Mortal Kombat: Khaos Reigns

Written by Nathan Carter on 10/8/2024 for PS5  

I honestly don't even know what Mortal Kombat is anymore. This used to be a series about fighters gathering for a martial arts tournament where they compete in fights to the death for the fate of their worlds. Now it seems like Mortal Kombat is overly influenced by the MCU, because this series now feels like a super hero franchise, where we are traveling to endless timelines in a multiverse seeing wacky and different variations of the characters.

In my original review of Mortal Kombat, I mentioned how the gameplay is very good and the Kameo system is neat, but my main issue with the game was the "New Era" direction they had taken the game. It really feels like the entire cast is all brand new characters since they all have new stories and origins, new motivations, some even have new movesets. The story mode certainly didn't help matters. It started off pretty decently, but then towards the end it gets absolutely ridiculous until it crumbles into multiverse nonsense. Well, a year later, Mortal Kombat: Khaos Reigns is here, the first expansion for the game featuring six new characters, three of them playable at launch and a brand new story expansion "Khaos Reigns" and - oh boy - the multiverse stuff has gotten even worse. 

First the positive. The Khaos Reigns expansion features six new characters, but only three of them are available at launch. Those six are guest characters Ghostface, T-1000 and Conan The Barbarian and three returning Mortal Kombat characters include Noob Saibot, Sketor and Cyrax. These three are all available to play now and are are part of the story expansion themselves. All three of them, like most of the characters, have different origins. Cyrax and Sektor are now women and aren't cyborgs anymore. They wear Ironman-like exosuits but still have most of their signature moves. Sektor still uses fire attacks and rockets and Cyrax still has bombs, the buzz saw, and a goo trap that can hold opponents in place somewhat like the previous iterations net attack.

The real star here is Noob Saibot, who is just absolutely incredible. With a roster of characters that barely resemble their original iterations, Noob Saibot feels like the most classic character out of the bunch, featuring a moveset that he hasn't had since his first playable appearance in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. He's got his forceball, he's got his teleport slam, he's got the shadow slide and he has his shadow fighting by his side which adds additional combos and moves when he is available only like a second Kameo. Once per match, Noob Saibot can also use a move called "embrace khaos" which boosts his attacks and gives additional properties to his special moves. However, once this expires the shadow is gone for the rest of the match. He is a ton of fun to play and the absolute highlight of this expansion. 

The main part of the expansion is the brand new story mode chapter called "Khaos Regins". Continuing where the original story left off, we are introduced to Cyrax and Sektor, members of the Lin Kuei who are about to attack Scorpion at his wedding for him betraying their clan. The attack gets thwarted, and right as Sektor and Sub-Zero are sent to Empress Mileena for execution, a portal opens up Titan Havik shows up with his own fighters from his timeline and starts wrecking everything. Eventually Geras gets captured and Sub-Zero jumps through the portal right as it closes. Liu Kang then sends Sektor and Cyrax on a mission to stop Havik and recover both Geras and Sub-Zero.

From the moment we get a look at the Khaos Realm, problems start to develop. Cyrax and Sektor are the only characters from the main timeline that we follow. The rest of the group is filled with characters from other multiverses such as a timeline where Johnny Cage is a WW2 soldier, Tanya and Rain are now married and are the king and queen of their timeline. This is where we get to the biggest problem with this story expansion and Mortal Kombat 1 as a whole. None of this matters, because this isn't the main timeline. 95% of this story expansion takes place in Havik's wacky wild khaos timeline. Most of the characters we see and interact with aren't part of the main timeline, so when characters start getting killed off, including an absolutely laughable heroic sacrifice by a certain character, we have absolutely zero reason to care about any of this. These aren't our main timeline characters, we don't know anything about these characters, and I sure as hell didn't care about seeing any of them killed off. 

This story mode is only about two hours long. It once again shows the flaws of NetherRealm's story mode chapter system where you are forced to play as certain characters per chapter. We start off the story mode showing Sektor and Cyrax training because they need to be ready for this really important mission that's coming up. Apparently Cyrax didn't need any training, because she is easily able to defeat both Scorpion and Sub-Zero, no problem. It is so frustrating to see many fights where a certain character would make sense, like seeing Kuai Liang (Scorpion) and Bi-Han (Sub-Zero) throw down, only for a character like Cyrax to step in and go "No, I'll handle this" because that's the character you have to play as in that chapter. Then you have things like Sketor and Cyrax having these special abilities like being able to fly or turn invisible, and yet they don't use these abilites in the story when they are needed most. We also have a villain who can regenerate his body parts and can replicate himself by ripping his limbs off so of course how do the heroes think we should try to fight and defeat this villain? By ripping his limbs off.

Yeah, this story makes a lot of the characters look like idiots. Because the story is so short, characters are changing allegiances on a dime. Sub-Zero gets turned into Noob Saibot and is presented as a new villain in the series and minutes later he is "saved" and remains Noob Saibot, but is now fighting with the heroes. Since this is a new timeline, it means that characters have new motivations.

Even worse, it feels like none of this matters because it doesn't advance the story at all. Not to mention, the main villain just...uhhh...disappears, I guess. No idea what happened to him. "Aftermath" for Mortal Kombat 11 felt like a continuation of the main story, where drew it to a complete ending. Khaos Reigns doesn't do this at all. We spend most of this story in an alternate timeline and once this whole thing is taken care of we are just right back to where we started. It just feels like a detour. With the way this ends without having any resolution at all, I suspect we may be getting more story expansions in the future. If this happens, I just hope they stick to the main timeline and actually advance the story instead of traveling to more timelines and seeing more ridiculous versions of the characters we know and love. 

The three new characters are fun to play, and the updates to the game such as Towers of Time and the new stages are nice and save this expansion. If all you care about is the characters, new Animalities, and Towers of Time, then this expansion would have been pretty good and my god they knocked it out of the park when it comes to Noob Saibot and his moveset, but when you add in the mess of a story expansion, it completely tanks this package.

I totally understand trying to do new things but this ain't it at all. Mortal Kombat is completely losing it's identity. I have no idea what this series is even more. It's like it's trying to keep it's roots with all of the blood and gore and fatalities and whatnot, but it also now wants to be a super hero story where instead of martial arts tournaments and fighting for the fate of Earthrealm, we are now fighting for the fate of the universe with endless multiverses. I'm sorry, but this multiverse nonsense needs to stop. Mortal Kombat is not Avengers Endgame, Mortal Kombat is not a super hero franchise.