There are games that think they're gory, there are games that really are gory, and then there are games that are so gory that they simply couldn't be any gorier if they tried. Mortal Kombat has always been nogorious for blood, guts and gruesome fatal moves, and its new scrolling beat 'em up spin-off does not disappoint. So read on, to discover Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks in all its gory…

It's the end of the first Mortal Kombat tournament and ironically a huge scrap breaks out. So cue one of the coolest fight sequences to introduce a game in a long while, as we watch all our favourite characters mixing it up in front of Shang Tsung, who is up to no good as usual. Sonja Blade, Johnny Cage, Sub Zero and of course Kung Lao and Liu Kang (the two playable characters initially available) are beating the life out of Reptile, Kano, Scorpion and Shang Tsung, after he's drawn into the conflict. Of course, the bad guys aren't going down without an almighty battle, so sit back and enjoy the show, which is choreographed and directed so brilliantly that you'll wish they'd make another film!

Despite Goro charging onto the scene, things aren't going well for Shang Tsung and so he opens up a portal and the bad guys escape, while the good guys retreat, all except for our heroes Kung and Liu, who fall into a chasm that opens up beneath their feet. Trapped within Goro's lair, you must now fight your way to the freedom and safety of Raiden's training ground - safe at least until it comes under a massive assault! I don't want to spoil the storyline, as it's actually quite intelligent and well-scripted for a beat 'em up, but our heroes are taken to the furthest reaches of Outworld as they battle to save Earth from destruction once more.

Coming onto the gameplay, all I can say is welcome back beat 'em up genre, I've missed you old friend, I really have. Remember Streets of Rage 2 (the best of the series to my mind) on Sega's 16-Bit wonder? Well, Monks is its first true spiritual successor in every way - a superb range of moves, interesting playable characters, a great variety of intelligent, tough and distinctive foes to defeat alone or with a friend, set across a number of cool environments, complete with a host of secrets and unlockables to discover, just to give it that current generation lift. Indeed, Monks is not only a great beat 'em up game, but it's a great game period and one that is supremely satisfying and enjoyable to play, pumping in the perfect amount of variety and gameplay challenges so that things never grow stale.

Whether you choose Kung Lao or Liu Kang, you're in for a real treat, as the move sets are brilliantly designed, the controls are beautifully responsive, the 3D movement and lock on system is (for the most part) very effective and the combos are intuitive to string together. You have four basic attack buttons - quick attack, power attack, launch attack and throws, each of which have an alternative effect when running towards your foe. The left thumbstick simultaneously moves your character and directs your attacks, making for some thrilling multiple enemy combat when you're surrounded - which happens a lot. This also allows you to dodge around like a wild thing when you're simultaneously blocking and locking onto an enemy. It's a very well thought out and brilliantly implemented fighting system.

But that's not all! There are aerial versions of each attack type, although these are a little tough to use and I found myself missing enemies half the time, plus a variety of alternative moves when holding the modifier button, which beefs up each type of attack quite spectacularly. Power attacks now send enemies flying across the battlefield or off ledges to their doom, while launch attacks send your foes sky high. You can even grab enemies, use them as a shield and then lob them up, away, slam them down or leap up their backs and launch upwards to reach unlockable items or high up ledges.

Of course, not all of your moves are available to begin with - the modified attacks have several stages to unlock, as do the combo attacks, which you access using experience. There are two ways to gain experience fast - rack up that hit counter by stringing moves together before the number fades away, or by executing a fatality. The hit counter encourages you to keep your attacks fast and furious, mixing up those moves in exciting and stylish ways to beat the gore out of multiple foes, racking up bonuses the higher the counter goes. It's a nice touch that taking a hit doesn't reset the counter, although it does of course delay your next attack, often ending the count. Fair's fair though, otherwise it would be too easy!

Coming onto those fatalities, the system for using them is perfect. As you get multiple hits and up the hit counter, a globe of blood slowly fills up. At level one it begins to glow, indicating that a fatality move is now available. However, take it higher and fill it to level two for a multality, or all the way to level three for the ultimate in destruction - the aptly named brutality! To execute a fatality move you must use the fatality attack and strike a character. You then get a few seconds to enter a sequence of four d-pad presses and one button press, which you must memorise (don't worry, they've made them memorable enough!) If you mess it up you only lose a bit of your fatality globe, so getting it back up takes only a few hits again. However when successful the background fades and you get a close-up of your character and your hapless victim.

There are a number of fatality moves to unlock for each character, although it takes a while to get them all. Still, the first fatality you unlock never gets old! Liu Kang's is Shaolin Soccer, where he punches the enemy's head clean off with a vicious uppercut, then leaps into the air and flips over to kick the head like a soccer ball, which hits the enemy's body with such force that it explodes in a shower of gore! Kung Lao's is even gorier and makes me grimace (but in a gleeful way!) He takes off his razor-blade encircled hat and slices the enemy clean in half, then the two halves fall apart to reveal innards and bones, like a couple of slabs of meat on the butcher's counter!! Gruesome just doesn't cover it; rarely has an 18 rating been so well earned!

