It’s official, Rabid Ferret and I* are going to the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Exposition, also known as E3, this June. With pencils, cameras, and iPads in hand,** we’ll be ready to drool over report on all of the expo’s happenings straight from the floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

In this “review” of Mortal Kombat, we look at all the reasons you should stop reading this article and go buy Mortal Kombat this instant. Is the game perfect? By no means. But if it represents anything, this Mortal Kombat iteration represents a new direction available to fighting games. Will others follow suit? Get over here and find out why they should.

Since Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat are two of the only games I’ve eagerly anticipated in months, tomorrow’s an exciting day. While you’re reading this site, odds are I’ll be at the store picking up the goriest fighting gem known to Earthrealm or on Steam playing a puzzling round of Portal 2. Realistically speaking, you’ll be doing the same.

While I ooze with nostalgia and try to hold back my personal hype, I would like to issue a stern warning to the gaming community: Please watch the fucking spoilers.

Somehow, against all odds, Top Tier Tactics has survived an entire year. It doesn’t sound impressive, but from what I’ve seen, blogging is one of the most commonly started and, subsequently, most commonly dropped hobbies. I’m not sure if it’s the money, the fame, or the terabytes of personal data I’ve harvested from my readers’ computers, but Top Tier Tactics has never been anything but a joy to maintain. I can only hope that on your end, it has been not only a fun quasi-literary pursuit, but also a great venue for discussion of gaming balance, full life consequences, and of course, prizes.

This week, WiNGSPANTT answers questions about console wars, Assassin’s Creed woes, and personal finances.

By now, everyone should know what the term metagame means, but for the uninformed, it generally applies to the current state of stategic focus in a specific game’s community. For example, “4 Gate” Protoss pushes are a dominating factor in Starcraft 2 currently, so much so that most Protoss players will employ 4 Gate themselves to counteract it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the two point conversion is such an infrequently used tactic in football that no defending team ever considers defending against it, even though actual point-after kicks are rarely blocked.

How is it possible that the same company that’s making Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition is also responsible for Marvel vs Cashgrab 3?

In Parts 1, 2, and 3 of our Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Multiplayer guide, we looked at every friggin’ skill in the game, from the lowly (and terrible) Sprint Boost to the oh-so-tantalizing Poison. With all the game’s abilities covered, there still remain two more aspects of each player’s loadout that should be taken into consideration: Perks and Streaks.

Just as with abilities, so too can players equip two of each category within Perks and Streaks. Perks offer passive or situational abilities, while Streaks grant bonuses if a player is doing particularly well or poorly. While these loadout choices aren’t as important to your overall strategy as abilities are, they can create major advantages in many situations.

Let’s see what kind of mayhem we can get ourselves into.

In a completely unprecedented move by US courts, the governments of eight states -including Wisconsin, Illinois, and Vermont- passed temporary measures last night to prevent the release of Mortal Kombat (Xbox 360, Playstation 3) over concerns of the graphic, violent content it contains. Citing the series gruesome fatalities and disturbing mutilation, several state senators have called Mortal Kombat “the worst game our nation’s children have seen since Mortal Kombat (1992).”

While the proposed legislation does not directly ban M-rated video games, the wording refers to “gratuitous gore or personal harm for the sake of inflicting personal harm” as gaming elements that could cause roadblocks for future releases.

In what could be a gigantic early blow against the 3DS and Nintendo shareholders, early reports are coming in that preliminary “J-7″ batches of the Nintendo 3DS will be recalled from Japanese markets after post hoc analysis of initial tests are revealing a disturbing pattern. Out of the 43,000 J-7 3DS units produced, over 9,000 instances of mild-to-moderate headache, nausea, and (in two cases) hemorrhaging of the central cortex have been reported.