MK1: Khaos Reigns Expansion Review

Last year’s Mortal Kombat 1 brought an impressive overhaul of the world and story of the entire series, which, among other things, again distinguished itself with a very rich and impressive “cinematic” interpretation of the story campaign. Overall the game looked great and was also noteworthy for the addictive gameplay that the series is known for. An interesting new feature was the Kameo teammate system, but conversely, some popular modes or features were missing. This has now been partially corrected by a large free patch that also came with the paid expansion Khaos Reign, which offers a continuation of the story campaign and six new characters, albeit at a rather high price.

• Platform: PS5 (review version), XSX|S, PC, Switch
• Release date: 09.24.2024
• Manufacturer: NetherRealm Studios (USA)
• Genre: thresher
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Yes
• Download data: 10 GB
• Game time: 3 hours
• Price: 1266 CZK (pairs)

Another Multiverse Stew

One of the nice things about last year’s installment of the series was that the story relatively stabilized the new world and cleansed it of the wildest excesses of nonsense. While we were treated to an absolutely brilliant mishmash of multiverse characters colliding at the end of the game, we ended up back in a new, polished dimension. Unfortunately, Khaos Reign’s story campaign largely ignores the new plane and takes you straight to another version of the multiverse, one made even more savage by the fact that it’s ruled by the mad anarchist Titan Havik.

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Much of the story revolves around running through a maze of traps that Havik has prepared for his guests. While the art is again impressive and some of the story sequences are memorable (whether due to the impressive cinematography or the extreme brutality of the deaths), it’s a fairly predictable sauce that wildly mixes all sorts of variations of popular characters, but their dialogue and even their appearance are not the best. The relationship between the heroine couple Sektor and Cyrax is quite interesting, as is the birth of a new variant of Noob Saibot, but in the short runtime of about two hours (gameplay and video combined) it doesn’t have enough space. express yourself this way.

Run through a labyrinth of traps

In terms of gameplay, the campaign will offer five chapters with a new playable character and a series of multiple fights for each chapter. A somewhat unfortunate contrast, in my opinion, was the moment when, after a clever pair of new heroines, the player gets Raina, who is so slower that you just feel like someone suddenly tied a ball to your foot. You’ll then make amends with the remaining two characters, especially Noob Saibot, whose playstyle is visually and mechanically very distinctive thanks to his “shadow” attacks.

New Additions

As for the trio of playable characters that you get when installing the add-on, Sektor is interesting mainly for its relative lightness and versatility, Cyrax can be quite cunning when practicing the “bind-enemy-throw a bomb” combo, and Noob Saibot with shadow attacks, in which his character seems to be split into two parts, which can confuse both the player and his opponent. Later in the game, the movie characters Ghostface, T-1000 and Conan the Barbarian will also appear. Khaos Reigns contains four new arenas that are traditionally graphically beautiful and stylishly complement the local world.

In addition to the paid expansion, many improvements and new features were introduced as part of a large free patch. As such, some characters have been rebalanced, but mostly the addition of time-rotating towers with battles to defeat (with additional cosmetic rewards and the ability to use your Incursions character), a two-player online training mode, and a native mode . missing animalities that are relatively easy to perform and reflect their performers with humor.