Yup, you heard right.
Mortal Kombat versus...DC. As in, DC Comics. As in, you're going to see Sub-Zero against Batman. Raidan versus Wonder Woman.
This is either the stupidest game premise I've ever heard or the coolest.
And frankly, it is actually that stupid that I am going to rush out and buy it when it's released. Because I want to see Raiden jam lightning down Batman's suit...(except if it's as rubbery as George Clooney's costume then Raiden is sorta screwed.)
I'm pretty sure they had that Marvel vs Capcom thing ages ago, so the idea of mashing two worlds together is nothing new- and I'm guessing that everyone is secretly thinking, "Why couldn't it have been Marvel vs DC?!" But Marvel is Marvel, DC is DC, and never the twain shall meet.
I've been waiting so long for a Mortal Kombat title to hit the 360 that y'know what? I don't really care, I just want it. I'm sick of playing the Mortal Kombat 3 demo that I downloaded from Live four months ago...I want to see some high-definition butt-kicking, although apparently this new title will be sans Fatalities.
Now at least I can stop jealously eyeing Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the shelf at work that holds the Wii games.
I hope Ashrah makes an appearance in this new one. I have a weakness for Mortal Kombat characters with cool hats.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Violence and the R 18+ Rating
Apparently, the Australian government is still mulling over the decision on whether to introduce an R 18+ rating for video games.
This means that all those gamers looking for an even greater level of violence to exceed GTA 4 (or Manhunt 2) will have to curb those bloodthirsty fingers on their trigger sticks for just a while longer.
Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. There's plenty of violence and gore out there already- how many times have we watched losers in Mortal Kombat fall screaming to their gory death on a bed of spikes?- so an R 18+ rating shouldn't really change things.
However, it did make me think of a family I sold an Xbox 360 to a couple of weeks ago- they were Asian, with a teenage son (a rather non-communicative little teenage son if I may say so myself.) One thing with Asian parents is that they believe that their teenage son is a little paragon of virtue who would never entertain the idea of virtually disembowelling someone, or teabagging a hapless n00b in an MMORPG, or viewing porn at a friend's house. Why, not my wonderful-little-boy-who-is-top-of-his-class-in-Maths-Methods.
Anyway...
...so the kid starts looking through the shelf of 360 games. Except his mother is standing over his shoulder overseeing what he's looking at. Which is never really a good idea.
The kid laconically informed me that yeah, he'd played Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War at friends' houses, but his mum wouldn't let him play anything violent.
Inwardly, I smirked.
His mother vetoed anything that looked remotely violent. In fact, I felt like falling on the floor and howling with laughter when she finally picked up one title and tried to convince the kid to get it.
Suffice to say, he was not impressed by his mother waggling Viva Pinata in front of his face and saying, "Look, this is a nice game!"
So she asks me for my opinion on a game for his new 360.
That isn't violent.
So I start pulling stuff from shelves.
Assassin's Creed. (Involves stabbing targets in public places and watching their blood billow out into fountains, then running away in kick-ass chase scenes).
Nope.
Crackdown. (Free rein to bash everything!!!)
Nope.
Saints' Row. (It's not like it sounds.)
Nope.
Call of Duty 4. (It has SOLDIERS on the front. Go figure.)
Nope, also out.
Gears of War (Note the use of the word "war". Also note the image of Marcus Fenix looking considerably grim and on some kind of steroid.)
Nups.
Mass Effect (This is currently set to eclipse KOTOR as my favouritest RPG, which is really saying something. However, it also features a suggested alien/human lesbian sex scene, many many drug references and mentions Krogan testicles. Man, I love that game so much.)
But yeah, that was out of the question too.
The kid finally settled on some kind of FIFA game. So that was nice and relatively non-violent, and I'm sure his mother must have been somewhat pacified by ther fact that her beloved Viva Pinata was packaged with the Xbox (along with Forza).
And this is why earning money and being over 18 is so much fun. You can buy your own Xbox 360 and get whatever you want.
Or you can get your parents to buy it for you, where the maximum level of violence in your games will be limited to hitting a cartoon pinata over the head with a shovel.
That said, I did reflect on the fact that there are very few family-friendly games for the 360, and that's just because of the demographic it's aimed at. It's not like you''ve got six year old girls wanting to play Bratz on 1080p, but after playing Scene It!, and looking at the popularity of the PS2's Singstar/Buzz games, maybe it's not such a bad market to tap into.
