Borderlands – An Enjoyable Experience

Just finished up Borderlands over the weekend and I’ll have to say that I’ve enjoyed pretty much every bit of it. I can’t say that it’s the best game out there but it definitely filled a void that I have been yearning for quite some time. If I were to describe what the game is, I’d say that it’s a mixture of Diablo II’s character selecting and item generating system combined with Fallout’s post apocalyptic themes and first person gameplay. Toss in some humor and pretty it up with some artsy water color graphics and you got Borderlands. That’s pretty simplified but that’s how I would describe it.

What I loved about it:

1. Random item generation. I’m a sucker for it. It keeps me coming back and I haven’t played a game that has done it so well since Diablo II. It actually makes me want to reinstall Diablo II on my computer and romp around Tristram again.
2. Replay value. There are 4 classes, each with unique skills and attributes. They can each use pretty much any of the weapons found yet their skills enhance the weapons differently. Makes for a unique experience each playthrough.
3. The ability to redistribute skill points at any teleport station… for a cost of course. Then again money becomes so plentiful later on that it’s a non issue.
4. 2 player co-op in the same room. Simple idea yet most games are going the way of network play only.
5. Humor. Some of the quests are funny and many of the sayings in the game are hilarious. I especially love the voice of the dude at the vehicle depot. Fun stuff.
6. Graphics. I love the contrast of the gritty nature of the game with the clean water color artsy graphics. Something about it appeals to me.

What I would have been happy without:

1. Excessive load times.
2. Fetch quests… Can become really repetitive. Luckily for me I don’t mind them in this game because It’s nice to hunt for new weapons. The fetch quests just become places for me to search while gaining experience.
3. The story is somewhat lacking. The entire game consists of fetch quests which I previously mentioned and there is only a thread of real storyline to follow.

Overall I’d give this game a score of $50/$60. Quite a fun game and I’m actually going through it a second time right now. Doesn’t happen very often with new games for me so that’s saying something. I’m so glad I picked it up for a whopping $36. Well I guess I better get back to Borderlands.

Games long, Times short

Yeah I realize that I don’t update or write nearly as much as I should. Then again it’s for good reason. Got many good games on the plate and just so little time to truly enjoy each of them to their best.

Currently I’m working on Demon’s Souls in the evenings and Borderlands during my lunch hours.

So far I’m truly loving every bit about these games. I’ll have to go into more depth in future blog additions but for now, I just wanted to say that these are consuming much of my time. I’d also love to jump into Prince of Persia that I purchased for $8 new at Target as well as Bioshock that I got at Toy’s R Us for $14. Couldn’t pass up the deals even though I don’t have the time to invest in them yet. I’ll get around to it though. Hopefully sooner than later.

(Not so) Random lyrics/quotes 0016

I’d take you where nobody knows you
And nobody gives a damn
said nobody knows you
and nobody gives a damn

from “I’ll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade

“How much possibility lay before me”

I’m sure by now everyone has heard the essay from Mary Schmich entitled “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young”. Most have heard it from the lyrics to the popular “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” song by Baz Luhrmann. Anyway I go back to listen to it from time to time and it seems that each time I listen to it, more and more of it hits close to home. I become more familiar with what Mary is talking about.

This time around, the part that resonates with me the most is “But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”

I’m not saying I’ve gained an enormous amount of weight or anything (I’ve probably lost weight actually). It’s just that there are possibilities that I realize I no longer have. As I have become older, I realize how true it is that when I was younger, there was truly an infinite amount of possibility before me. It seems that every door was open. Now I look at myself and realize that my path is becoming narrower and narrower. As the years have passed and I have chosen specific doors to open, in turn other doors have closed. It almost seems that for every path I take, two other paths get grown over with weeds. Is it a bad thing? I’m actually not sure yet. What I am sure about is that the answer will reveal itself as time passes whether I want it to or not.

It’s a new day

Just thought I’d freshen things up a bit with a new theme.

Gamestop = Epic Fail

I know that both Gamestop and Best Buy get a horrible rap but fact is, they typically set themselves up for their own failures.

I typically don’t pre-order anything but I decided on pre-ordering Metroid Prime Trilogy from Gamestop so that I could get the bonus T-Shirt and poster. I pre-ordered long ago and at that time both were still available and showing on the Gamestop site as available. Well I got a text message yesterday saying that I could pick it up the following afternoon. I decided I would use my lunch hour to pick it up. Well I tried calling first to see if it was there but of course none of the employees found it necessary to answer the phone. I decided on heading there anyway since I did receive the text message the night before. I stopped in and the guy at the counter didn’t know what I was talking about then proceeded to tell me that he hadn’t checked all the boxes yet. He went to the back and after a few minutes came out and said that it must still be on some truck somewhere… Ok, I  guess I’ll deal since I headed there without knowing if the product was in yet. Well I went back to work and did my time. I headed back to the store immediately after work and go figure that they were already out of posters. Not only that but they told me they were only shipped 2. Now I dunno about you but if there is a pre-order item to be shipped with product, then they sure as hell better have more than just 2. That’s a load of shit if you ask me. I call that a cheap bait tactic to get customers to buy there as opposed to anywhere else. Totally uncool in my opinion. Ok the clerk said that it was while supplies last (which is true) but you better have more than 2 if you plan to promote the damn thing. Oh and to top it all off, the guy that was there when I stopped in for lunch to pick it up was still there. He “went back” to look if there were any more posters. The F*&^&$^* bastard should have saved one for me in the first place.. the prick.

