Mortal Kombat 1 gore-soaked gameplay trailer is hard to stomach

Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest is officially underway and just a couple of weeks after it was first unveiled, we’ve just got our first look at Mortal Kombat 1’s gameplay in action in a brand new trailer.

Mortal Kombat 1 is clearly somewhat of a soft reboot and not the Mortal Kombat 12 that fans were originally suspecting. The reboot theories all began when the Mortal Kombat Twitter account released a short video of a clock counting down but instead of reaching midnight, the hand skipped ahead to one. The game is set to release on 19 September and centres around a “reborn Mortal Kombat Universe created by the Fire God Liu Kang.” This will usher “in a new era of the iconic franchise with a new fighting system, game modes, and fatalities.” The initial reveal trailer confirmed that it’s set to be the goriest Mortal Kombat instalment to date, and now we can see that in action in the first gameplay reveal.

Take a look at Mortal Kombat 1’s new gameplay trailer in action below.

The developers over at NetherRealm made the jump to Unreal Engine 5 for the game and we must admit, the graphics are looking dazzlingly slick. In the gameplay deep dive, we see a number of playable characters in action including Kung Lao, Kitana, Johnny Cage, Raiden, Sub Zero, and Scorpion.

If you were worrying that the gore was restricted to the reveal trailer, you thought wrong. In the gameplay trailer we see a number of utterly disgusting finishers - and by disgusting, I secretly mean epic. Heads being ripped off, skulls being split in half in several different ways … you name it.

Ed Boon appeared on stage to explain Liu Kang’s universe. It’s the beginning of a new timeline, with Boon adding that Scorpion and Sub Zero are now brothers and allies which is a cool change. There are also a number of kameo fighters in the game, as we’ve seen mentioned across the last couple of weeks. Boon explained that once you’ve selected your main character, you’ll then be able to pick a kameo character. During the oncoming fight, you’ll be able to summon the kameo fighter during certain combos, rather than it working as a straight tag-team match.

The game is set to be new-gen only, so will only release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.