Mortal Kombat

FINISH HIM! My ears have been dying to hear those sweet words for quite some time now and my waiting has finally paid off. That's right, the brand new Mortal Kombat game was released today and I am happy to say it does not suck.

If you remember, the last few MK games have quite literally been total crap. Developers began to take everything that was great about the original arcade title and add cheap mechanics to entice other audiences. What is perfect about this game is that the fantastic folks over at the newly dubbed NetherRealm Studios have taken Mortal Kombat back to its roots, back to what made the original game attract thousands of fans and disgust hundreds of politicians.

One good thing about this new title is that it is a legitimate, competitive fighting game. It also has all the gore necessary to make the most hardcore Mortal Kombat fans screech with delight. The single-player modes in this game can be kind of imbalanced, however, most people play for the competitive aspects of the game. And it is in this mode that Mortal Kombat is engaging, enthralling, exciting and just downright fun.

The story line takes you back as you relive the events of the first three Mortal Kombat games, so newbies to the series will actually know what the hell is happening. To wrap it up in a nutshell, super d-bag Shao Kahn is trying to destroy the world and kills everybody at the end of the storyline. SPOILER?! No, because Raiden then sends a message back through time to prevent it giving you the chance to alter the future!

Like I said earlier, Mortal Kombat is going back the the basics, so the side scrolling 2D fighting style is back. No more 3D 360-degree cameras to contend with and no freaking multi-level arenas (screw you, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe). You can play one-on-one or tag-team allowing you to play with or against a friend. Each character in the game has a set of simple, basic moves and a bunch of special attacks (back, back, punch...'nuff said). Combos and special attacks are easy to figure out and execute but it may take you some time to master the art of stringing all those attacks together whilst simultaneously keeping your opponent stunned/juggled.

A new feature is the super gauge. This fills as you give and take damage and can be used in a variety of ways. There are three segments, so obviously using all three at once will give you better benefits. Using a single gauge will increase your special attacks. Two segments will allow you to break out of an opponent's combo, which is particularly useful when you fight some of the hardcore players. Unleashing all three segments will initiate an x-ray attack. This is a series of attacks that go into slow motion while an x-ray version of your opponent's insides is visible, showing you all the gruesome, internal damage you are dealing. This also deals hella damage to your opponent, just don't miss.

Mortal Kombat is a bit slower than most fighting games but that keeps pace with how the traditional game plays. It also makes executing combos oh so satisfying. There is also a ton of other stuff to love about this game. Fatalities are back and bloodier than ever. Babalities (the ability to finish off your opponent by transforming them into the baby version of themselves) is also back, which should please some of the more traditional fans.

Playing with friends is where most of the enjoyment will be received from this game. You can play either locally or online but locally is definitely the best. You don't suffer from any lag and you can personally deliver the smack talk directly to your buddy's face. Single player is a little more imbalanced and some of the boss fights are downright brutal and may make you want to hurl your console across the room (I suggest padding the walls with cushiony foam).

To put it bluntly, Mortal Kombat delivers. The game combines great visuals and extreme brutality with a terrific fighting engine. New features like the super gauge and new game modes, like a revamped King of the Hill mode, which allows you to choose your X-box or PlayStation home avatar and take him into the theater with a bunch of other players' avatars and watch actual fights until it is your turn and even interact by scoring the winner or throwing things at the screen, offer a lot of fun options to your experience.

If you were a fan of the original three games and have been dying for a good Mortal Kombat game, this is just what you have been looking for. It goes back to the basics and still makes one helluva game. Definitely one to try out.

Mortal Kombat is available now for the X-box 360 and PlayStation 3 and if you truly want an authentic Mortal Kombat experience, be sure to pick up the Mortal Kombat Fight Stick for that traditional arcade feeling.

Source: IGN - Mortal Kombat Review

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GameStop ShopStore Soon on Facebook

GameStop is looking for a new, fresh way to pull in some revenue, so how do they do it? Via Facebook, of course! On Thursday, April 7 GameStop announced that it has decided to enter into a partnership with Adgregate Markets, a social-commerce company. The video game retailer plans to open a Facebook-based store that they will call ShopStore. Currently, the plan is for the ShopStore to function exactly like GameStop’s home page. Any customer will be able to view gaming hardware and software offered by GameStop, add items to their cart and purchase them all from the ShopStore Facebook app. "Social commerce on Facebook is a natural complement to our trusted store and online networks," Kelly Mulroney, vice president of ecommerce at GameStop, said in a statement. "We have millions of customers already engaging with us on Facebook, and ShopFans gives those loyal fans more reasons than ever to shop GameStop across multiple channels." This new store that is being constructed for GameStop is based off of Adgregate Markets’ ShopFans solutions. This allows retailers to create a marketplace on Facebook for their customers. GameStop isn’t the first company to begin offering their products via the social networking giant. Old Navy, Banana Republic and Nike all have moved forward with this new form of marketing. The marketplace that GameStop and Adgregate Markets are setting up is extremely similar to GameStop’s homepage. Customers will be able to see reviews, watch product videos, etc. The ShopStore will also allow customers to preorder games that they can then pick up at a GameStop store when they are released. The members of GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards program will also be able to earn and redeem points by making purchases at the Facebook store. I think this is an incredible, as well as practical, marketing move for GameStop. Everything these days is on Facebook, so why not have a marketplace? I believe that GameStop will definitely see an increase in revenues, but we’ll just have to wait to see how it all works out.