Multalities aren't quite as 'intimate', they allow you to take out multiple nearby foes but aren't half as fun as the fatalities. The brutality is outstanding however - you go into a kind of super-powered rage mode, where your four main attacks become brutally lethal, as you go into a frenzy, beating enemies until they explode in a shower of blood and guts after just a few hits! One of my favourites is Liu Kang's throw move, where he runs up the enemy's body and stamps him into oblivion! As if all this wasn't already enough, you can also pick up weapons from time to time, such as a huge sword or dual curved blades, and then use them in a variety of ultra cool ways as the blades blur around, slicing and dicing anyone unfortunate enough to get in your way. You can even pick up and throw the skulls and bones scattered around each environment.

Graphically, Monks is very slick and lovely to look at. The animation of every last move is flawless and looks supremely stylish, there is constantly blood and gore showering everywhere (putrid corpses stagger around, vomiting blood as an attack method for crying out loud!!) and the enemies are highly detailed, with animation and a range of attacks that are just as spectacular and polished as your own, often using flashy effects like fire and lightning effects, some even teaming up to launch special attacks at you. The close-up fatalities are wonderful to watch (in a sick and twisted way, of course!) and the interaction between hero and foe is perfect. The environments vary as much as the enemies that throng within them - from the greenery of the living forest complete with trees that attack anyone in their reach to the dingy soul tombs, which are broken up with outdoor areas sporting grand, red mountains in the distance and pterodactyls swooping overhead.

Every environment is also packed with interactive elements, mostly traps and lethal scenery that can be used to instantly kill enemies, at the expense of not getting any experience for the death (you still retain it for the hits though). There are closing spike traps just waiting to be sprung, swinging logs covered in spikes, spiky or thorny walls to kick or throw enemies into, spike-filled pits (noticing a theme here?), trees that eat enemies alive, jets of flame, lethal drops and more. One of my favourites is one I call the Hellraiser (which I've named after the truly disturbing scene at the end of the first movie). You launch an enemy into four blades hanging from chains on the ceiling and they suddenly come to life, stabbing into the enemy and holding him, as four more blades spring up from the floor. Then all eight chains tighten and pull, resulting in the enemy literally being ripped apart in a shower of fleshy chunks!! Sorry to come over as a bit of a psychopath, but boy is it fun to use this on a particularly troublesome or annoying enemy! There's another room near the Hellraiser with a ceiling of spikes and you can launch every enemy up into it, then watch as their blood literally pours down, splattering all over the floor. The variety of ways to kill your enemies is never ending.

The sound effects are great (although Liu Kang does gibber a lot with every attack, which can grate at times) with the punching, burning, squelching and crackling all sounding just right. The voice acting is good, the script is well written (not fantastic but far more than you'd expect from the genre) and the music is excellent, with a range of atmospheric tunes that complement the action very well.

Most of the characters from the MK universe are here and you get to either fight alongside them or against them, in some very challenging boss fights that you'll almost certainly die in during your first attempt, with Kitana (joined by Jade and Millena to triple attack you!) and Reptile being two that you come up against early in the game. There is also a good range of platforms to negotiate, with ledges to leap across, traps to dodge, levers to pull (activating lethal traps) and environmental hazards like giant water snakes to avoid. One section sees you jumping across some ledges while avoiding a giant snake that's speeding around a crumbling ruin and it comes along at just the right frequency to keep things fresh. As well as this, there are obstacles blocking your path that you can remove as you gain new powers, so there's loads of revisiting to be done in each area of the game if you want to find every last secret and unlockable, of which there are well over a hundred. They're not easy to find either; you'll really have to search and make use of enemies and environment to get every one.

One feature that is very much welcome and a total delight is the addition of the Ko-op mode, which is the final part of what makes this so Streets-Of-Ragey. You and a friend can play through the whole game together and there are secrets to unlock in every area that you can only get to by working as a team, a very nice touch that really encourages you to play through with a friend. Arguably this is how Monks is meant to be played. Apart from just dividing up the enemies between you, there are also team moves that you can activate to do some serious damage - another fantastic touch in a truly exceptional game. There is a versus mode too, although everyone but Kung and Liu are locked to begin with and the range of arenas, taken from the main game, are cool but nothing that special. It's nothing more than an extra, which is fair enough, because if you want more than this then you can pick up Deception or Deadly Alliance

The only downside to Monks is the frequent load breaks - they're fairly quick and although the areas you play through are quite small before you hit another load break, it takes a while because you're fighting your way through. It doesn't interfere with the gameplay too much but it's a pain that they're so frequent when backtracking. Also, the save points sometimes don't come up as often as you'd like, although you can continue with full health from the room you died in, which in some ways almost makes it too easy and takes the edge away. That said, even the Normal mode is challenging and you will die regularly (being on the receiving end of fatalities in boss encounters, like Reptile who pukes venom into your mouth and then watches as your flesh dissolves, leaving only your skeleton behind!) so think twice before tackling Hard mode.

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is a shining triumph of beat 'em up glory, spinning off from the traditional MK one-on-one gameplay and showing us all just how excellent the old-school beat 'em up can be in this current generation of gaming. The spectacular fighting action, using a host of stylish moves to deal bloody death to all-comers, combines with lovely graphics, super slick animation and a variety of tasks to make Monks a real pleasure to play from start to finish. Be warned though, this is about as brutal, gruesome and gory as they get - and you'll love every moment!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).