Microsoft boasts about it's Black Friday sales
Black Friday, if you didn’t know, is the biggest shopping day of the year over in the States. It’s they day that people leave their brains at the door and run riot through the shops trying to get the best bargains for Christmas. It is also a very nice indicator on how the silly season will progress and this year …
The fighting system works well with only a few hiccups, like the blocking not being as responsive as I would like but it doesn’t take away from the overall experience.... While progressing through the story mode I noticed a trend where I would win the first match and then lose the second match 99% of the time because in the second round the AI seemed to take revenge on my first round victory by assaulting me with super move after super move.... The first of these are Freefall Kombat where you hit your opponent off the level and then continue attacking them all the way down.... The Second event is Test Your Might and happens when you shove your opponent into a wall after which you just keep on running through wall after wall....
Even with the super AI I really enjoyed the story mode, it’s a nice change of pace from the normal fight, die, fight, die, fight, die, fight win! The game is simple enough to allow me to pull of cool moves while trying to win and I didn’t even have to resort to cheap tactics to beat anyone, including the bosses.... And this is where the combo challenge comes in. The Kombo Challenge pits you against an AI opponent which never moves or attacks so that you have time to pull off the required combos.... It is sort of an advanced sparring mode, but after trying and failing Superman’s first Kombo Challenge, I couldn’t be bothered.... Nothing beats electrocuting your opponent and mocking him for being a little girl and knowing that any minute he could hit you because he is sitting right next to you.... I think that with this title being aimed at a younger audience, the casual gamer might enjoy this more, but this is not to say that the hardcore gamers out there won’t find anything to enjoy here either.... Scoring Gameplay : 7/10 (Solid gameplay with a few issues, nothing gamebreaking) Presentation : 7/10 ( Nice character models, average backgrounds, a little bland) Sound : 7/10 ( Good voice acting, Standard but cool MK voice “ Finish Himâ€) Value : 6/10 ( Might not be enough to warrant a R700 purchase, but fans should get it) Overall : 7/10 ( Solid gameplay, looks good and is lots of fun.
While the console race has been a close and interesting one to follow, it seems like Microsoft may be whipping a card out of it's sleeve that may just give them a big advantage. The sickening thing about this whole story is that it's an advantage that is going to be obtained by making their console reach a standard of quality that should have already been there all along. Is there a bright future ahead for the Xbox 360, or are we just being setup for even more disappointments from Microsoft? The problem is obviously that Microsoft released a console that was flawed from the start and even though they were in the knowledge of those flaws, decided to release it anyway. It was good to see that Microsoft landed up paying for their underhanded tricks in the long run, with the need to extend RROD warranties for a problem that really shouldn't have been there from the start. Usually I don't enjoy seeing anyone suffer for no reason but they deserved it because at the end of the day it was always the consumer paying the price for a lazy design job and some underhanded business tactics. Many of the issues with the Xbox 360 may now be coming to an end with the latest batch of Xbox 360's to leave the factory and if a decent job was actually done this time around, we may see the era of problematic Xbox 360 consoles actually come to an end....
The new consoles have had their internal memory pushed up from 16MB to 256MB, meaning that the console will now be able to store the NXE dashboard without the use of a hard drive.... The internal memory, while not of much use for other functions is at least big enough that it can now carry the NXE and still have a little bit of space left for a few small Xbox Live Arcade games.