Mortal Kombat 1's exuberant ultra-violence shouldn't need defending, but here we are

We’re doing this again, are we?

I get it, the video game discourse is a giant ouroboros, a never-ending, endlessly repeating series of events that come back around like clockwork. Difficulty settings, review scores, the eternal ‘are games art’ debate are all due to rear their head one again at some point in the future but, for now, we’re back on the topic of violence in video games. A true classic of the video game discourse field, talked about for decades. Hell, you may even call it the ‘godfather of video game discourse’.

In fact, it’s awfully fitting that the discussion has, once again, been rebooted by none other than what appears to be a reboot of Mortal Kombat. The trailer for Mortal Kombat 1 dropped last week and, to the surprise of absolutely no one, it’s incredibly violent. Characters having their throats slashed, their eyes thumbed in and, in a spectacular sequence at the end of the trailer, kicked in half by an elder god whilst held up by two elemental dragons. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, it seems to have, once again, touched a particular nerve.