Next Mortal Kombat's Selling Point
Despite often outselling Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat still finds itself in its senior’s shadow. MK serves a fanbase dominated by casual players more interested in the story, characters, and MK's signature Fatalities than competitive play. Among the wider fighting game community, Mortal Kombat has struggled to legitimize itself, even after the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot considerably upped its mechanical depth. However, there’s a better way to endear people to Mortal Kombat's gameplay than just adding new battle mechanics.
Enter Modern controls, one of three control options available in Street Fighter 6, and the only one besides Classic controls allowed in tournaments and online matches. While Modern reduces the number of tools characters have to work with, it also reduces the frustration many players have with performing special move motions and combo strings. Mortal Kombat already does the latter, but not to such an extreme degree. A future Mortal Kombat title could delight its fanbase with this feature, and the most it would need to change to accommodate it would be renaming it to “Modern Kontrols.”
Mortal Kombat Feels Made For Streamlined Controls
Not only is Mortal Kombat primed for modern controls, but it could adjust to them better than Street Fighter 6 did. MK is a four-button fighting game instead of a six-button one, and because there are only three aerial normals, switching to Modern’s three attack buttons and special move shortcut button would be easy. The punch/kick split allows Mortal Kombat to go even farther, distilling its face buttons down to punch, kick, special, and whatever mechanic replaces MK1’s Kameo Fighters. With something like Street Fighter 6’s combo assist button allowing access to Enhanced specials, short combos, and even the missing attacks, everything should fall into place.
The benefits of doing this go beyond just giving iconic special moves to casual players. Unlike Street Fighter's typical assortment of special motions applying to all three punch or kick buttons, Mortal Kombat has historically spread its command normals, built-in combos, and special inputs across its four buttons with a variety of different special inputs. Despite many characters sharing similar specials like projectiles, and even some universal inputs like uppercuts, reading MK’s move lists is necessary to quickly find everyone’s moves, and jumping between characters only became more difficult as they diverged. Modern controls would standardize Mortal Kombat's cast, making them easier to pick up and play for everyone. For a fighting game with a predominantly casual audience, that’s the best possible outcome.
Mortal Kombat 1 is available now on PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series X/S.
