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The Podcats: SURPRISE

Gaming is full of suprises. As Gomer Pyle would say: “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”

 

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REVIEW: BORDERLANDS

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PS3, PC.  Developed by Gearbox. Published by 2k Games.

So Borderlands is one of those games that shouldn’t. It shouldn’t have sold as well as it has. It shouldn’t be as much fun as it is. But it is. Gearbox, known previously for Brothers in Arms and a lot of good porting work had been showing the game for quite a while before a massive revamp in art style took place. Realism was replaced by a unique cel-shaded graphic novel look. And it obviously worked. Even though the games features many similarities with Fallout 3, Borderlands manages to escape many direct comparisons by being it’s own beast.

So you’re on this planet Pandora (Seems to be a lot of that going around these days), and while it’s a failed colony of sorts, you can’t help thinking that you’re playing Fallout 3 with better gunplay. In fact, it’s like the bastard offspring of Fallout 3, Mad Max and Firefly. It’s an open world first person shooter with a decent RPG feel so levelling whores (which, since WoW and CoD4, is almost everyone). So you pick one of four characters- the usual soldier, sniper, engineer, chick with super powers, etc and off you go, going from mission to mission (and a few side missions) looking for The Vault. You can play it by yourself or party up with up to 3 other players to explore the world and kill and loot to your heart’s content like all good social experiences. Most believe that’s the way to play this game but I concentrated on single player. Me being the solitary loner that I am, I played the game all the time thinking of the sling and arrows I suffered as a child and how I burned them all and pissed on their remains and… anyhoo.

The world of Pandora is a cel-shaded desert full of wackos and doof doof droids. You visit someone who gives you a mission, follow the way point to your mission, beat it, and then return to the mission giver to collect your reward either in the form of experience points or money or hopefully both. Missions are varied with some kill all of the xxx here, some collect all of the yyy (which usually means killing some xxx along the way) or make your way to zzz, kill aaa after you’ve killed all of the xxx). In other words, it can get just a tad repetitive after 10+ hours which is why the co-op would really lift this game if it’s an option open to you.

The game is put together well and has a fairly polished feel. Levelling and using the menus are nice and easy with a controller though I can’t help feel the checkpoint system and save system needs some work. Several times I saved a game and the game didn’t restart from the last checkpoint I was at. Another thing to note: this game respawns enemies. So when you leave Fyrestone, your jumping-off point, expect the same two or three bandits to attack you from exactly the same spots. This does tend to make the game more tiresome than it needs to be, but it least means that there will always be something to kill to get more XP. That said, the enemies scale with you, meaning it’s easy enough to go wherever you like and do missions in almost any order. The mission briefings even tell you what level you should be at and the difficulty of each mission before you make the attempt. A few corners may have been cut with animations, as briefings tend to be a text screen but the text is full of a wry sense of humour. It might just be the cel shading but this game reminds me somewhat of XIII from the PS2/ Xbox era (one of those first of a franchise games that never went any further.

Traversing the large world is made easier when relatively early on, you gain access to vehicles. While these may control like a golf cart driven by a drunken one-legged midget with blisters on his feet, they offer a decent amount of firepower to make mincemeat of respawning foes in encampments. You can get some sick air with these on ramps with your boost enabled. Just like Pedro.

Of course, one of the big draws are all the weapons you collect in this game, somewhere in the order of 3+ million. And some are good and others not so much, so you can drop them, buy them or sell them at vending machines around the world. You can buy upgrades to the capacity of the weapons and even upgrade how many you can carry and have equipped at once. There are lots of guns in this game. A lot. There are more guns in this game than there are HDTV owners who know how to change aspect ratios when watching old movies (“Say, Honey. Doesn’t Orson Wells look a lot fatter on this new TV?”).

Cel-shaded or not, the game has a unique vibe in its presentation, despite a few blurry textures here and there. The world looks like an early 90’s graphic novel come alive, the framerate is mainly solid and the audio presented well, if you can stomach the comic accents. The game could have used a slightly less old fashioned looking menu system and a bit less repeated dialogue (YES, I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE DANCING. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME, AGAIN)

It’s nice to see Gearbox try something other than trying to convince us Brothers in Arms is a popular, fun-to-play franchise. The difference is, this is fun. Is it essential? No, but if you have a lull in your schedule and can time it to coincide with a friend in the same predicament, give Borderlands a shot.

Controller1.com Rating 2/3

Now Playing: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time

My history with the Ratchet and Clank Franchise has been solid. Although I wasn’t mad keen on the 2002 original, which I thought was a bit overlong and difficult, it did come out in a year with a lot of really solid platformer games and acquitted itself well. A year later R&C2 came out and was much better and to this day is still my favourite of the series. Another year, another installment, perhaps not as great as R&C2 with its focus of multiplayer action over the single player campaign, but still good. I skipped the arena-based Gladiator game and the Clank only game but did give the PSP version of Size Matters a go and enjoyed the first PS3 effort, Tools of Destruction. But for some reason, I have found, despite the obvious quality and ingenuity you find in a Ratchet game (I won’t say Insomniac games because I found the Resistance games a let down), this one hasn’t grabbed me at all.