If you're under 18 and have a console, you're probably still living at home, in which case you probably can't play an R18+ game without getting grounded. So for all the other gamers out there, an R18+ rating won't really change things, it'll just open up more ground and more titles. The only thing I'm worried about is that eventually it might lead to a whole influx of gamer porn...like Playboy the Mansion for PC on crack.
But we'll see how this all pans out.
This means that all those gamers looking for an even greater level of violence to exceed GTA 4 (or Manhunt 2) will have to curb those bloodthirsty fingers on their trigger sticks for just a while longer.
Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. There's plenty of violence and gore out there already- how many times have we watched losers in Mortal Kombat fall screaming to their gory death on a bed of spikes?- so an R 18+ rating shouldn't really change things.
However, it did make me think of a family I sold an Xbox 360 to a couple of weeks ago- they were Asian, with a teenage son (a rather non-communicative little teenage son if I may say so myself.) One thing with Asian parents is that they believe that their teenage son is a little paragon of virtue who would never entertain the idea of virtually disembowelling someone, or teabagging a hapless n00b in an MMORPG, or viewing porn at a friend's house. Why, not my wonderful-little-boy-who-is-top-of-his-class-in-Maths-Methods.
Anyway...
...so the kid starts looking through the shelf of 360 games. Except his mother is standing over his shoulder overseeing what he's looking at. Which is never really a good idea.
The kid laconically informed me that yeah, he'd played Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War at friends' houses, but his mum wouldn't let him play anything violent.
Inwardly, I smirked.
His mother vetoed anything that looked remotely violent. In fact, I felt like falling on the floor and howling with laughter when she finally picked up one title and tried to convince the kid to get it.
Suffice to say, he was not impressed by his mother waggling Viva Pinata in front of his face and saying, "Look, this is a nice game!"
So she asks me for my opinion on a game for his new 360.
That isn't violent.
So I start pulling stuff from shelves.
Assassin's Creed. (Involves stabbing targets in public places and watching their blood billow out into fountains, then running away in kick-ass chase scenes).
Nope.
Crackdown. (Free rein to bash everything!!!)
Nope.
Saints' Row. (It's not like it sounds.)
Nope.
Call of Duty 4. (It has SOLDIERS on the front. Go figure.)
Nope, also out.
Gears of War (Note the use of the word "war". Also note the image of Marcus Fenix looking considerably grim and on some kind of steroid.)
Nups.
Mass Effect (This is currently set to eclipse KOTOR as my favouritest RPG, which is really saying something. However, it also features a suggested alien/human lesbian sex scene, many many drug references and mentions Krogan testicles. Man, I love that game so much.)
But yeah, that was out of the question too.
The kid finally settled on some kind of FIFA game. So that was nice and relatively non-violent, and I'm sure his mother must have been somewhat pacified by ther fact that her beloved Viva Pinata was packaged with the Xbox (along with Forza).
And this is why earning money and being over 18 is so much fun. You can buy your own Xbox 360 and get whatever you want.
Or you can get your parents to buy it for you, where the maximum level of violence in your games will be limited to hitting a cartoon pinata over the head with a shovel.
That said, I did reflect on the fact that there are very few family-friendly games for the 360, and that's just because of the demographic it's aimed at. It's not like you''ve got six year old girls wanting to play Bratz on 1080p, but after playing Scene It!, and looking at the popularity of the PS2's Singstar/Buzz games, maybe it's not such a bad market to tap into.
If you're under 18 and have a console, you're probably still living at home, in which case you probably can't play an R18+ game without getting grounded. So for all the other gamers out there, an R18+ rating won't really change things, it'll just open up more ground and more titles. The only thing I'm worried about is that eventually it might lead to a whole influx of gamer porn...like Playboy the Mansion for PC on crack.
But we'll see how this all pans out.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Warm-and-Fuzzy-Gaming-Moment-of-the-Week
Yesterday a father and son walked into the store and asked if they could buy an XBox 360.
(Not surprisingly, the first one died in a hideous blaze of three glowing red lights and they had to return one to EB because it bricked...I'd say that '30% failure rate' is warranted)
I asked what games they had, and the father turned to me with this big smile and said, "Me and my son love to play Call of Duty together."
Awwwww.
To quote Mr Brady, "The family that plays together, stays together."
Of course, the Brady Bunch enjoyed having sack races in the backyard, rather than blowing the brains out of NPCs in bloody combat, but it's all the same thing...
(Not surprisingly, the first one died in a hideous blaze of three glowing red lights and they had to return one to EB because it bricked...I'd say that '30% failure rate' is warranted)
I asked what games they had, and the father turned to me with this big smile and said, "Me and my son love to play Call of Duty together."
Awwwww.
To quote Mr Brady, "The family that plays together, stays together."
