Mortal Kombat 1

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-8 Competitive Tournament (Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Mortal Kombat 1 is the twelfth mainline installment in the long-running Fighting Game series, the direct sequel (and in some ways prequel) to Mortal Kombat 11. Released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, this release on Nintendo Switch has become somewhat infamous, and is arguably an example of hubris at its finest.

That is because it is, to my knowledge, only the second Nintendo Switch game without an accessory where the base version of the game was priced at $70 on launch. The first such game, for the record, was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and I think players generally agree that it was worth the expense. On the other hand, Mortal Kombat 1 not only had much of its content parceled out to paid DLC right from launch in addition to the steep price, but it released in an absolutely sorry state, with terrible performance issues and nasty loading times.

In the time since its release, the game has received multiple updates that have made its Nintendo Switch release far more competent and added back in features that were missing at launch, like online cross-play, but this has come at a heavy cost, in more ways than one. For starters, the game’s standard price dropped to $40 ($10 less than other platforms), and the game regularly goes on sale for $10. In addition to this, the aforementioned patches are absolutely massive in size – you’re looking at this game taking up over 40GB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s internal memory or MicroSD card, and that’s even if you have the physical release. Ouch.

So, when all is said and done, is the game any good? Well… yeah, actually.

Mortal Kombat 1 technically takes place after the end of Mortal Kombat 11, but due to time travel shenanigans, it is both a sequel and prequel to that game, with this game starting with Liu Kang having defeated Kronika, gaining godly abilities, and rewriting the timeline. Of course, even with time travel shenanigans, history repeats and Liu Kang finds himself gathering heroes from Earth to fight in an interdimensional tournament, basically trading places with the original Mortal Kombat’s Raiden as Earth’s patron sponsor.

It’s a wacky plot that has the benefit of appealing to both newcomers and longtime fans – the former can jump right in without having to know any of the franchise’s convoluted story or lore, and the latter can enjoy seeing an alternate story play out with the series’ familiar characters going about things differently.

The gameplay here is fairly solid and doesn’t feel drastically different from prior entries in the series, but does add some interesting new elements. The main one here is the Kameo system, which works in a similar fashion to the Marvel Vs. Capcom series’ assist characters – these characters don’t actively participate in combat, but jump in from time to time when called for to make additional attacks, or even join you for “Fatal Blow” moves.

I do have a few issues with the gameplay, particularly the way the game lets you use ZR to “enhance” special moves to empower them. The timing of this is demanding to such an absurd extent that I find it impossible to do it on command.

I should note that Krypt mode isn’t present this time around, though in its place is a new Invasions mode that has you moving along a map to battles with special conditions. This is in addition to the standard story mode and arcade-style Towers mode.

When it comes to presentation, even after the patches Mortal Kombat 1 on Nintendo Switch isn’t coming anywhere close to the sort of visuals present on other platforms, and in particular the character models definitely look kinda’ ugly, and the stages are an eyesore. Even the opening title screen is a painful mess of aliasing, low resolutions, terrible shimmering, and ugly textures. In addition, I noticed some hitching and screen tearing in story cinematics, though this thankfully didn’t affect the gameplay, and overall the gameplay seemed to look mostly fine, though the 3D visuals are overall lower-quality and uglier than you’ll find on other platforms, and there are framerate issues too.

In the end, I think the patches and price drop have made Mortal Kombat 1 on Nintendo Switch mostly respectable again, though that comes with the caveat of a massive file size and a note that this is still clearly the worst version of this game with butt-ugly graphics. However, if Nintendo Switch is your sole game platform of choice and you’re wanting to pull off some toasty fatalities, Mortal Kombat 1 is worth picking up.

tl;dr – Mortal Kombat 1 may have launched in a terrible state on Nintendo Switch, but after multiple patches it’s in better shape, though still not great shape. This is still the worst version of this hyper-violent Fighting game, but if Nintendo Switch is your game platform of choice (and you have 40GB+ of storage space), I think you’ll be satisfied with this release.

Grade: B-

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Mortal Kombat 1

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-8 Competitive Tournament (Online)

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Review:

I’m pretty sure my review of the Nintendo Switch release of this game is the first time I’ve used the phrase “butt-ugly” in a review. This game is not pretty on Nintendo Switch, and despite the massive improvements that post-release patches have brought the game, it’s still far worse than other versions of the game. So, can playing the game on the Nintendo Switch 2 make a difference here?

Well, first I’ll make this clear – this game is still an ugly mess on Nintendo Switch 2. The aliasing, low resolutions, the ugly textures, and ugly character models are all still present here. The same mostly goes for the low-quality cinematics, though I didn’t see any of the hitching or screen tearing that these suffered on Nintendo Switch.

One area that has received noticeable improvement is framerates – this game runs much more smoothly on Nintendo Switch 2 than it does on Nintendo Switch, making for a much smoother overall experience, even if it’s still an ugly experience.

The loading times are much-improved here as well. It took 36 seconds to load to the title screen on Nintendo Switch, compared to only 11 seconds on Nintendo Switch 2. And loading up a match in Towers mode from the moment your opponent’s name is spoken to the match’s opening smack-talk goes from 32 seconds on Nintendo Switch to 10 seconds on Nintendo Switch 2.

All of this doesn’t make the game less ugly, but it does make Mortal Kombat 1 on Nintendo Switch 2 far more playable. It’s still absolutely terrible-looking compared to the version of the game available on non-Nintendo platforms, but if all you have to game on are Nintendo platforms, then you will get a noticeable improvement on Nintendo Switch 2.

tl;dr – Mortal Kombat 1 may have launched in a terrible state on Nintendo Switch, but after multiple patches it’s in better shape, though still not great shape. The Nintendo Switch 2 helps to improve framerates and loading times, but this is still an ugly version of the game that pales compared to the version non-Nintendo platforms got, but if Nintendo Switch 2 is your game platform of choice (and you have 40GB+ of storage space), I think you’ll be satisfied with this release.

Grade: B

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