When it comes to single-player content, NetherRealm Studios has made sure that Mortal Kombat 1 will have enough for the game’s lifetime through Invasion mode. Replacing MK11’s Krypt, this board game-like experience presents players with expanded locations, all packed with secrets and easter eggs, to fight through in order to earn some sweet rewards. Like Kombat League, Invasion is operating on a seasonal content release cadence. So, you’re going to be met with a fresh Invasion experience every six-or-so weeks. That might be exciting news for some of you, but quite a few MK1 fans find this “unfinished” mode a bit of a “disappointment” to play. They, however, know how a few key Mortal Kombat 1 Invasion changes could transform this game mode – and we agree with almost all of their suggestions.
While we’re sitting here in awe of these impressive fan-made MK1 Invasion maps, Mortal Kombat 1 fans are discussing how NetherRealm Studios can help the mode live up to its full potential. With it essentially being like Mortal Kombat Mario Party, there’s certainly a lot of fun to be had here. However, as Reddit user ‘ponjo_89’ highlights in this discussion-starting post, Invasion is far too linear and repetitive in its current iteration. Sure, you can unlock a killer Roomba if you’re brave enough, but there’s not enough of a narrative to keep it engaging and the series’ past (like Konquest and Krypt) only serve as reminders of what can be done – but isn’t, right now.
So, that’s why these Mortal Kombat 1 fans believe (and rightfully so) that these three changes are key to transforming this lackluster experience into an Invasion mode worth spending your time playing.
The main issue with exploration in Invasions is that there isn’t any, really. While this game mode might be a great way of testing your Mortal Kombat 1 combos while exploring some interesting environments, the pathways you can continue down are largely linear and don’t often require any sort of forethought or route planning to reach the end of. There are some instances where back-tracking is required, but it’s largely straightforward and uncomplicated to complete each Mesa. If NetherRealm Studios wants to keep people playing Invasions when Season 2 rolls around, it really needs to make the maps more maze-like – presenting players with a better sense of discovery when they work their way through them.
Another way NetherRealm Studios could improve Invasions is to permeate the experience with more narrative content. We know Season 1 reveals what the ‘real’ Scorpion is up to during the events of the main Mortal Kombat 1 story, but that information is shared at the start of the experience and then that’s it. When you’re working through each Mesa itself, story details are few and far between. This undoubtedly doesn’t help combat the sensation of repetitiveness while playing and it makes quite a lot of it feel more pointless than it is. When you think about how Konquest mode was used to tell new stories in older Mortal Kombat games, you have to wonder why NetherRealm Studios isn’t using Invasions to explore the seasonal stories it’s telling in more detail. A few more moments that tell stories, even text based, would go a long way here.
Finally, Mortal Kombat 1 fans want to see NetherRealm Studios experiment a little more with kombat modifiers throughout Invasions mode – and so do we. At the moment, players are finding themselves frustrated with an apparent over-reliance on Armor bonuses to break combos and modifiers that interrupt gameplay (without any way around them) far too frequently. One talks about their fighters stopping to “cough on smog” every two seconds during a fight. We’re not sure it would be quite so frequent, but we understand the frustration this modifier would create. We don’t know what to suggest here – and we’re not sure the Mortal Kombat 1 community does either – but we know that there needs to be some changes to this. Kombat modifiers are a great way to keep gameplay fresh in a fighting game, but they’re just not as fun as they could be when they’re so invasive and stacked upon one another – like they so often are in Invasion mode.
Are we going to see any of these changes make their way into Mortal Kombat 1 in the future? We don’t know for sure. You have to imagine that kombat modifiers will need to be refreshed in order to keep the experience itself ‘new’ each season, though. Beyond that, though, we don’t know for sure. This is one of the best fighting games out there right now, though, and we’re sure NetherRealm Studios wants to keep things that way.
While we wait to find out, though, you can find out more about who sits atop our Mortal Kombat 1 characters tier list and Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo tier list right here. If you want to practice with any of these, Invasion mode is a fantastic place to do it. You may as well earn some cosmetics while you learn, right?