Climbing Mortal Kombat’s New Challenge Tower Is A Bloody Good Time

The new Mortal Kombat, as revealed last week, will feature a 300 mission long mode dubbed the “Challenge Tower.” We played a handful of levels of the mode that lives up to its name with demanding while teaching players the finer points of this year’s Mortal Kombat.

Those 300 missions feature no lack of variety. They start off simply, asking the player to refrain from being hit for an entire match in some or defeat an opponent with only a handful of special moves, like throwing Sonya Blade‘s energy attack, or using only kicks. Occasionally, the Challenge Tower will ask players to fight with special match requirements. In one, Johnny Cage must battle an uppity stuntman (named Stunt Man) with double strength attacks. The next match, Cage attacks with half his normal strength.

In one situation, I was asked to defeat a very hard Baraka, then perform Sonya Blade’s fatality. Again and again and again, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know the (unforgiving) range of Sonya’s fatality and could not progress.

Fortunately, Mortal Kombat addresses this particular problem. Players are awarded coins during missions, which can be cashed in to buy one’s way out of a challenge when stuck, easing the mode’s frustration. The new MK also has a Fatality Trainer, letting players get to the good stuff, NetherRealm Studios‘ gory, glorious finishing moves.

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Challenge Tower comes with a few other variations, including the return of the brick-smashing, button-mashing Test Your Might mini-game and a Three Card Monte game called Test Your Sight that hides a plucked eyeball underneath a table full of human heads. Fail Test Your Sight and Nighthawk’s trademark glowing green axe will punish you.

Test Your Luck, as seen in the announcement video, throws a ton of crazy variables into the mix, from headless battles to inverted gravity to vicious environmental dangers.

Part tutorial, part hardcore mission mode, Challenge Tower looks like a hefty stack of highly addictive tasks, ideal for Mortal Kombat players stuck playing the game solo.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night Trailer 2011

A Third “Riddick”?

in Diesel has done a brief video update his official Facebook pagewith a new video in which he and director David Twohy talk about the proposed third film featuring Diesel’s famed anti-hero character Riddick.

Twohy says the film be more along the lines of the first film “Pitch Black” than the second “The Chronicles of Riddick” as the budget is obviously a smaller scale like ‘Black’.

in Diesel has done a brief video update his official Facebook pagewith a new video in which he and director David Twohy talk about the proposed third film featuring Diesel’s famed anti-hero character Riddick.

Twohy says the film be more along the lines of the first film “Pitch Black” than the second “The Chronicles of Riddick” as the budget is obviously a smaller scale like ‘Black’.

Part of the reason for that is they want to maintain the R-rating that ‘Black’ had in this one. Keeping that higher rating is a “big deal” they want to achieve “at any cost”. The plan is to shoot it lean, quickly and they joked that it does feature “seductions”.

At last report the plot has Riddick left for dead on a desolate planet fighting for survival against not just alien predators but bounty hunters, yet this chess game is all part of his plan to return to Furya and save it from destruction.

 

“Lord of the Rings” Extended Goes Blu

Amazon.com have posted up an entry for the Blu-ray release of the extended editions of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Though there’s some ugly cover art and a pretty good trailer, no date for the release is specified other than a generic 2011/2012 one. The price is currently set at $84.

There’s nothing really in the way of new features, but all the previous special features from the DVDs will be ported over to the Blu-ray release. All three films will boast 1080p video and DTS HD-MA 5.1 audio transfers.

The packaging calls this a ‘Limited’ extended edition. No word if that means only a certain number of copies, or more likely the set will only be available for a certain amount of time before being pulled from the shelves – much like Disney does with its animated releases.

New Socom 4 Screens

We’ve some new screenshots of SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs and we are afraid they aren’t as impressive as we were expecting them to be.

As you can see, poor textures and sharp corners are evident in almost all of these screenshots and the visuals overall look sub-par.

In the day and age where PS3 exclusives like the upcoming Uncharted 3 and the recently released Killzone 3 are setting an example when it comes to delivering the graphical goods on consoles, Socom 4 feels sorely lacking, atleast in these screenshots.

We hope the game turns out to be different and gamers get to experience a fun game albeit one which doesn’t really set new standards when it comes to visuals.

The game releases on April 19 in the US and is exclusive to PS3.