Mortal Kombat rings back to my childhood for me, a time when violence was pixilated and 2D, before Jack Thompson, Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto scandals. Since those days of my childhood, the industry has changed as well as the Mortal Kombat series and a little while ago the bloodiest fighter in video games took the jump into the 3D and never looked back, until now.

I wish to get a little something out of my system first. FINALLY! Finally there is a non-anime based fighter on the DS, finally there is a fighter on the DS that isn’t afraid to splash a little blood and finally there is a fighter that happily goes hand in hand with Nintendo Wi-Fi.

Now, the great thing about this Mortal Kombat game is that it isn’t just Mortal Kombat. When you first start up the game you are asked to put in a profile, which (1 of 4 that can be stored on the cartridge) tracks your wins, losses and general stats throughout the game. This is good but not what I’m getting at when I say it isn’t just Mortal Kombat; what I’m talking about is Puzzle Kombat.

The premise is quite simple: put the same coloured blocks together, use a MK icon as a catalyst and set off a combo onto the other players screen, that’s right this is a puzzle Kombat game. So rather than trying to get to the complete a number of lines or combos (a la Tetris), you compete against someone else and try to fill their screen up before yours does. The bottom screen of the DS displays the puzzle combat going on, while the top screen very smartly displays a pretend fight between two Mortal Kombat characters (made to look quite cartoony), which will change depending who’s winning etc. The match ends when one persons screen fills up (hopefully the opposition) and with that, you are treated to a Stageality on the top screen (Stageality is basically a Mortal Kombat finishing move which changes depending on the stage).

Puzzle Kombat not only has a full single player to work through but also includes full local (single and mutlicard) multiplayer as well as online multiplayer. Keeping records of all your matches whether it’s local or online linked to your account (as I said before, you select when first starting the game).

Now onto the bulk of the game: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. This is a direct port (well, as direct as it can be on a handheld) of the Playstation game of the same name. When you start it up you have three flavours to choose from: Single Player, Local Multiplayer (which is multicard only folks!) and Wi-Fi Connection. The first of the three is fairly obvious to any fan of the series or anyone who has played a fighting game before actually, choose a character and beat people one on one until there is no one left to bloody up.

Mortal Kombat always added a bit of spice by letting you choose how many people you want to fight but this has no effect on the difficulty of the game, which I always thought was pretty cool. With regards to how difficult this little gem actually is, well, what can I say? Mortal Kombat was always damn punishing, the AI in the game learns quickly if you use the same combos over and over again. I feel that even on the easiest difficulty setting the game will punish you, that is if you don’t know more one or two combos. Harder difficulty settings are even worse blocking everything before you even think of it, choosing the master setting is for people who are insane or robots here to take over the gaming community.

In the history of fighting games, most have opted for one of the 2 different types of story, ones that are so poorly linked together that they are totally pointless and ones that are so ridiculous, that the attempt at a story is laughable. Luckily the story for the game is somewhere in the middle of them both. Like the other Mortal Kombat games, the story is the greatest fighters on earth go to another realm to battle their greatest warriors for ownership of both realms. It’s written ok, but is still ridiculous and doesn’t really do anything for the game. More than likely you didn’t think about buying this game for the plot, more the blood and guts and awesome fighting.

If you didn’t play Ultimate Mortal Kombat on the Playstation then let me tell you there are 19 characters to choose from with three more unlockable characters to get your hands on. One of the best parts of Mortal Kombat was always the fatalities and that doesn’t change here. Fatalities are well, fatal, and at the end of each fight you get a chance to use a fatality. Not only are they absolutely brutal, they are also pretty difficult to pull off. This isn’t because the DS controls are terrible (more on those later) but because the combo of buttons need for some fatalities are hard to remember and even worse to time. I’m making it sound terrible, but it really isn’t. If anything it makes you feel fantastic when you pull it off, which brings me nicely to the nice addition of having moves displayed on the bottom screen during fights. This is a great thought by the developers and really is great for old pros and beginners alike. another recent release Bleach: Blades of Fate has a similar idea on the bottom screen but also allows players to simply tap the screen to do a move, I’m glad Mortal Kombat didn’t adopt this approach as I think its pretty cheap.

Now fatalities are great, but only because of fantastic controls. The DS isn’t best known for its great D-pad controls (personally I find the D-pad a little small for my ape like thumbs) but within minutes I was pulling off old teleport uppercuts and chest grenades with great ease (and the move set on the bottom screen helped too). The controls really work a lot better than expected on the DS. While I thought the D-pad would be a bit rubbish it really wasn’t, may I add I don’t hate them in general; I’m actually a D-pad user for fights and turn into jelly when faced with analog sticks for fighting games. Aside from the D-pad the face and shoulder buttons are all used in usual fashion.

The DS was never know for its amazing graphics and as this is a port the graphics haven’t exactly had a overhaul, but they have been nicely tweaked in my opinion to run on Nintendo’s dual screen wonder. Visuals stay true to the original. Fighting is 2D like the original, using the same engine also (I assume. sure does look the same), while Puzzle uses 3D to show the progress of your match. Everything works well with no lag of any kind within the 10 hours or so I played. The nearly 10 year’s old visuals aren’t painful on the eyes but there are a lot prettier titles.

Much like the visuals in the game, the sound is exactly the same as the original. For those who never played the original the music in the game is pretty…quiet and there is a good reason, that being its hasn’t aged well. Sound effects work well and add a bit of comedy to the game.

Closing Comments

Ultimate Mortal Kombat DS is one of the best fighters on the DS so far and as such should not be missed. Its has its faults like all games, it’s a little dated and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would of preferred Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which has the bigger character list. Despite this id still highly recommend it if you can find it for £20 or so, it’s a bargain

Score 8.8

+ Controls work well
+ Puzzle Kombat is great
+ Online play

- £30 is a bit pricey
- Difficulty is steep
- A little outdated