So there’s been a lot of stuff going on around here, and I’m pulling myself in half a dozen different directions, juggling half a dozen really large projects. By the end of last week I was stressing out a bit, so I gave myself a mandatory three-day vacation. My best friend came up from New York and we spent the weekend on the couch, wasting away in front of video games and movies. It was a nice escape.

We played through Lego Star Wars on co-op, a game I’ve had since it came out, but never played all the way through.

We also went out and picked up Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, and we were both very pleasantly surprised by this game.

First of all, the meat of it is a co-op mode, which for us is an instant +1,000,000 points. Honestly, if you can’t play this game through with a friend, I wouldn’t bother. It would be like eating two pieces of bread with no sandwich meats inbetween. You’d be cheating yourself out of the full experience.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the game just oozes Mortal Kombat, and if you spent your days after school down at the local arcade glued to Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 like I did, that’s such a great thing (I liked MK3, but that was when they introduced the combo system and a bajillion new characters. It just got really complicated all of the sudden, and lost a bit of its charm).

You’ll actually be playing in all of the areas you remember from the video game. Remember the pit? That huge bridge where you could knock people off onto the spikes? That’s in there.

Goro’s lair, the dead pool, the Outworld portal, all there. As well as all of the characters you recognize.

The combat system is really fun and brutal, as you would expect. Lots of big hits, lots of blood, lots of nasty ways to dispose of your enemies. It’s got an RPG side to it, in that you earn experience for killing enemies, which you spend on upgrades attacks. For instance, I was playing as Kung Lao, and got new more powerful versions of his hat throw and teleport.

The fatalities are a great addition as well. My only complaint would be that some of them are a bit too long.

Overall, don’t expect any super-deep puzzles or particularly intriguing storyline here. It’s pretty much the standard “Shang Tsung lost the Mortal Kombat tournament, now he’s pissed and up to no good”. The cutscenes are overacted, but it adds to the martial arts cheesiness of the atmosphere.

We also watched the Family Guy movie, which was great. Some of it was way over the top, but it was entertaining.

Speaking of entertaining, this twenty minute video of Oblivion is jaw dropping. As if my anticipation for this game wasn’t already maxxing out, it’s now through the roof.

I’ll be back to work tomorrow, so tonight I’m going to enjoy the rest of my time off. Hopefully I can have more information for you regarding the CAD LAN event soon.