Month: November 2008

Some random game musings…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I finally got my hands on Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. I’ve played it for a few days, and I have to say that right now, gameplay-wise, I consider it the best game since Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. The fighting engine feels more like Mortal Kombat II than anything else, and not dealing with only dial-a-combos makes a nice change. I’m also liking the story mode; it’s not as flexible/non-linear as the Konquest modes from Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, but on the other hand the story is better (and does a decent job of explaining why the worlds are merging), and the voice acting is far better. (There’s also nothing as ridiculous as in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, where Baraka impales a monk through the chest and head, and tosses him to Liu Kang and Kung Lao, where Liu asks him if he’s all right.) I haven’t played much online, though, but I’ve been consistently getting my ass kicked. Obviously I need more practice. If I had one major gripe about the game, it’s the fact that in Freefall Kombat, if you build up the damage meter enough to do a super attack, if your opponent counters they have access to that full damage bar instead of starting over. It’s annoying. Now we just need for some DLC to come out for it…

Also, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (wow, that’s a mouthful) was released this week on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. I’ve already downloaded it and installed it. The game looks and sounds GREAT, and the controls seem to be good. I just don’t recall ever being this bloody BAD at the game. Even on the easy difficulty in single player, I started getting my ass beat after the third opponent or so. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but I don’t recall doing so poorly at this game. Either that or I just need a more appropriate controller. Ah, well… I’ll keep plugging away and practicing. I haven’t even tried to play online, nor will I unless I play someone I know. :-)

I’ve also been playing some LEGO Batman. I have to admit, it’s a pretty cute game. I haven’t gotten to the point where I can unlock the villain chapters of the game, but I’ve been having fun so far. There’s just something innately quirky about playing as Batman and Robin in the form of LEGO characters… it’s got some definite comedy moments, but more of as a previously mentioned cute feel, and not the deadpan absurdity of the 1960’s TV series. I’m going to keep on with this, but so far I like it. :-)

Finally, I leave you with something Maxim posted. I’ve met Hernan Sanchez at E3 before. If you don’t know who he is, you’ve probably heard him. He’s been the announcer for every Mortal Kombat fighting game since Mortal Kombat 4. Well, Maxim got him to come by and do some more announcer-type phrases, but not the kind you would normally hear in a Mortal Kombat game… :-)

What’s the point in being grown up if you can’t act childish sometimes?

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I have to say it’s been a very interesting week. From dealing with my own birthday last Sunday to going to Jinny’s birthday party yesterday, I must say that I’ve had plenty of things to do this week. It all started with my birthday last Sunday. All in all, it was a quiet day. When I got up, I found that Mom and Dad had bought me Tom Clancy’s EndWar and LEGO Batman for my Xbox 360. Mom had also bought me seasons 1-3 of Doctor Who, but Amazon had yet to send them. That evening, the folks took me to PF Chang’s for dinner, which was excellent as always. Otherwise, I had a nice and quiet birthday.

Tuesday was the big day, because that was the day we did the Fight Night event for Mortal Kombat Online. I arrived in Chicago close to noon, and quickly made my way to the L station at O’Hare so that I could meet up with Crow. Once Crow and I got on the L, we made our way to the hotel, with a couple of wrong turns along the way. We also stopped for lunch; we ended up eating at Cheesecake Factory, which he had never been to before. Once done there, we made our way to the hotel, where we started to work on picking questions for the event. When 5 PM rolled around, we got a taxi and made our way to Midway.

The event itself was fun. Fortunately I had planned ahead of time and set up portable versions of X-Chat onto a USB drive customized for each attendee, and simply needed to copy the folders to the desktops of the attendees’ machines. While I coordinated the questions and answers, Crow sat with Jeff with Midway and picked questions. I was also happy in that I finally got to meet one MK team “bigwig” who I had never met before, and that was Carlos Pesina (an artist, who actually played Raiden in Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II. and Mortal Kombat Trilogy). If you’d like to see how the event turned out, well, a transcript is available here. I personally thought it went well, even though this was the first Fight Night we had done where the event took place before the game’s release. Once the event was done, we caught a cab back to our hotel, where we put our stuff away, and then walked a few blocks away to find a bar and have a couple of drinks to wind down. That done, we went back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

The next day, after grabbing some breakfast and checking the channel for the post-chat reaction, we ended up making our way to O’Hare. After going through security (and Crow realizing his normal pants had too many studs, causing him to be wanded down), we found a Chili’s to have lunch at. Once we ate at Chili’s, we went to Crow’s gate, and waited for his flight. And waited. And waited. His flight ended up leaving an hour late, but I ended up utilizing the time to upload videos to YouTube for MK Online news stories. After Crow had left, I went to my gate and waited for my flight. From there things were uneventful, other than the overhead bin not having room for my backpack, leaving me stuck with little legroom and making me very uncomfortable.

Otherwise, the big event for us was Jinny’s birthday party. Jinny decided that she wanted to feel more like 5 or 15 than 35, so we planned appropriately. We all met at the McDonald’s at Kuykendahl and Louetta for dinner. Once we were done there, we went to Dean’s (Sean’s father) house for drinks and cake. Once we all had a drink and some cake, it was time to go to the roller skating rink.

Yes, you read that right. We went to the local roller skating rink.

