How Mortal Kombat for the PS Vita Got it Right

   I'm just going to come out and say it: I'm in love with Mortal Kombat for the PS Vita. I know that it might seem a little surprising that one of my favorite games of 2012 so far is a handheld port of the already excellent Mortal Kombat that we saw last year, but this game does what other portable games have been attempting to do since the Gameboy was released in 1989. At last portable technology has finally caught up with the home consoles and we are finally beginning to see ported games that aren't just cast shadows of what appeared on the original systems. This game feels like it was made for the portable device—and I'm not just saying that in the generic way that you'll hear countless other reviewers say it, as if they're speaking of how convenient it is to play Angry Birds on the way to work. No, this game is an actual video game, and one that is worth playing for far more than two minutes at a time.

I feel like Mortal Kombat for the Vita is exactly what I've been waiting for: a console port that retains all of the incentives that make us want to play video games in the first place. From the very moment that I started MK up for the first time, I noticed that this game takes itself seriously. Most portable games that I've come across in the past tend to have this annoying habit of dumbing themselves down to appeal to the people presumed to be "always on the move", a demographic that, if it ever even existed in the way it was marketed, is now irrelevant due to the rise of Smartphones. Because of the unforeseen consequences of everyone carrying around a portable computer that doubles in speed almost every year, to survive and flourish in the new portable market you need to do more than just innovate; you absolutely have to differentiate yourself from the competition. Nintendo is beginning to slowly realize this with it's monumental mistake of keeping its touchscreen-centric device pretty much the same.

Ok, ok, exactly the same.

 These days, all the portable devices have touchscreens, cameras, microphones, and accelerometers already built in. To even exist in the handheld gaming market today you have to give people a reason to choose you even though they already have a device that does most of what yours can do and, what's more, they already have it in their pocket at all times. That's where Mortal Kombat and the PS Vita come in. Of all of the things that Smartphones can do, there's one thing that they really can't and it's called "actual physical controls". A D-Pad and buttons just don't work very well when they're superimposed on a touchscreen and, fortunately for the Big Three, they tend to be very necessary for games that involve more than moving blocks and sling-shotting birds.

So how does Mortal Kombat fare on Sony's handheld? Fantastically well. The game handles magnificently on the device, in fact. It's well known that the Vita is a powerful machine, but when you actually get a chance to play Mortal Kombat or Uncharted, you really can see the system for what it really is: a truly portable console that keeps up with its bigger brothers on almost all fronts. For example, MK translates almost all of the great stuff from the console release with only a minimal visual downgrade. The game even manages to keep its extremely-important-for-fighting-games 60fps. To put it mildly, this game is a glimpse at what we can expect from the Vita in the future. If you are looking for a full-fledged console in your pocket and you also enjoy playing real, fleshed-out games on it, then the forecast for the PS Vita is looking really solid.

And who knows? Maybe gamers will finally have more options than Tetris or Angry Birds.

I absolutely fucking detest this game