Monday Night Combat Review: Monday! Monday! Monday!

Class based shooters are a dime a dozen these days. You get some characters who specialize in offense, defense, and support (which usually means they can heal). It doesn't help that the shooter market is saturated with competitors. But Uber Entertainment manages to stick out from the crowd by throwing in something almost everyone has played at some point or another: tower defense games.

RSS Round Up: Rick Astley and the Norwegian King of Names

Here's what I've been clicking on in my Google Reader, just to prove that I'm not illiterate.

4Chan Founder Explains Internet Jargon to Court via Gamepolitics
Depending on how you read the context of the court's questions, even the U.S. District Court of Knoxville, Tennessee thinks Rick Astley is a joke.

Guard Crush 5 Grand Finals: Zidane (Hazama) vs. SKD (Ragna) via iPlaywinner
Hazama uses a pair of knives. Ragna uses a broadsword the size of St. Benard. And yet Zidane proves it's not the size that matters, it's how you use it. For context, Ragna is capable or doing 4k damage in one combo easily in a bread and butter combo. Hazama's bread and butters barely top 3k and yet Zidane is capable of pulling off so much more.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light shipping despite being unfinished via Gamesradar
Isn't this the equivalent of turning in your research paper and promising the thesis portion next week?

TalkRadar Clip 'o the Week: The Norwegian King of Names via Gamesradar
A flashback clip of TalkRadar's news of the day. Norwegian King refuses boy's request to change his name to Sonic X. Spawns TalkRadar's most beloved in-joke, a Norwegian King with the power to change anything's name.

Arc System Works explains their netcode via Siliconera
Blazblue's smooth online gameplay is a mystery no more (sort of)!

I'm Missing Out on the Xbox Summer of Arcade

By itself, $15 doesn't  bother me too much. One Xbox arcade game is fine and dandy. But three games?

I know Limbo is good. The trial already told me that the atmosphere accomplished so much with only two shades and a lack of BGM. But I have to make economic decisions. I'm not interested at all in Tomb Raider and the last three seem to offer me a lot of bang for my buck. Hydro Thunder Hurricane, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, and Monday Night Combat.

Ok, so Hydro Thunder and Harmony of Despair have received sketchy reviews, but I am the target demographic those games cater to. I loved Hydro Thunder when it was a sit down arcade cabinet, complete with wheel and throttle with light up red button. I was proud of the fact that I knew how to select the secret boat, Tinytanic. I've loved pretty much every Castlevania since Symphony of the Night. Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia, all Castlevnia games I loved that weren't exactly very different from one another. And Monday Night Combat? Please, I've been following that since it's announcement. What was that? Two years ago? Finally, Team Fortress 2 but on a console and supported for by the developer post-launch (those guys on the Orange Box still don't have the Backburner I hear).

But $45? I'm struggling with this price tag. Even after receiving a solution, promised credit to Gamestop and Amazon, this credit has yet to appear before me to actually use (they're still enroute from shipping).

Until then, I'm either going to keep going back again and again to their trial demos or will stick with Blazblue: Continuum Shift.

Makoto DLC First Impressions: "Nuts to this!"

Blazblue has finally gone where no other fighting game has gone before. Actually adding new characters as paid content during the game's lifetime. It's a small secret that there are three in total planned, but one has already been released.

Fans may remember Makoto Nanaya as Noel and Tsubaki's half-squirrel classmate during their academy days. Hyperactive and full of energy, she was the active one of the trio while Noel played the sympathetic sad one and Tsubaki reeled everyone in as the straightman. She was promised as a rushdown character to satisfy the fast and foolhardy who just don't get a rise out of the stronger characters in the cast who simply have rushdown options.