Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns review

Mortal Kombat 1 is near perfect when it comes to the fight. Fluid movement and so many ways to build exciting combos, and gorgeous visuals made the original release well worth playing. The story was entertaining and fleshed out, even though it went hard on the timeline idea. That’s why it’s a shame the Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns expansion is so disappointing in where it takes the story, continually choking you with the notion of so many timelines, causing you to suspend disbelief and just go with the silliness of it. It could have done so much, but chose to do so little.

The story is as generic as it comes, especially for Mortal Kombat. Taking place following the events of the base game where Lui Kang and friends stop Shang Tsung, Havik decides he wants to take over all timelines and inject with anarchy. He kidnaps Geras in an effort to speed up the process, leaving the newly added characters to visit his lair and stop the villain from achieving his goal. There are some great segments in Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns, such as the wedding scene at the beginning, and the debut of Noob Saibot in the modern age is another highlight, but the whole thing is more of the same.

There’s a focus on Cyrax and Sector, two new fighters who are both great to play as, but their backstories are never fleshed out. Sub-Zero’s transformation into Noob Saibot will be cool for fans to see, and while he’s an incredible fighter with a dense moveset, he’s never used to his full potential. It doesn’t help that the story does nothing new, and stopping such a low-level villain like Havik who feels like a two-dimensional character with no appeal just doesn’t quite hit that hard. The Infinity Stone-esque plotline damages the originality of the base game and turns it into a generic good versus evil fight with little pull to find out what happens. No spoilers, but I was left deflated by how NetherRealm decided to end things.

It’s also a lot to ask players to invest in an expansion where the story is barely hitting three hours, and while the three new characters have differing movesets, it just isn’t worth the asking price. Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns looks stunning, and as it did previously, the character animations are stellar, as are the environments. There are some cool moments, but the overall narrative does little to flesh out the new characters. Havik is a weak enemy in comparison to Shang Tsung and Kronika, making him little more than a paint-by-numbers enemy just to get players to try out the new fighters.