Brink
6.5 out of 10
Brink is the type of game that has a lot of potential, but suffers from a bad bout of repetition that could potentially bore you to death. The premise of the game is pretty simple: you're on a floating city called The Ark, and you battle another faction for dominance. Yup, that's about it. You get to choose a side right away, so don't expect the kind of developed morality you find in bigger games like Fallout and Mass Effect.
What Brink does offer, though, is a beautiful environment and a lot of multiplayer options. Beyond that, though, the single-player storyline chugs along whether you have players helping you or just AI bots (not very good bots, either). I'd rent it if I were you. If you can find a Blockbuster that's still open.
Mortal Kombat
8.0 out of 10
Now here's a pleasant surprise: excellent graphics, really good controls, and some good old-fashioned gore that made the Mortal Kombat franchise famous. It's like being a thirteen-year-old kid again, sitting down in a friend's basement secretly playing the most ridiculous game ever, trying to execute the finishing moves to see some creative deaths.
And there are plenty of those this time around. All of the cheesy ninjas, robots and monsters from 1, 2, and 3 are here as Raiden attempts to save the earth by sending a message back through time, which pretty much sums the story up enough. Still, it's a good time, maybe because the 2D fighting is done so well. Maybe it's the gore, too. While playing, you may get the sense that the developers, having finished the first draft of their story, then turned and spent the next six months developing all of the creative finishing moves.
Expect a few imbalances between the characters, and when you play online, make sure you're not just relying on uppercuts because there are some tough dudes out there. Like I said before, the environments are fantastic, and a lot of the fighting centers around your Super Gauges, which provide for a fair amount of strategy and enhance your characters' special moves.