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Rage's Campaign Completed in Only 15 Hours?

Usually when you buy a video game, you get the box, an instruction manual and a single game disc that contains all the enjoyment you just paid for. However, there are the rare, yet incredible, occasions when a game is so massive that it needs to be put on more than one disc. With the advancements in modern gaming, a lot of stuff can be put on one disc, so if a game does come with more than one, you know it has a whole lot of content. There are a few games that come to mind when I think of multiple discs, Mass Effect 2, which required two discs, and Final Fantasy XIII which required three discs to play. Well, the upcoming Fallout/Borderland hybrid game from id Software, Rage, is said to be released with two discs. So, considering the games that Rage is compared to coupled with the fact that it has two discs, you would expect Rage to deliver a very long single player adventure. However, that may not be the reality we are faced with on release day. According to Tim Willits, creative director for Rage, the game's single player campaign will only take you around 15 hours to complete. In a recent interview with Official Xbox Magazine (OXM), Willits stated that the campaign only takes a lousy 15 hours to complete. Now, granted, this is long compared to your typical first-person shooter game but considering the nature of Rage's post-apocalyptic open world environment, we should have a lot more than 15 hours of gameplay. However, the report is vague. This could mean 15 hours of straight storyline main quest adventuring with no time calculated in for side quests. Fallout 3's campaign can be completed in around 20 hours if you do absolutely no side quests whatsoever. We are hoping this is the same thing here and that 15 hours will be stretched to somewhere between 50 to 100 hours. If Rage ends up being 15 hours total (including side quests), there are going to be a lot of disappointed gamers out there. Rage is one of the most highly anticipated games to come out soon and many are saying that it will be the best console game of our generation. You can read the interview in the May 2011 issue of Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) but to get the hard facts we will just have to wait until Rage is released on September 30th, 2011. Source: Examiner - Rage's 2 discs can be beaten in a day

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Game Developers want DirectX Out of the Picture According to AMD

It comes as no surprise to anybody that console graphics pale in comparison to the graphical possibilities of the PC. Compare a card like the GeForce GTX 580 and its 512 stream processor to the 48 units found in the Xenos GPU of the Xbox 360 and you might as well be comparing VHS to Blu-Ray. That doesn't even take into consideration the aging GeForce 7-series that you get with the PS3.

That is why it is so amazing that, even though PC games often look much better than their console counterparts, they do not crush console graphics into oblivion. Why is this, you may ask? Well, it is primarily due to the fact that a majority of games are designed for consoles first and PCs second. AMD, however, says that this could change if PC game developers were able to program PC hardware directly at a low-level as opposed to going through an API like DirectX.

According to Richard Huddy, Worldwide Developer Relations Manager of the GPU Division at AMD, "It's funny. We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way." According to Huddy, one of the most common requests he gets from a game developer is "Make the API go away."

"I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers," Huddy added. "And I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers - not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software - being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want. By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft - no doubt at all. Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security but unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate."

Now you may be thinking to yourself, weren't shaders designed to allow developers to be more innovative with their graphics? Yes, as a matter of fact, they were. The ability to run programs directly on the graphics hardware definitely allows for some flexibility, especially when you get past the fixed-function shaders accompanied by DirectX 8. Yet aside from a few stranger indie games, there isn't a lot holding you back from saying that a whole lot of PC games look a whole lot like one another.

Huddy added, "The funny thing about introducing shaders into games in 2002 was that we expected that to create more visual variety in games, but actually people typically used shaders in the most obvious way. That means that they've used shaders to converge visually, and lots of games have the same kind of look and feel to them these days on the PC. If we drop API, then people really can render everything they can imagine, not what they can see - and we'll probably see more visual innovation in that kind of situation."

For the full story including an Overhead of DirectX performance and Problems with Multiple GPU Architectures head on over to bit-tech.

Source: bit-tech - Farewll to DirectX?

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"Fastest-selling Consumer Electronic Device"

On Wednesday, March 9 Microsoft announced that it has sold more than 10 million Kinect units for its Xbox 360. The device was launched by Microsoft on November 4 and has now become the fastest-selling device in the world.

On the very same day, the Guinness World Records reported that the Kinect now holds the title of the “Fastest-selling Consumer Electronic Device” in the entire world. It sold more than 8 million units in the first 60 days after its release. This statistic was released by Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer at CES in January. Between November 4 and January 3, the Kinect has sold an average of 133,333 units per day.