It’s very likely that it’s just a bad time for me to be playing a R&C game or that I’ve outgrown the series and genre (I also haven’t gotten much further in Super Mario Bros Wii, either). It’s also that the R&C games, whilst tinkering with the edges, are basically exactly the same as the 2002 original in terms of structure. Oh sure you upgrade your weapons slightly differently, but it really is the same game. Maybe the sub-Futurama setting has just gotten stale for me. The gameplay itself is still good but there’s something about the grind in this game that I’m not able to look forward to. Now I’d just finished Assassin’s Creed II (which I loved), am playing MW2- which I mostly love and moving on to Borderlands next, which I have no idea about and is a lot more grindey than a R&C game. But I just can’t do A Crack in Time at this time. The quality is there but spirit is just not willing in this case. Maybe when there’s a lull in new releases mid year I can come back and try again.

So with the disappointment with this R&C game, and Mass Effect 2 another week away and a 4 day break off work (with a public holiday on Tuesday, why the fuck wouldn’t I use a leave day?), I needed something to play in the interim. I did have Borderlands ordered a few weeks back but that fucker looked like it was never going to ship so I canned the order despite the low price. But four days with only MP MW2 would drive me mad. The last two 2009 games I had any interest in playing were Borderlands and The Saboteur. Both original IP’s, both from sorta respected developers. Borderlands was an unexpected hit and Saboteur an unexpected failure that still hasn’t triggered much discounting. I was more keen on Saboteur, seeing as how I enjoyed most of the open world games I played in 2009 other than the first GTA expansion (Funny how the only GTA style game I didn’t like in 09 was GTA). But Borderlands was on special and Saboteur wasn’t. Borderlands was in the store last night and Saboteur wasn’t. Saboteur will just have to wait until the inevitable 2010 lull (everyone goes on about how Q1 2010 will be huge, but not all that much is scheduled for Q2 and Q3) and a nice discount.

I’m still somewhat iffy on Borderlands. It’s a coop game and I have no intention of playing it coop. It’s an RPG with grinding etc, and I normally hate those. But I have found RPG’s with more SF backdrops can appeal to me. I didn’t click with Oblivion but loved Fallout 3. I never played Neverwinter Nights but loved Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect. With ME2 out, I’m stoked for it. But all the time i was playing Fallout 3, I was thinking how dated this made a lot of what was in Mass Effect. Let’s see how Bioware has responded. Let you know in a week or two.

One last bit of website news. We’ve moved into a new studio for recording The Podcats. It’s less echoey that the room we’ve recorded in for the last six months (and yes it is  a functioning, if poorly located audio studio). It is apparently a temp location so we might be moving again in 6 months or we may not. Management inertia is like that. It’s a better space for our purposes but it has a caveat, it’s not set up to focus test games (other than PC titles, or handhelds for obvious reasons) so expect fewer Focus Test-style shows and more chat.

So there’s other other stuff out there

So you don’t want to jump on the MW2 bandwagon. What do you play if you’ve already played Trials HD, Infamous, Uncharted 2, Shadow Complex, ODST et al to death?

NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS Wii (Wii)

A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS. let me repeat that: A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS!!! Now with a 4player coop mode similar to Legend of Zelda Four Swords. But it’s a mother fucking Mario game. And a motherfucking Mario platformer and a motherfucking motherfucking 2D Mario platformer! 2.5 D is the new 3D. Super Mario Galaxy was pretty good but I still enjoy the 2D mario games more (despite generally preferring 3D games).

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (PC, 360, PS3)

EA/Bioware’s return to a fantasy-world hardcore western RPG. A tweak everything, serious, 100 gazilliion hours single player experience that makes Oblivion’s single player look brief. If you love RPG’s, have a lot of time on your hands and DON’T play WoW, you’ll probably love this.

BORDERLANDS (PC, 360, PS3)

Poor Gearbox. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Gearbox show that there is something for Fallout 3 fans this year. A shooter RPG with more weapons than Denmark (to paraphrase). The loot whore in us all can take heart in the post apocalyptic wasteland, and then shoot the shit out of it.

ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 (PC, 360, PS3)

Now, the first one was promise unfulfilled incarnate. If you loved doing what you did in the first hour enough to do it for another 15 with less variety than scenes in Groundhog Day, then you would have loved it. For everyone else there were lots of other, better games released then. Ubisoft say they’ve learned lots of lessons from their past mistakes. ORLY?

FORZA 3 (PS3)

What is likely to be one of the better regarded driving games of the year. So if you like driving games. Get this. If you don’t like driving games, get this and return it for store credit and get something you do like. Or don’t. Or do. I don’t care.

Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)

Overshadowed by Uncharted 2, there is a new R&C game out. And it may well be the last time Insomniac even attempts making a 60fps game. It’s not Resistance so it’s worth getting.

Saboteur (360, PS3)

I might be the only person interested in this game. I like WWII history. I find it an interesting subject (unlike many). Saboteur looks to be a fun take on the open world genre that has flummoxed Pandemic technically in the past.

A decent selection to be sure. And once you clear those there will be Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Convictions and Bad Company 2 and much, much more… Bring it on!