Grave Gamer News & Views — crossover

Even More Mortal Kombat Assassins by Letticia Maer

Some are Assassins, some swear by the Templars. All are superpowered ninjas with a knack for dismemberment.

I featured Letty’s work (when she was Sona?) a while back and since then, this prolific artist has been, well, pretty damn prolific about churning out one of the coolest crossovers in fan art.

Mortal Kombat Assassins by Soňa Nekorancová

Crossovers are nothing new in the world of gaming, and are vastly more commonplace in the realm of fan art, but when done right, the results really friggin’ pop.

This Slovakian artist had the novel idea of meshing the brutal, Eastern fantasy world of Mortal Kombat with the equally violent, historically steeped style of Assassin’s Creed.  As you can see, the kombination is deadly (and amazingly awesome.)

Resident Evil 6 and Left 4 Dead 2 Crossover! Valve and Capcom’s Undead Collide Exclusively for the PC

Did not see this one coming but, as evidenced above, Capcom and Valve have joined forces to provide exclusive content to PC players of both Left 4 Dead 2 and the upcoming Resident Evil 6 port.

On Capcom’s end, RE6’s PC version will have a remixed Mercenaries mode fittingly called “No Mercy” in which the four survivors of Left 4 Dead 2 – Coach, Ellis, Rochelle, and Nick – are featured as selectable characters replete with custom weapon loadouts.  Valve has also relinquished two iconic infected for players to get slaughtered by; the Witch and the Mini-Tank (a bite-sized, still assholey version of the big boy Tanks).  All this content will be made available as a free background download come April 5th.

On Valve’s side of the zombie spectrum, a small roster of RE6’s gruesome B.O.W.’s will run rampant in Left 4 Dead 2 thanks to the power of the Steam Workshop tool set.  The Lepotitsa, Napad, and Ogroman – some of the biggest, meanest sons of bitches RE6 owns (the Ogroman alone stands at two stories tall; expect some reduction there) – will invade as cameo Specials in L4D2 later this Spring.

“We’re huge Resident Evil fans,” said Valve’s senior writer, Chet Faliszek, “so when the opportunity arose to work directly with Capcom to combine L4D2 and RE6, we jumped at it.”

Well, thanks to Capcom and Valve, my console edition of RE6 has been outmoded into the ground, through the earth, and out the other side of the world.  Time to start a PC fund, folks (to which PC players resoundingly reply: "Duh.”)

Project X Zone Heading West This Summer

Given its severely niche nature, I almost gave up hope on seeing this Namco/Capcom/Sega mashup grace Western shores.  But low and behold, Namco Bandai has announced it would be localizing the 3DS’ Project X Zone for release in the U.S. and European markets this very summer.

The spiritual successor to Namco X Capcom, a PS2 crossover oddity that remained only in Japan, Project X Zone (wherein the “X” means “Cross” somehow) carries on the tactical RPG gameplay and 2D sprite visuals found in that title, but adds a little dimension to the affair thanks to the 3DS’ functionality.  Combining over 200 characters from each publishers’ library of franchises (over 50 of which are playable), players will participate in teams of two paired heroes fighting freely on battle grids based on recognizable gaming locales.

Basically, you get into ludicrously awesome encounters like Space Channel 5’s Ulala cracking knuckle against Nemesis’ face.  If that isn’t worth wiping the dust off my 3DS, nothing in this world is.