Of course, the Brady Bunch enjoyed having sack races in the backyard, rather than blowing the brains out of NPCs in bloody combat, but it's all the same thing...
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Pitfalls of Bubble Breaker
Despite the fact that I have a three-core next-gen gaming machine with all the bells and whistles of ATI graphics and shading, I have been spending most of my time on what is possibly the most addictive game in the history of stupid, mindless games.
It's called Bubble Breaker.
You might know it as The Same Game, although I think Hexic has a similar purpose...all you do is click/tap on groups of more than three bubbles. Extra points if it's a bigger stack.
THERE IS NO POINT TO IT. AND I CAN'T. STOP. PLAYING. IT.
It was one of the games that came pre-programmed into my PDA, and I have developed an obsessive-compulsive thing with it...the other day, all I did was stare into my screen without blinking for 40 minutes on the train, tapping frantically whilst ignoring all the other commuters around me.
The other night, I stayed up until 2 a.m playing the friggin' game.
I don't think I can take it into lectures this semester. I'll learn even less than I did last year, and I don't think that was even possible...
It's called Bubble Breaker.
You might know it as The Same Game, although I think Hexic has a similar purpose...all you do is click/tap on groups of more than three bubbles. Extra points if it's a bigger stack.
THERE IS NO POINT TO IT. AND I CAN'T. STOP. PLAYING. IT.
It was one of the games that came pre-programmed into my PDA, and I have developed an obsessive-compulsive thing with it...the other day, all I did was stare into my screen without blinking for 40 minutes on the train, tapping frantically whilst ignoring all the other commuters around me.
The other night, I stayed up until 2 a.m playing the friggin' game.
I don't think I can take it into lectures this semester. I'll learn even less than I did last year, and I don't think that was even possible...
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Christmas Gaming
For Christmas, my family gave me Bioshock.
My uncle gave me Assassin's Creed.
My sister gave me Test Drive Unlimited. And also Scene It!
Then I went and bought Mass Effect because I really couldn't wait any longer for what is possibly the most uber-awesome RPG to ever hit shelves.
And then I bought Dancing Stage Universe because I thought the Workout mode might compensate for my general lack of exercise (it hasn't).
And thus, friends, I am now banning myself from spending any more money on anything XBox 360 related, at least until The Force Unleashed comes out and you'll see the frightening combination of Star Wars fangirl and gamer come into fruition. I also think that with Mass Effect, I have a lot to get through, and I haven't even opened Bioshock yet (I know, I know) but I figured that the curious blend of FPS and art deco can wait until I've conquered Saren and ground him into bits of little Turian dust. (BTW, did anyone else think that Nihlus looked like the Turian equivalent of Gene Simmons? Or was it just me?)
Nihlus:
Gene Simmons:
See?!
My uncle gave me Assassin's Creed.
My sister gave me Test Drive Unlimited. And also Scene It!
Then I went and bought Mass Effect because I really couldn't wait any longer for what is possibly the most uber-awesome RPG to ever hit shelves.
And then I bought Dancing Stage Universe because I thought the Workout mode might compensate for my general lack of exercise (it hasn't).
And thus, friends, I am now banning myself from spending any more money on anything XBox 360 related, at least until The Force Unleashed comes out and you'll see the frightening combination of Star Wars fangirl and gamer come into fruition. I also think that with Mass Effect, I have a lot to get through, and I haven't even opened Bioshock yet (I know, I know) but I figured that the curious blend of FPS and art deco can wait until I've conquered Saren and ground him into bits of little Turian dust. (BTW, did anyone else think that Nihlus looked like the Turian equivalent of Gene Simmons? Or was it just me?)
Nihlus:
Gene Simmons:
See?!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Technobabblement Begins
I figured I'd do something I've always wanted to do, and start a blog entirely devoted to gaming and technology in general. Like the bastard child of Gizmodo and Gaming Today but ten million times crappier. In fact, take out all of the witty journalism from those two sites, and filter it down to the viewpoint of a young gamer who has very litte knowledge of HTML and thus is forced to stick to this plain old Blogspot format. (Ah, way to publicise my own blog).
'Learn HTML' was on my 'to-do' list, along with 'learn-how-to-program-with-Java' and 'go-to-the-gym-more-often'.
I figure this blog might die a slow and lingering death, but hey, at least I gave it a shot :D
'Learn HTML' was on my 'to-do' list, along with 'learn-how-to-program-with-Java' and 'go-to-the-gym-more-often'.
I figure this blog might die a slow and lingering death, but hey, at least I gave it a shot :D
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