Fighting

Wanted: Dead, not Alive

HIGH The responsive combat controls.

LOW The haphazard and awful excuse for a story mode.

WTF The sheer number of women getting backhanded.

This Room Looks Familiar

HIGH Ripping through Rapunzel with Maar's Lance.

LOW Finding out I lose auto-save data when I turn off my console.

WTF Climbing a ladder and climbing vines is the same animation.

Swords, Sandals and Stats

HIGH Improving my favorite sword and killing an opponent in two strikes.

LOW Taking humbling beatdowns from the Egyptian fighters.

WTF Why aren't there more bull, tiger and elephant battles?

My Fist, Your Face

HIGH Hero vs. Hero & Hero.

LOW My continuing inability to find a save point in downtown Tokyo.

WTF Death Volley, the Volleyball-themed assassin!

Is Dead or Alive: Dimensions kiddy porn? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

The Dead or Alive series has never pretended to be anything but what it was. It featured nubile, scantily-clad women with entertaining breast physics that kicked and punched opponents across a fighting ring or stage. It was a game aimed squarely at young men and over the years it catered to that demographic to much success.

Rebooted into Respectability

HIGH The story mode is one of the best ever seen in a fighter.

LOW The AI vacillates between "invincible" and "lobotomized".

WTF Shang Tsung's "Joker" fatality.

I've been putting a good amount of time into the new Mortal Kombat, and if you read this blog, you'll know I'm a fan of this latest iteration. I have much admiration for the work that NetherRealm Studios has put into the project, and in my view, this is the best Mortal Kombat of them all, bar none.

As Goes the Heavyweights, So Goes Boxing

HIGH Brian Kenny's soft hair reporting on my last fight.

LOW Controlling a fight for nine rounds, only to be instantly knocked out by poor collision detection.

WTF The feeling of watching my boxer, with my face, get pummeled mercilessly into unconsciousness.

I was excited for Mortal Kombat. The demo played pretty well, albeit a little on the slow side. The special editions of the game looked pretty neat. It felt like a throwback rather than an attempt to keep expanding in the direction that the games took during the last console generation. It seemed like a day-one purchase for me, if only to support the revival of a fighting game that used to share the spotlight with Street Fighter some 15 years ago.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

HIGH Ping-ponging a room full of enemies with a combination of spell and scythe, and watching them all meet their grisly fate simultaneously, tangled in the vines of Mag Mell's Rose.

LOW Getting knocked down a hole after failing a boss QTE 20 times.

WTF For being upset at having to execute all of her sisters, Gretchen sure seems to love making a graphic display of their demise.