It’s rare that a series as old as gets the chance to make a new name for itself. However, the 2011 reboot introduced the trump card that reinvented Mortal Kombat through a story-focused single-player campaign. Now, Mortal Kombat 1 takes that further, building around that idea with an interesting new 🐎mode that takes the best parts of both The Living Towers and the Krypt.
Giving players something to do outside of fighting online 🌊made it perfect for a more casual, non-competitive crowd, and Mortal Kombat’s popularity swelled. It wasn’t perfect, and had a nasty habit of making charac༒ters fight simply for the sake of it, but the fresh focus was exactly what the series needed to stand out from the crowd.
As important as those campaigns have been for Mortal Kombat’s rebirth, they’re just a small piece of Mortal Kombat’s stable of single-player content. Ever since the 3D era, Mortal Kombat games 🥂have featured a ton of different things for players to do outside of just fighting, from Test Your Might minigames and explorable spaces like The Krypt to wilder examples like Motor Kombat and Chess Kombat.
N🎀etherRealm might have reigned in these weirder urges recently, but I’ve still been looking forward to seeing what it 🔴was bringing to the table for Mortal Kombat 1. As it turns out, “bringing to the table” is an apt metaphor as its new single-player mode, Invasions, seems to be trying to be a Mortal Kombat board game. One with blood, guts, and narration by Johnny Cage, which infinitely makes it better than real board games.
Initially, I wasn’t into the idea of Invasions at all. My brain turns to goo when it comes to board games, and I was holding out hope for something weird like Puzzle Kombat. To hear it wasn’t either of those left me soured. Thankfully, after some hands-on time with it at Gamescom, I was impressed by how it managed to combi♔ne the best elements of two of Mortal Kombat’s most notable modes - The Living Towers (or Towers of𝓀 Time if you inexplicably prefer MK11 over MKX) and The Krypt.
My enjoyment of Invasions was helped by the fact that it’s not really that inspired by board games🙈. The overhead dioramic view and positions on the map to move between might make it look like one, but all you’re really doing is moving between spaces on the board to fight enemies, picking up items ♛and talismans to use (which are essentially just one-time special moves you can place on your character), and getting to explore mini versions of iconic Mortal Kombat locales.
The section of the mode that I got to play took place in a warped version of Johnny Cage’s🎐 mansion (at least, I don’t think he has a movie theatre randomly lodged in his home…) that’s been taken over by demons and he♔llspawn. So, normal Hollywood executives then?
Invasions has a surprising amount of dialogue from Johnny, who pops up between fights to explain mechanics and just genera💃lly jokes about whatever’s going on. This helped keep t⭕he Invasions map interesting to explore, and I hope it continues in later boards that feature different characters, like Hanzo Hazashi in his upcoming season.
That’s right, Invasions is going to be seasonal, with NetherRealm promising a new board based on a unique theme that features new challenges and unlocks every six weeks. This takes the best part of the Towers of Time, its replay value, and puts it into a mode that so far doesn’t make me wan🐼t to tear my hair out with repetitive fights and cheap objectives.
Invasions also takes the best part about The Krypt, its unlockable extras, and features a ton of gear, colour pale⛎ttes, and unique skins for characters to acquire throughout the board. Even🎃 the best iteration of the Krypt in Mortal Kombat 11 mostly just had you running around a map and completing simple puzzles, but Invasions keeps you doing what Mortal Kombat is best at, fighting, while rewarding you for it.
So far, it looks like Invasions is taking the best part about those two modes and putting them into something exciting and new that’s goi🉐ng to be supported for some time. I hope that it doesn’t devol🌌ve into cheap, annoying fights like the Towers of Time, but what I played seemed fair and fun, albeit with some modifiers that differentiated it from normal fights.
It might not be the Puzzle Kombat or Shaolin Monks mode that I was praying for, but Invasions is shaping up to be one of𓃲 the best side modes that Mortal Kombat has had, and a damn sight more interesting than just doing Towers for the third time.
