Ultimate Mortal Kombat

"A perfect port, FINALLY, after 12 years!"

I have recently picked up Ultimate Mortal Kombat for the DS, and while I haven't played Puzzle Kombat yet, I have played the port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which was my reason for picking it up. All I can say, FOR ONCE, the game is ported right! The game has its flaws from UMK3, but it doesn't have any new bugs, load time issues, slowdown, it's perfectly accurate for once!

Now for the basic stuff:

Graphics: 9/10. I still have to say that the realistic graphics of Mortal Kombat hold up to this day. I particularly hate 3-D graphics with a passion for the most part, so this is what I consider the best of in real life graphics. I still say that most games have a real hard time reaching the motion picture capture of the Mortal Kombat 3 series. While some might like animation better, I think the accurate motion picture capturing is elite.

Sound: 9/10. One of the worst things about the Mortal Kombat ports to other systems has by far been the sound. It doesn't matter whether it was the SNES, PlayStation, N64, they always found a way to BOTCH UP this. For once, the game sounds somewhat like the arcade, and I'm damn happy about this. Impressive it's coming from the DS nonetheless. Well done.

Gameplay: 7/10. While it doesn't match up to the current Street Fighters and stuff deep-wise, it's still a fun game if you know how to play it. And the AI, well, yes, it's cheap, but it's perfectly accurate to the arcade port. I think the people bashing the AI really need to pick up the arcade game on MAME or something if they want to complain about this. It's 100% accurate to the T. It wasn't the best point of the game, but HEY, if you want a correct port, you got to live with the bad points of the game as well.

Also, the movelist on top of the screen, broken. This could be a problem come tournaments because it's generally considered bad form to look at movelists during tourneys or pause the game. I don't know how this will be judged when this game is ran.

Fun Factor: 10/10. For once, it feels like 1995 playing the game. My Mortal Kombat friends so far have been delighted by this game, and I feel the same. It has its flaws, but for once we can play the game right! Kudos to you Midway, you did it right this time.

Overall Score: 8/10. Fun for the fans, might not be suitable for the newer gamers. I still enjoy it, some might not.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/08

Game Release: Ultimate Mortal Kombat (US, 11/12/07)