Mortal Kombat is one of the world's coolest fighting games with its over the top finishing manoeuvres and sturdy gaming engine. Ultimate Mortal Kombat from iTunes is based on Mortal Kombat 3 and the developers have successfully ported this game to the iPhone/iPod Touch with four gameplay modes.

These modes include Arcade (Classic Mortal Kombat, player versus random opponents until the boss), Local Multiplayer (WiFi or Bluetooth versus mode), Survival (Pick a character and see how long you can last) and finally, Shao Karnage (Player versus Shao Karnage in order to rank up those high scores.

Arcade Mode is easily the best which allows you to fight your way up the Mortal Kombat tournament, one opponent at a time. The last opponent is a boss character that is generally quite difficult to beat. Fortunately there's plenty of learning to be had along the way, including some well needed practice.

Controls have been well mapped on the touch screen with a virtual game pad in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and the fight/block buttons on the left of the screen. It does take a little time getting use to the controls but after the first few bouts, it works quite well.

What about characters? All the main characters are in the game from Sonya to Nightwolf and my favourite, Shiva... the four armed warrior from Mortal Kombat 3. As you do progress, you will unlock additional characters that can be chosen by the player once unlocked. It's all classic Mortal Kombat here!

With various difficulty levels, Ultimate Mortal Kombat can be played by most gamers, casual to hardcore. The only drawback to the game is that sometimes the attack buttons are a little too close together and you accidentally push the wrong button. Apart from this, overall, it's a decent playing game and is the perfect port on this console.

The graphics are the star of this game with realistic looking characters and some great Mortal Kombat environments. It has the over the top commentator and all those whacky Mortal Kombat sound effects plus that dark and brooding music. The game even boasts those weird finishing manoeuvres that contain pixelated blood and gore. I love it!

Still want more? The game contains leaderboards, achievement lists (e.g. defeating your opponents with a set criteria like a flawless victory), player statistics (e.g. friendship counts or favourite fighter of the player), character bios (mini stories about the characters you can play) and lost treasures (how many treasures the player has found). Definitely good value for money.

In the end, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is a fun game that pays true homage to this classic game. The gameplay is almost there on the iPhone 4 and hopefully EA will continue to release and fine tune these classics on this format. If you're a fan of fighters or the Mortal Kombat series, than there are far worse games than this one! Check it out at the iTunes store!