Excepting 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, it's been a long time since Mortal Kombat games were anything but a punch line. For a time in the early 1990s, however, Mortal Kombat was neck-and-neck with Street Fighter in terms of popularity. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the iPhone attempts to harken back to those halcyon days, but fails miserably.

A port of the 1995 arcade game, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 shows up on the iPhone with all of the series' trademarks in tact, including creepy motion capture graphics, blood spatters and the option to "FINISH HIM" with a fatality. Unfortunately, while all the basic elements are in place, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3's gameplay is severely lacking.

Many fighting games on the iPhone suffer from the lack of actual buttons, which makes pulling off complicated combos and special moves even more difficult. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is no exception in this regard, and in fact, moves become even more difficult due to the game's buggy, inconsistent recognition of button presses. Making things even worse is the fact that the game's multiple buttons (five or six depending on your layout), are very small, making it easy to accidentally press the wrong one.

For a game that values elaborate special moves and finishers so much, the inability to pull them off easily is a huge blow. Additionally, while hardcore gamers might like the fact that there is no in-game tutorial or move list, more casual Kombatants will be quickly discouraged when they find out they'll need to scour the internet for details on how to pull off their favorite Babality. And again, with the game's buggy controls, even knowing how to do a move is no guarantee that you can actually make it happen on screen.

With its imprecise controls and too-difficult special moves rendering Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 little more than a button-masher, there's little left to enjoy when it comes to gameplay, as even on the easiest mode, the game all but requires the use of overpowered special moves to advance. Unfortunately, the game's graphics don't fare much better.

While the creepy, almost-real look of the early Mortal Kombat games and their over-the-top blood spurts used to be a major selling point of the series, they don't hold up very well in the day of beautifully rendered iPhone fighters like Street Fighter IV. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 doesn't even look retro - it just looks ugly.

Longtime fans might still be drawn into Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 with the hopes of playing as some of their favorite characters. But while classic fighters such as Sonya Blade, Sub-Zero and Scorpion are available, the game is missing many of the series most iconic characters, such as Reptile, Kano and Kung Lao. In fact the game only has 11 characters total, two of which must be unlocked through gameplay. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 doesn't even deliver on the nostalgia front.

While all of the above is bad, the worst part of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is its price point. With the generally low prices of App Store games, once a release costs several dollars, gamers rightfully expect a certain level of polish. But while Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 will fun you $6.99, it looks and plays amateurish at best, with a dearth of playable characters.

This is especially offensive due to the fact that Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 isn't even a new game - it's a port of a fighter released to arcades over 15 years ago. The fact that so little work went into the game, and yet it costs so much, is a real slight against consumers, particularly Mortal Kombat fans that might very well already own this game on a different platform.

By the time that the original Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 came out, the series was already losing some of its luster, as the once shocking Fatalities shifted into self-parody with Babalities, Friendships and even Animalities. The iPhone release of the game does nothing to enhance what was already a questionable gaming experience, and instead kneecaps the game by offering only about half the amount of playable characters as the original, and utilizing a frustrating unreliable control scheme. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is a waste of $6.99 and should be avoided at all costs.

Final Score: F