Ultimate Mortal Kombat Member Review for the DS

The Good: Perfect port of UMK3 and Puzzle Kombat is a blast, online play makes it that much sweeter, second screen used for finishing move and special move lists, swappable screens

The Bad: The bad parts of UMK3 still exists, graphics are slightly blurry, Puzzle Kombat's graphics dumbed down, not much in modes

When Midway announced Mortal Kombat: Unchained for PSP Nintendo fans screamed that they wanted one as well. They got their wish with a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Puzzle Kombat from MK: Deception thrown in. Here you have a perfect port of both with responsive controls, and a useful bottom screen that shows finishing moves and special moves. All the characters from UMK3 are here plus some unlockables. There's not much to say other than the controls work well and I could pull off fast combos online while dishing out Fatalities and Animalities left and right.

A couple of small gripes is that the -ality position isn't listed on the bottom screen so you kind of need to experiment, and the time to pull off the fatality is like 4 seconds so you get one try. I also found the graphics slightly blurry due to the low resolution and small screen, but it's only noticeable to people who played the classics a lot. I also found the the Puzzle Kombat graphics were toned down a bit even more so than on the PSP. Overall this isn't a huge package, but enough to satisfy fans and online play is the best way to go.

Being able to make the fight screen on the top or bottom is a nice feature, but the problems from UMK3 still exist like ridiculous AI, combos are hard to pull off, and forget beating Shao Kahn unless you cheat. I just wish there were some more modes that could have been thrown in or maybe a few more arcade ports, but what's here works well and feels great to play and come back to.