A near-flawless transition
The controls are amazing but there are a few twists. For starters, it is much easier for me to conduct combos now since the buttons are smaller and closer to each other. But the same principle doesn't necessarily apply to the D-pad because I don't think Vita's D-pad is as a precise as the PS3 controller's D-pad.
Otherwise, the game plays as well as it does on a PS3 controller. You use the L button to throw and the R button to block.
You get the 4 extra characters as well as Kratos.
The game also maintains a steady 60 FPS rate.
As for the graphics, I honestly expected to see a full conversion to PS3 graphics here but it's probably around 75-80% when viewed up close. There is no anti-aliasing so you can see the jaggies in the background as well as slightly sloppy character models when viewed up close at the end of the battle. My expectations were higher because of the Uncharted: Golden Abyss game that pretty much looked somewhere between the first and second Uncharted games.
However, I am probably thinking that in order for them to cap the game at 60 FPS they had to degrade graphics there and there, it is not all that noticeable anyway.
Also, something I wanted to get off my chest for a while now. I am not in favor of the new character models, they looks so unrealistic. The Genesis characters actually looked like real people, they moved more or less realistically, and Jax was actually dark black, not Hispanic. This time however, we get characters with giant buffed arms and ginormous boobs. I mean, it's not about that. The genesis version featured real looking people with normal arms. You don't need to have huge arms to fight in a tournament. Seeing huge biceps and trips on Liu Kang looked just too out of place. But I am rambling now.
All in all, the game costs $ 40 however there is no cross-platform play (which sucks big-time) and you still need wi-fi to play online versus. However there is ad-hoc mode, good luck with that. 3G connection doesn't allow online play either.