"The sales figures outstrip both the iPhone and the iPad for the equivalent periods after launch," Guinness World Records wrote in a blog post.
Then, between January 3 and March 9, Microsoft sold close to two million Kinect units. This is roughly the same number of devices that Microsoft sold within the first 24 days.

The Kinect has been one of Microsoft’s most successful recent products. The company’s 2010 fourth quarter revenues shot off the charts. There were rumors of a shortage of Kinects in January, and supposedly, Microsoft had to tap into February’s units.

There are more than 50 million Xbox 360 owners worldwide. Microsoft is hoping to snatch up users who don’t have a Kinect yet, as they add more than just gaming features. It now has features like controller-free Hulu and Netflix and there are hints of PC support.

"The community that has blossomed since the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 in November shows the breadth of invention and depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology," Steve Clayton, director of cloud strategy at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. "Already, researchers, academics and enthusiasts are thinking through what's next in natural and intuitive technology."

There are also promises from Microsoft to release a non-commercial SDK free download for the Kinect in the spring.

"[It] will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to key pieces of the Kinect system—such as the audio technology, system application programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor itself," Clayton wrote.

"Supporting this community and enabling creativity around natural user interfaces (NUI) is important to us, and our hope is that this SDK will ignite further creativity in an already vibrant ecosystem of enthusiasts," Clayton wrote.

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GDC Unveils the Villain of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

While I am no fan of the PS3, the system does have one very very good game going for it and that is the Uncharted series. Both Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves were some of the most sold games for this generation of consoles and the third one is one of the most anticipated games of the 2011 holiday season.

One of the biggest things that people are wondering about is where the story will go from the first two games and, most importantly, who the main villain is going to be to antagonize Drake in his third trip to the PS3. GDC was lucky enough to have some playable demos available for the game and it was clear in the first few minutes that Naughty Dog was not going to hold anything back.

The GDC reveal of Uncharted 3 most likely set in stone anything you were wondering about concerning what the new game would contain. This game, like its two predecessors, is set to give you a truly enticing and riveting experience with intense action similar to the previous games and storytelling to rival Bioware. But GDC did something else for gamers by introducing them, for the first time, to the game's main villain.

The new cutscene shown at GDC introduces gamers to Katherine Marlowe, an aging British woman and head of the 400-year-old cabal associated with the Queen Elizabeth and Drake's relative Sir Francis Drake. The outset of the cutscene has Drake and Sully thrown into an alley in England where Marlowe's henchmen rough them up to the point that they are adequately subdued enough for Marlowe herself to show up.

Sure Drake has gotten himself into some pretty sticky situations before, but Naughty Dog promises that Marlowe is a real threat and the biggest one to Drake yet. While she may seem like a fiery old woman who just wants to get her hands on some treasure, she is still not someone to be taken lightly. She has some pretty rough lackies and is even capable, and willing, to do some of the dirty work herself as seen in the cutscene. Marlowe seems to favor psychological taunts as opposed to physical ones and even steals the ring Drake wears around his neck, the same ring that was important in the first game and is sure to be important in this one.

That is about all that was revealed about Marlowe at GDC, but the event did show off some other things that gamers will find interesting. The game will be running in 3D if you have a TV capable of doing so. The effects looked really smooth in 3D but it probably isn't worth buying a 3D if you don't already have one. A lot of people, however, were very interested in Katherine Marlowe and her role in the plot. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception looks to be one helluva game and the PS3's best title for the 2011 holiday season.

Source: IGN - The Villain of Uncharted 3

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25th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda

There was a milestone that was reached in the gaming community today…“The Legend of Zelda” celebrated its twenty-fifth year of existence. Exactly 25 years ago to the day, the game was released in Japan. Eighteen months after the Japanese release, the game came to the United States, and since then, the concept has been utilized for a TV show, books, merchandise, and a fan following that has been described by some as “cult-like.”

Link and his world were first introduced in 1986 via Nintendo’s Japanese Famicom console. When it was first presented to the U.S., it went on sale for the NES. Since the game’s first appearance, there have been 15 official versions of The Legend of Zelda that have been released on Nintendo’s different consoles. It’s safe to say that the series has done quite well.

Link’s magical world was designed by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who also created the Mario Brothers series. The Legend of Zelda has currently sold more than 59 million copies worldwide. It is actually the fourth best-selling Nintendo game of all time, coming in behind the first three Super Mario Brother games.

The most recent Zelda game that was released was Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS. This was released in December of 2009, and I can attest that I heard about it every day for months from my twelve-year-old brother before its release. Later this year, Nintendo is lined up to release the next Zelda title, Skyward Sword.

In celebration of The Legend of Zelda, the Web has been jam-packed with memorabilia from the games that have spanned across a quarter of a century. There have been a collection of the best Zelda commercials, Zelda merchandise, and even 25 facts about the games that you didn’t know.

If you are a fan of the Zelda series, than I’m sure that today was a great day of memories. Link, Zelda, and the whole cast of characters have made it through 25 years of gaming, and they’re still going strong. Hopefully, we’ll see them continue to thrill fans for at least another 25 years!

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