Members of the fighting game community are split on whether or not the gameplay for Mortal Kombat 1 looks good, with some calling the animations “janky” and hard to read while others like what they’ve seen so far.
Fighting games have had a bit of a renaissance in recent years. With titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ, Guilty Gear: Strive, and Tekken 7 really hitting their stride, fighting games have been thrust back into the limelight as some of gaming’s best competitive offerings.
What’s more, the recent Street Fighter 6 has only elevated the hype for fighting games, and Tekken 8 imminent release has the FGC hyped for the future. The recently announced Mortal Kombat 1 has more competition than ever if it wants to stand out and compete with other fighting games, however.
While some longtime fans of the series have thoroughly enjoyed the bloody cinematic and gameplay trailers showing off the anticipated title, others aren’t sold just yet and have called out the gameplay for looking “janky” in motion.
Mortal Kombat 1 divides fans of the series with gameplay trailer
Mortal Kombat stands out from its contemporaries within the genre for more reasons than one. Its ever-controversial gory presentation and fatalities aside, it also has a bit less focus on continually juggling the opponent in one combo.
Titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Tekken 7 have long combos that often take huge chunks off of their opponents health bar, all of which appear to naturally flow and progress.
Many have called out Mortal Kombat 1’s animations for looking particularly “janky” by comparison.
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My two cents #MortalKombat1 pic.twitter.com/N7igklHBAe
— Fighting-Games Daily (@FGC_Daily) June 8, 2023
“Ed Boon magically summoning 30 billion f***ing dollars to make the jankiest gameplay animation you’ve ever seen” reads the take, which many have agreed with.
To illustrate this point, TikTok creator sixfoot_dancer dunked on the animations by showing how stilted a real person would look if they moved like a Mortal Kombat character.
However, many longtime Mortal Kombat fans thought the recent gameplay reveal looked fantastic. It showed off some of the much-love fatalities, returning characters, and some iconic moves like Johnny Cage doing the splits to deliver a decisive punch right to his opponent’s junk.
Some fans weren’t even sure what the discourse is about after watching the trailer and were confused as to why the game was receiving backlash, saying that it looked great in their eyes.
With all of that said, it’s important to note that the gameplay shown was from a pre-release version of the game. It’s very possible that it gets some changes ahead of launch.