Ok ok, you may be wondering why I’m so worked up about a poster… It’s not about the poster at this point. If a product is being promoted as a bonus gift for doing something you don’t need to (pre-ordering) then you should get the product or at least have enough made to be handed out to a reasonable amount of people (not 2 per store). Doing that is a crooked (possibly illegal?) store tactic.

Oh… and the T-Shirt was an XL by the way. About 2 of me could fit in one of those. Nice right?

Resident Evil 5

I have actually completed this game a few weeks ago but I have just recently completed it on normal difficulty. I’ll have to say it’s a great game. I really wasn’t sold on it from playing the demo but I purchased the game anyway. I’m a pretty die-hard Resident Evil fan. I had no choice.

If you loved RE4, you’ll definitely love RE5. It’s basically the same formula but fine tuned. I enjoyed the story and all of the tie-ins to the previous games. There is a lot of history in this game which probably wouldn’t really appeal to those that haven’t played the rest of the series but it’s great for people like me.

A nice change is that you can redo any stage you have already played. You don’t have to go through each stage sequentially. This gives you the advantage of being able to just redo a stage to gain cash and items to help in future stages. It also allows you to try and get a better score on the stage which is advantageous to those who are trying to unlock all of the trophies/achievements.

Controls have not been changed much from RE4. What RE5 has changed though is that it has incorporated a much needed shortcut for weapon swapping. Essentially you can assign weapons to any of the four primary directions on your D-pad. Quite handy in those action packed intense moments.

Item management has gone through some heavy evolution. RE4 had a briefcase that you used to organize items anyway you felt fit to. Size of items also mattered because each item used up a different amount of space in the briefcase. You could upgrade the case multiple times in order to hold more items. RE5 does away with this system and instead limits you to 9 slots (per character – 18 total between Chris and Shiva). Each slot can carry one item of any size or shape. So essentially a slot could carry a grenade or a rocket launcher. You would think if a rocket launcher fit in a slot, you could probably fit more than one grenade into it. Not in this game. Anyway I’m ok with it because this inventory system is only in effect during gameplay. In the main menu, there is an item management area where you have a very large stash. You can place anything you have gained during gameplay into this stash for later use. This is a very handy place to save weapons that are less effective in certain areas of the game and swap out for more effective ones. What’s also great is that you can access this while in the game in a kind of sneaky way. Once you reach a checkpoint, just pause and select restart. It will start you right back at this checkpoint but will allow you to access your secret stash first. This will allow you to unload your full inventory or grab a better weapon for the boss of the stage. I use this technique quite often.

Aside from story elements and these minor control changes, there really isn’t much difference from RE4. Shiva is pretty much an armed Ashley. Weapon types are essentially all the same albeit a larger selection. Controls still have the annoying – stop to shoot – style. It’s Resident Evil 4 with a facelift. I love it all the same.

-Great graphics
-Decent story
-Great weapon selection
-Good replay value
-True to the series (perhaps too true concerning controls)

My grade for this game would be $70/$90 for the collector’s edition or a $50/$60 for standard.

Devil’s Tongue

I like to keep track of the progress of my devil’s tongue year after year. It was a gift from a friend and it started out as a single bulb about the size of a lemon but has since become about the size of a grapefruit. It’s awesome. Not only that but it has cloned little buds for me as well. The image only shows 3 but there are plenty more small one’s where those came from. The darn thing just grows so quickly and that’s what I really love about them. I’m hoping to get it to the full estimated 25 cm diameter. That would be awesome.

My PS3 HDD Upgrade

Well I finally did it. I’ve been eyeing a couple of hard drives for my PS3 lately and I decided to just bite the bullet and get one. It was probably more out of necessity than anything because of my 60 gig HDD (55 usable) I was at 1163MB left. That’s what was actually left after the manditory Resident Evil 5 install. I didn’t figure that 1GB was gonna last too long.

You know, I was a little stand offish about doing it but it truly is as easy as different sites and blogs have said.

1. Take the HDD cover off.

2. Unscrew the blue screw. Slide the HDD towards the front of the PS3 using the attached handle then slide it out.

3. Remove the old hard drive from the frame. Need to remove 4 tiny screws.

4. Follow these instructions in reverse (with the new drive) and boot up the system. Follow onscreen instructions.

*One thing to note is that the screws are pretty soft and are easily stripped. Make sure to get a very tight fitting screwdriver and take your time in this process. Better to do it right the first time. Don’t want to have to find a way to remove tiny stripped screws from your delicate piece of hardware. That’s just my opinion.

Now there is the added steps of backing up your hard drive and restoring all of it but that’s pretty easy as well. After my complete install and backup restore, I’m now at 216GB left to burn. Ahh it’s nice to have breathing room again.

Fallout 3 Finality

Well I have finally completed this game and collected a platinum trophy while at it. I have to tell you, this is an amazing game. To me it was worth every penny I spent on it and thensome. The sheer size of the game and openess of choices make this a worthwhile experience for any gamer.

What I loved:

• Many options for customizing your character. Replay value is about as high as it can be for any game.
• Great weapon selection.
• Alignment choices which alter the game much more than others that have tried the same.
• V.A.T.S.
• Huge map that is open for the explorer in all of us. Very well executed.
• Open ended gameplay.

What I hated:

• Constant system freezes.
• Many graphical glitches.
• Quest glitches.

My final score for this game is $70/$80 for the CE ($50/$60 standard edition) The Vault-Tec Bobblehead is awesome.

I would have given this a perfect score but the game is plagued with too many glitches. It truly does detract from the experience.

Bottom line, this is an amazing game that any gamer should play. If I were to do it again, I’d get the 360 version for the simple fact that it has the DLC.