Armageddon is the amalgamation of all of the best parts of the Mortal Kombat games from the past 15 years or so.

If you’ve been a fan of any of the Mortal Kombat games over the years you can probably rest easy that your favourite character will be in this package seeing as Midway have managed to cram a whopping 64 characters into this title, including a character that you are able to design and build from the ground up. The impressive array of fighters will ensure there are many different moves to learn which can be taken into the range of different combat modes. Aside from the standard modes there are options for a four player racing game and a quasi-adventure subsection.

This game comes after releases on both the Playstation 2 and XBOX last year and therefore must provide something new if it is to be deemed a successful port. This is (of course) where the Wii remote steps in hopefully with great success.

Developers Midway wanted to keep things as simple as possible in terms of the Wii remote controls in Armageddon. Too many times when I have had people over to play on the Wii they have found the controls too difficult to get to grips with and, so, I’m glad Midway opted for a control scheme novices would be able to immediately familiarise themselves with.

In Armageddon special moves are simply pulled off by holding the “B” trigger, making a motion and then releasing the “B” trigger. Generally this gesture doesn’t have to be an over the top lunge of your arm as simple flicks of the remote offer just enough immersion and accuracy.

An example of a move would be if you were playing as Scorpion and wished to execute his spear-rope attack. Firstly you would simply press and hold the “B” trigger followed by a flick of the remote away from your opponent then towards. To carry out the move you just release the “B” trigger and watch as the action is represented on screen.

It’s possible that with as an intuitive system as this Armageddon could be the first game to have successfully tacked on controls. However, what is nice about Armageddon is if the controls don’t work as well as they should, players will be able to plug in either a Classic Controller or GameCube controller to play the game.

With Fatality’s being such a big part of Mortal Kombat the ones included in the Wii version are very nice. You are able to build up your own fatality with certain gestures of the Wii remote. This can bring in some experimentation as you poke the remote forward to rip out your enemy’s heart or pull the remote back to pull off their head. It remains to be seen whether this system for fatalities will make the famous mechanism a little limited but on paper it seems perfect for the novice gamer.

Armageddon will be playable in wide screen and will make full use of the Wii’s component cables. While the game has no real difference to its former generation counterparts, there are a range of nice looking lighting effects and the game rarely dips below 60fps.

Stay tuned for our full review of Armageddon when it lands in UK stores on June 8th.