Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns (PS5) Review
Summary: Khaos Reigns in this by the numbers expansion that gives back exactly what you put into it.
3.5
More-Tal Kombat
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns is a competent add-on with some great new characters, and flashy set pieces let down by a reliance on the worst aspects of the newly rebooted setting.
Following straight on from the events of the main campaign, Khaos Reigns opens with Sub Zero, along with his disciples Sektor and Cyrak, kitted out in new cyber armour (think Iron Man instead of RoboCop) storming Scorpion’s wedding in direct violation of whatever truce the ninja clans cooked up between them.
After Lui Kang and co catch Sub Zero and take him to the NetherRealm to figure out how his lieutenants should be punished, A version of Havik turns up from the timeline in which he came out on top in MK11, kidnaps Garrus, and is pursued by Sub Zero after his menagerie of freaks are forced to make a hasty retreat after getting a swift beating from the new gender-flipped cyber ninjas.
This results in the various factions putting their differences aside to stop Havik and his plan to merge all the timelines with his so everyone can be a self-flagellating freak like him. Sorry I mean so everyone can bathe in the wonders of whatever the producer’s shallow idea of anarchy is. (You know where everything is violent and crazy, and not a collectivist movement that opposes the notion of the state.)
There’s nothing wrong with this as the basis for the next chapter of MK1 if it weren’t already revealed that the new Mortal Kombat timeline is a multiverse, and every single season of content thus far has been about some timeline where {insert character here) won out instead of Lui Kang, discovered the other timelines, and decided to conquer them all.
This isn’t a special event in MK1. It happens all the time, and for the best part, Havik, for all his fun head-chucking gory body horror glory feels like the monster of the week.
The only difference seems to be that Havik has found a way to do this that might work, and he likes to torture his prisoners until their minds and bodies are as twisted as he is.
Essentially it’s just a framing device to add another couple hours of story mode that follows the latest additions to the MK1 roster. Not that I’m complaining.
The overall plot of Khaos Reigns may be a little dull, but the plot was never the series’ strong suit. What makes the story mode so compelling in Mortal Kombat has always been NetherRealm’s ability to create brilliant action set pieces and weave gameplay into something that feels like pure Hollywood schlock in the best possible way.
It’s also a brilliant showcase for the reboot’s reimagined versions of Cyrax, Sector, and Noob Saibot.
Cyrax trades in the big green net for bombs full of expanding foam but keeps the grenades and buzz saws. They’re fairly fast and excel at creating traps for unwary opponents. Though getting them to fall into them is often tricky.
Sektor is still all about explosions and teleporting, sending missiles at her opponents or defending with even more missiles before quickly teleporting and shocking the ground by her opponent before sticking them with her Iron Spider-like robotic legs. She’s a great character for those players who like to focus on all-out offence.
Noob Saibot is as deadly as he ever was and his Shadow Clone abilities, not only look very cool but also give him a crazy amount of range thanks to him being able to send out a clone that will cross the screen while he’s standing basically anywhere. Add some fun trap moves and an absolutely brutal uppercut and in the right hands, you’ve got one of the trickiest fighters in the game.
Khaos Reigns also includes the next Kombat pack which has another trio of guest characters including Conan the Barbarian, Ghostface from Scream, and the T-1000 They all look cool enough, but every time I see these kinds of characters make their way into another Mortal Kombat I wonder why NeatherRealm don’t just make the movie mashup brawler they clearly want to, and give us any number of the dozens of MK characters still sitting on the bench instead.
Final Thoughts
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns is a fun addition to the steller base game. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that your mileage with it will vary wildly.
If you’re just after a little more story you could be done with Khaos Reigns in a couple of hours. Those looking for new characters to master, especially fans of a certain trio of ninjas will certainly get much more out of the update.
That being said a lot of the major additions such as the animalities and new game modes have been included as a free update So if you don’t want Cyrax, Sektor and Noob. There’s little reason to shell out A$75.95 / £39.99 for what extends to a brief story expansion and another round of bonus characters.
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