The manager didn’t know quite to make of our group of ten people in our mid-30’s who had come to skate, but we just told him we were reliving our childhoods. :-) Oh, man, it was a BLAST. Some of us took a while to get the hang of it, but after a few unsteady minutes I was back into the swing of things. Granted, I also had more wipeouts than anyone else. But still, we had a LOT of fun, even if some of us were complaining about how out of shape we were and how much it was causing legs and hips to hurt. We stayed until the place closed down, at which point most of us went back to Dean’s for more drinks. We stayed there, sat around, and BSed and had drinks for a couple of hours, until one point where Jinny said, “You know what? I want hash browns.”

So, it was off to Denny’s we went.

We were there for about an hour and a half, still talking, having coffee, and eating. We ended up breaking up around 3 AM, which was fortunate for me because I was nearing a crash point. I drove home, quickly brushed my teeth, and fell into bed without even bothering to change my IM status or check messages.

As for today, it’s been relatively quiet. This week probably won’t be eventful; I have an optometrist appointment on Tuesday, and I THINK Jesse is coming into town this week, but at the rate things are going I doubt I’ll get to see her or Rob. Ah, well. I also need to pick up a copy of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and get cracking on that. For now, though, I’m just going to go to bed and catch up on rest. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

Announcing the MK vs DC Universe Fight Night Chat Event!

D'Arque Bishop

(This was originally posted over at Mortal Kombat Online.)

It’s that time again! With the release of Midway’s latest entry in the series of Mortal Kombat titles, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, almost upon us, Mortal Kombat Online is proud to announce the return of its celebrity chat event, FIGHT NIGHT! The return of Fight Night will feature an informal and fun chat with the development team of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, including creative director and co-creator, Ed Boon! This event will bring together fans and developers together in one place, where the developers will answer the fans’ questions!

The chat event itself will take place on Tuesday, November 11th at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST. The event will last for about an hour, and it will take place at the #MortalKombat Online IRC Network!

The event can be reached via a java chat at the link above or by using the following settings in your IRC client of choice:

Server: irc.webmaster.com -or- irc.webchat.org
Port: 6667
Channel: #mortalkombat

Because of the anticipated high attendance, question submission for Fight Night will be done before the event. From now until Sunday, November 9th at 11:59 PM EST, we will be pre-accepting questions for the chat via the Fight Night Submission Form available at this link. We will be accepting approximately ten to fifteen questions related to Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (development questions, storyline questions, and the like) from the pre-submitted queue, time permitting. Then, attendees will be able to submit questions at the actual event itself. The remainder of the questions for the evening will be picked from the questions asked at the event. It will be at this time that we might take a few questions pertaining to the development of future Mortal Kombat titles.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars! Again, the event will be taking place Tuesday, November 11th at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST! We look forward to seeing you all at Fight Night!

Another week gone by…

D'Arque Bishop

I realize I haven’t posted in a while. Really, it’s because I really haven’t had much to talk about on this front. Things have been more or less the same old same old, so there hasn’t been much to post about. Still, it’s been more or less an interesting week for me… not always in a good way, though.

This past weekend, for example, would have been rather uneventful except for one slight problem: the hard drive in Mom’s laptop decided to die on her. Fortunately there was very little actual data loss outside of programs and bookmarks; her documents and mail were actually stored on the server. It was also fortunate that getting access to the actual hard drive in the laptop was pretty simple. We ordered a new drive from Newegg, and once it came in, I got to work reinstalling from the restore CDs and downloading the essentials for her laptop. The only questionable part was MS Office; all she had were Word 97 and Excel 97. She wanted something more up to date, but didn’t want to actually PAY for MS Office. I went ahead and downloaded OpenOffice.org for her, and if she doesn’t like I’ll switch her to something else a bit later down the road. Otherwise, her machine is pretty much up and running now.

I also got put on the spot, so to speak, on Wednesday evening. I needed to deliver a laptop to one of my coworkers who was in town from Houma. She and another coworker told me they were eating at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and that I was welcome to join them so that I could drop off the laptop. So, I joined them and ended up talking shop for a while. For a change, I had the seared tuna tataki salad, which was damn good. Tiff and Tashia got salads as well, and were understandably shocked by the size of them. A woman at the table next to us asked Tiff what her salad was, and she replied, “The luau salad. Want half of it?” At the end of the meal, when the waitress asked us if we wanted to see the dessert menu, I said I was going to have the low carb cheesecake. Tiff piped up with, “It’s his birthday. He can have whatever he wants.” In retrospect I should have seen it coming, but a few minutes later the waitress came back with another one, and had my cheesecake slice… with a candle on it. They, Tiff, and Tashia then proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I swear I’ll get Tiff for that one…

As for this weekend, well… in a couple of hours I’ll be going out to meet Dave and Louie for lunch, gaming, dinner, drinks, and the usual types of fun. As for tomorrow, I’ve got work stuff to do during the day, and then during the evening Mom and Dad are taking me to PF Chang’s for my birthday dinner. I hadn’t planned on doing anything yesterday, but late last night Sean and Jinny invited me out for coffee, and I joined them over at Denny’s. (In retrospect, I should have stuck with the coffee. The food’s not agreeing too much with my stomach.)

Ah, well… it should be a good weekend, all told. :-)