I tell you what, the rating boards are going to have a field day with the new Mortal Kombat game. In bringing back the classic 'Fatality' finishing moves (in all the their visceral glory), Warner Bros have somewhat gone back to basics in the latest addition to an iconic beat 'em up franchise. It's been a while since Street Fighter last did anything major, and Tekken's presence seems to have diminished somewhat, leaving it a perfect time for the franchise to re-launch itself back into the public mindset.

The main problem with games like these is, usually, if you've played one you've played them all. To its credit, there's a fair few things that make this Mortal Kombat game unique, but the basics are the same. It's interesting to note though that this game uses the Unreal engine, and the battle environments are rendered to 3D, however, you only fight on a 2D plane. It keeps the simplicity of the older games whilst using modern graphics technology to bring the world to life, and it's a nice effect.

That's going to hurt in the morning

There's going to be 26 playable characters have been revealed so far, two if which are apparently going to be DLC (And the PS3 version gets Kratos, of course), and they mainly focus on characters from the first three games - the devs have already said if you have a favourite, then he or she are likely to be included.

The combat is handled pretty much as it always is - they'll be extensive combo lists to memorise, and each character has several level of attacks - normal, Super, Enhanced and X-ray. These are defined by a power meter, and the more powerful attacks require more power to use. The power metre is charged through a combination of attacking, defending, but also taking hits - if you go all out on someone, odds are they will get a full metre before you do, even though they are taking more damage. There's an element of tactics here - do you go for a couple of the super moves, or an Enhanced? Or do you try and wait it out for the X-ray moves, which are really fun, by the way.

And of course you have the fatalities, which is has been one of the more widely publicised aspects of the game. Each character will have a at least 2 fatalities - one ready to go off the bat, the rest to be unlocked as you go along. Even though the devs have put in a lot of effort into making sure each character is unique, and there's no reused animations, some of the fatalities are actually pretty boring, all things considered. Still these epic finishers are most welcome, and you'll have a lot of fun in trying to pull them off.

Apart from the main quick battle set-up, there's the story mode, which involves your standard ladder match, there's challenges modes which will confront players with unique tasks to perform in a match, and then there's also tag matches. Whether you're online, offline, or going solo, you can have a two vs. two bout that's actually pretty chaotic, as there's special combo moves for each character, and swapping out is as easy as a touch of a button.

It's like Bulletstorm all over again, with more chains

New comers to the series, or the franchise in general will definitely appreciate the enhanced tutorial system. As well as the basic fighting and tag tutorials, there's a specific Fatality practice mode that's actually extremely useful. We couldn't test it out, but there'll also be full online multiplayer support, and we've been told the dev team are working especially on the networking code to reduce latency. There'll be offline too of course (which we did play) and that's as fun as you can imagine it being provided you have friends and don't suck at it completely.

That's about it. The game is pretty feature complete at the moment - the build we played through was pretty stable, and was just limited so that we couldn't reveal too much. The Mortal Kombat series got a bit weird and wonderful in recent games, so it's nice to see a strong return to form with this title - never underestimate the value of going back to basics. Veterans and newcomers alike will have plenty in store for them, and the new mature visceral nature is sure to entertain for hours. Parents, for the love of god, keep this away from your kids.

Top Game Moments: It's a toss up between the X-Ray moves or the Fatalities. They're both pretty sweet.