Anya

RE3 is great. It's my third favorite in the series, behind 1 and 2. The original trilogy are classics. The rest...not so much. MK post John Tobias is sort of lame. Honestly if the newer games weren't MK I wouldn't play them. If the series had ended at MK3 I wouldn't have complained. MK3 would have been a perfect end too, since it's the last 2D game and a very fitting climax to the story.

It's the exact same MK II as MAT2. So no Smoke with sound glitches and messed up shadows. They didn't even bother to change the pause menu or loading screens from MAT2. One of the designers was saying they had added an extra at the last minute, I bet it was this.

Trying to find all the secrets is really addicting. Im trying to do SMokes missions, which unlocks MK II.

No. As far as I know Tobias and Boon remained friends. Boon doesn't even write the story. In fact he doesn't seem to care much about it at all. The story has been handled by John Vogel since MK4, who has been with the MK team since the beginning. He just doesn't like some of the stuff Tobias did, most famously his hatred for Cage dying before MK3. Tobias was incredibly vague back then, so it's up to Vogel to flesh things out and that often means changing things around. Like in MK II Sub-Zero was simply there to kill Shang Tsung as ordered by the Lin Kuei. Now that they've made Noob Saibot Sub's brother they've added that to the MK II story, Sub is in outworld looking for him. Also these games are not designed with the story in mind. The story is often one of the last things they do. They decide what levels and characters will be in long before thinking of the story. So frequently Vogel has to come up with excuses to explain things that shouldn't be possible, like all the dead characters coming back to life. If Boon wants Kabal in Deception then he has no choice but to explain his return even though he was killed off in Deadly Alliance.

Yeah, but I was hoping this would finally get cleared up. It's frustrating to know so little about MK II. In MK3 he just shows up alive and well with no explination. Now it's two games where this happens. I liked how they stuck with his MK II death(it always bugged me how they ignore the big boss death scenes). They could have lead into MK3 though. Just show him reform afterwards when the heroes leave and then begin plans to raise Sindel. Cage is an arrogant joke character in the game.

Ok I'm going to spoil the game, so if anyone cares to find out on their own this is their warning..... Sub attacks Kung Lao and Liu Kang thinking their bad. Kung throws his hat and hits Sub in the face. And the ending..... What's really screwed up about the story is that almost all the bad guys die. Baraka, Reptile, Jade, Kintaro, Shang Tsung and even Shao Kahn himself are killed. Yeah, Kahn dies. Not a lame "apparent" death where his body is never found either. He gets owned. He turns to stone, blows up and you even see his soul float off. That dude is gone. As messed up as this sounds...it appears they are ignoring MK3. After Kahn dies and the heroes leave Quan Chi appears and takes Shinnok's amulet from Kahn's body. I guess this is supposed to set up MK4. Except this makes no sense. This is the continuity error I am talking about. Quan Chi ALREADY HAS THE AMULET. He has had it since MK Mythologies which took place before MK1. Even if he didn't what would Kahn be doing with it? Kahn had NOTHING to do with the amulet sub-plot. The thing wasn't even in outworld! Whoever came up with this plot twist clearly knows nothing about the MK4 story. This may be the biggest mistake or retcon they've made. Usually you can come up with some BS way to explain it. This one is just stupid.

The gameplay is surprisingly fun though. It's basically a rip off of God of War with a bit of Metroid's world design. The game is sort of non-linear. The portal acts as a hub and you can go anywhere you want, but you need certain abilities to get far. It's like Metroid where you'll see a wall you can climb hours before you get that power up, then when you do get it you backtrack to reach a new area. Also most of the boss battles are good, with little cinematic gimmick things to play with like God of War's boss in the hades level. At one point you fight Scorpion and he'll jump up on this platform where you can't reach him and start throwing his spear. You have to catch his own spear and yank him off the platform back down to you. In a battle with Mileena & Jade you can knock them into little cages and then do a Test Your Might to release these spikes to damage them. Lots of levels require you to throw bad guys into fun stuff like chains and spikes. There's some really cool moments that hardcore fans will love. We FINALLY see Kahn without his helmet, at last we know how Sub-Zero got his scar, and Kintaro's introduction is awesome.

I beat the game. In one night. Not counting secrets its only like 6 hours long. As a fan of the story I am so disappointed right now. I went in hyped to finally find out what happened in MK II. Well it's horrible. Basically everything established in MK II is thrown away. The whole game is one big retcon and the ending makes absolutely no sense. There's a plot twist at the end that's proboably one of the dumbest continuity errors I've ever seen.

It seems really cool. Like god of war meets MK.

No pink = no sale.

That is why Dual Shock is the best ever. You can play anything on it fairly well. I could see having a slot for weird gimmick adaptors to attach to a regular controller but this remote? Dumb.

It'll work for some specific gimmicky games but what about everything else? It's the same thing Nintendo has done since N64. Wow it's great for Miyamoto's latest Mario game....but what about when I want to play Street Fighter?

Yeah, I'm almost happy it's so ridiculous because it's just so much fun making fun of Nintendo. What a fall from grace.

Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of Mortal Monday.

Solidus looked old like that in MGS2. In fact I think that is a MGS2 action figure....

I'm glad to see GE Rogue Agent bombed. That was a disgrace.

I liked the old Crashes more than Mario. More action and linear. Mario 64 was too much running around.

Well the PSX is now 10 years old in the US. I think gaming has got a whole lot better since it came out and most of my favorite games are from that era. So let's celebrate.

I don't think they made new copies, they were just old copies laying around in a warehouse.

How did you know she likes MK?

No, never played it. I do know that and Persona 2 are having a small reissue.

The remake is amazing graphically. One of the best looking games this generation. It's one of those cases where graphics really matter and enhance the game since the mood and atmosphere is part of what makes RE good. It is so much creepier than the original. But some of the added content I didn't care for. The new fast zombies don't really work with RE's sluggish tank controls and carrying around gas and lighters sucks since you're already low on equipment slots. The additions to the story are pretty bad too.

DC was good for it's time but I don't think it has much longevity. Most of my favorite games are fighters and it's the nature of that genre for those games to be outdated because of all the ports and sequels. Soul Calibur, VF3, and the Capcom & SNK games are now either on other systems or have sequels. 3rd Strike was the last big reason for me to dust off the DC and that died when SFAC came out for PS2 & Xbox. Nostalgia and the novelty of playing the older versions is really the only reason to play it now. I played Double Impact the other day for like 30 minutes just to see the evolution of Yang and now it'll probably be another 6 months before I play it again. PSX games haven't aged well. It's hard to believe FF VII's graphics were once amazing. Playing the older Tekken games is always fun too and not just for the graphics. Tekken 2 is so slow and sluggish, it's like playing MK Deception. I like how the juggles take like half your life. Even with the bad graphics most of my favorite games are still great. I just beat FF VII and VIII again last week and I'd take the original RE and MGS over the remakes any day.

I don't care much about backwards compatibilty. It's a nice convenience but nothing I'm worried about. My only concern is old Xbox 1 games on XBL. Are they going to stop supporting them after a while?

They're not even clear on what is going to be launch and what isn't. It seems very disorganized. Hard to believe it's only a couple months away. I hope my Dreambox converter works on 360. That pad looks awful for fighters. Triggers are lame.