Mortal Kombat vs Portal 2, and Sony's embarassing shutdown

Folks, early this week, 2 games for the 360 and PS3(with one also on PC) released. On one side, you have a reimagining of one of the most violent fighters since 1992. On the other side, you have a sequel to one of the most well-known 1st person puzzle-shooter.

The reimagining of one of the most violent fighters is Mortal Kombat. That's right. They took your favorite smackdown-of-a-fighter-trickled-with-fatalities and really went to work on it. All of your favorites from the past(Minus Rain, plus Quan Chi, and introducing Cyber Sub-Zero) are in it. Reviewers are pleased with the new Mortal Kombat and it's happy days for all.

That is, unless you live in Australia. Not only is the game banned in Australia, but any attempt to import it will result in your copy being seized and a A$110,000 fine imposed.

"As Mortal Kombat has been refused classification in Australia, it is considered objectionable material. It is therefore a prohibited good and illegal to import into Australia," the spokesperson said. "Customs and Border Protection works closely with Attorney General’s Department to identify imported games that are banned in Australia. This includes games purchased over the Internet from foreign websites. Attorney General’s Department regularly updates Customs and Border Protection about classification decisions on publications, films, and computer games, including the reclassification of material, and about different versions of computer games (some of which may be refused classification), and how to identify those versions at the border. This information is then used to assist in identifying and seizing banned versions of games.

And you thought Nintendo was kiddie. This makes Nintendo look more mature.

The sequel of the well-known 1st Person Shooter-puzzler is known as Portal 2. Taking on the role of Chell again, you must complete the challenges of GlaDOS, an AI/DiskOperatingSystem hybrid. New challenges, new techniques, and a new surprise will have you awe in amazement.

Unless you're a spoiled Valve fan who has an entitlement problem

An army of bitter little fanboys has attacked the game via Metacritic's user reviews, with hundreds of negative summaries complaining about unbelievably inane sh*t. Many of them just seem upset that the game didn't release as early as they wanted it to. Others bitch about the downloadable co-op costume packs that appeared at launch.

Yet more are claiming that the game is overpriced and that the main campaign is only two to four hours long. That last complaint is a straight-up lie, but apparently that doesn't matter if a customer is really pissed off about some inconsequential nonsense.

I'd go so far as to agree that the DLC is silly, but that actually has nothing to do with the game itself, which is one of the best titles I've ever played (review coming soon). The campaign is six to eight hours long, and then there's co-op, which looks to add almost as much playtime.

And like they say, Video Games is serious Business.

So what will it be? Mortal Kombat? Portal 2? Take your pick(Those who pick the former and have a PS3 will get the honor to play as Kratos from God of War)

Finally, it has been a bad week for Sony. Especially in the PSN category. On April 21st, 2011, the Playstation Network went down in a similar situation to early this month. Sony believes that it may have been caused by a third party that may or may not be Anonymous

Sony is calling the downtime an "outage" publicly, saying that it is still investigating the cause of the problem and hasn't ruled out deliberate interference. In a message on the EU and US PlayStation Blogs, PSN manager James Gallagher said that one potential might be an attack by a third party.

"Our support teams are investigating the cause of the problem, including the possibility of targeted behavior by an outside party," wrote Gallagher. "If the reported Network problems are indeed caused by such acts, we would like to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service."

"Our engineers are continuing to work to restore and maintain the services, and we appreciate our customers' continued support."

While people are quick to try and draw a connection to Anonymous, it should be noted that the group has said publiclly that it would not attack PSN because it would hurt consumers.

As if that was bad enough, they also had this to say about how long it will stay down

"While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we're able to get the service completely back up and running," Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications & social media, wrote on the official blog. "Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we'll update you again as soon as we can."

Great. Now how am I to enjoy the free Online that Sony provides for that much time? Even a day off of PSN will cause me to go crazy like how the X-Box Live owners had to deal with prolonged shutdowns for maintenance.

Works Cited
GameSpot Australia
Destructoid
Game Politics Link1
Game Politics Link2