Game: "Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks"

Console: PlayStation 2 (also out for Xbox)

Developer/publisher: Midway

Genre: Beat-'em-up

Number of players: One to two.

ESRB: M for mature

Premise: After the first Mortal Kombat tournament, an earthquake allows Shang Tsung to escape in a portal to Outworld while Kung Lao and tournament winner Liu Kang barely escape with their lives. Upon their return to Wu Shi Academy, they find it's been invaded by Baraka and his army of Tarkatans. Under the guidance and wisdom of Raiden, the warriors must travel to Outworld to capture and bring down Shang Tsung.

Game play: In a complete deviation from the series' versus-fighting style, "Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks" is a platformer beat-'em-up with tons to offer its players: more unlockables than you could imagine, throwbacks to previous installments and lots of detail in environments created painstakingly by the designers.

You can choose Kung Lao or Liu Kang in story mode; both characters use the same button scheme but play completely differently. Liu Kang is better for button-mashing players while Kung Lao is for gamers who like stringing together big combos. Many of the attacks you'll see — Kang's bicycle kick, Lao's teleportation and many more — will be familiar to the series' veterans. You'll also run into classic characters along the way, including Johnny Cage, Mileena, Kitana, etc.

You kill your way to Shang Tsung, whether by using your bare hands or the plethora of environmental hazards that earn you experience points, which in turn let you purchase new skills and upgrades for your fighter. There are also skills — fatalities, mutilations and brutalities — you acquire as part of the story. Performing these will bring up the same music and "FINISH HIM" commands as in the arcade versions. The graphic violence that was at the core of the game's legendary status and controversial past also is intact.

Good/bad: A demo of "The Suffering 2: The Ties that Bind" is definitely a bonus, but the best thing about this game is the insane number of things to unlock, spanning from concept art to the original version of "Mortal Kombat II." Unfortunately, a lot of it can only be unlocked in Ko-Op mode and because you can't switch between one- and two-player modes mid-game, the only way you unlock everything is to have someone joined at your hip.

Tips: In yet another throwback to MK history, Dan "Toasty" Forden utters his famous line in the middle of lengthy combos. Hit the Start button when you hear it for an extra 1,000 experience points. The trick works every time, so keep your ears open.

My take: "Shaolin Monks" is a great fighting game with a solid fighting system and game engine. There's enough violence to satiate anyone's bloodlust and classic content to make any Mortal Kombat purist happy. And unlike horrific past attempts to branch out from the series' formula (for instance, "Mortal Kombat: Special Forces" and "Mythologies: Sub-Zero"), Midway got it right on the money this time.

Jeremy Castillo is a student at Windward Community College and editor of the college's newspaper, Ka 'Ohana.