Unlocking The Vault
So, after a pretty sporadic schedule of playing my girlfriend and I finally managed to get all the way through our first Borderlands co-op game, finishing the story and every available side quest at around level 36.
"If there aren't really roving bands of angry midgets bandits in the future I'll be soooo disappointed."
The ending was a bit of a let down - if you've ever read any forum threads or news comments on the game then you've probably already seen a bunch of people complaining about it. I didn't think it was that awful though I suppose I didn't exactly have high expectations given how bad the game seemed to be at narrative throughout. Without spoiling anything let's just say that the ending isn't what most people would expect it to be, and even the best explanations of what went down still leave various questions on the table. The best and most likely explanation is that the story parallels the myth of Pandora's Box but even that isn't extremely fulfilling. Like I said though, Borderlands isn't exactly a game you play for the story. The silly blocks of quest text coming from mannequin-esqe NPCs would have left much to be desired if shooting and looting weren't so much fun.
"Much less fun when you're on the receiving end."
I wasn't super happy with the loot system. It's pretty badass, no doubt, but from the mountains of loot we got it seemed like I rarely ever found an item that was a worthy upgrade. I would have preferred finding "good" items just a little more frequently. It just needs to be tweaked a little. I never did find a support machine gun with both high damage and a good rate of fire, and it took 10s of levels between each of my shotgun upgrades, for example. It kind of left me itching to play Diablo 2 yet again, to be honest. 
I have some other complaints about the game too, but nothing too major. It was a fun co-op experience, fun enough that I wouldn't mind experimenting with second playthroughs and other classes if some parts of it weren't so tedious to think about replaying. When I get an upgraded hard drive for my 360 (sometime very soon, I hope) I'll definitely be buying and playing through the Zombie Island and Secret Armory DLC expansions. I'm actually probably more hyped up for the possibility of a proper sequel.
As usual for 360 games, not my screenshots. Pretty sure these are from some official PR releases.
March?!
Damn, it seems like it has been an eternity since my last update. I guess it has been almost a month already. I guess time flies when you’re not having much fun too.
First and foremost after finishing up with The Ballad of Gay Tony I started playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on my 360. I wanted to go ahead and start playing it right away to capitalize on the massive buzz surrounding its much lauded online multiplayer.
"There goes the neighborhood..."
I played my share of Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer and liked it a lot. Modern Warfare 2 is more of the same, only now cranked up to 11. Of course adding more rewards, perks, unlocks, challenges, etc. does tend to change the game quite a bit despite the similarities and I’ve talked to a fair amount of players who prefer COD4’s less insane (and possibly more balanced) multiplayer to that of MW2. Still, MW2’s increased focus on rewards succeeds in achieving an almost MMO level of addictiveness that is hard not to appreciate. In fact I had a hard time convincing myself to play the single player while the multiplayer was there, calling out my name. It isn’t usually the most tactical or cooperative of online military shooter experiences but it is definitely a hell of a lot of fun and has become my go to “kill a few minutes” online game on console.
I did eventually finish up the single player campaign on “hardened” difficulty and unfortunately enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed Call of Duty 4’s. Most of the observations I made in my write up of COD4 a few months back remain true in its sequel. It’s a highly polished experience but I’m just not a big fan of the whole “get funneled around the map while running and gunning through hordes of enemies” thing and would rather be granted the freedom to use some actual tactics to complete my objectives. I suppose the checkpoints are a little better this time around. There have also been claims that there are now always a finite number of enemies so you can never run into nigh impossible situations facing seemingly infinitely spawning enemies that you often could in previous COD games. While this may be true it is honestly hard to tell as the unpleasant, often controller-smashingly frustrating “meat grinder” sections of old are still alive and well here. If you don’t care about the additional achievement and this frustration doesn’t sound like your idea of fun then do yourself a favor and play it on one of the easier modes and for god’s sake stay the hell away from “veteran” difficulty.
"Boom! One of the first of MW2's innumerable huge explosions."
While I’m bitching the plot of this one makes the COD4’s story look like a classic war documentary or something. It’s completely over the top and full of weird plot holes. Games Rader has a pretty funny article about it. I really wonder what happened over at Infinity Ward to make them go from writing stories more or less based on real life WWII events to the bizarre shit they’ve given us in the last two COD games. It doesn’t bother me that much – it’s more amusing than anything. These stories at least give us plenty of opportunity to shoot stuff which I suppose is their primary purpose.
As a complete aside I’ve always liked the way Infinity Ward handles first person cinematics and the perspective in general. The spacewalk scene and the flare popping scene on Whiskey Hotel’s roof both come to mind from MW2. There are others as well. They might not always look accurate but they always look cool and feel fairly immersive. It’s too bad they never actually do anything with it by venturing outside of the usual FPS gameplay conventions.
"This mission makes it disturbingly clear that someone at Infinity Ward hates waiting in line at the airport."
Oh, before I move on let me reiterate a piece of advice that has been passed around a lot since it was first announced that Party Chat wouldn’t be supported in some of MW2’s game types. Its usefulness goes far beyond replacing Party chat though and finding it isn't nearly as intuitive as it might sound.
How to mute everybody, all the time on Xbox Live: Hit your guide button. Scroll to the right to the "Settings" section. Select "Profile", "Edit Profile", and then select "Privacy Settings". Select "Voice and Text" from the menu and change it to "Friends Only".
This will make it so that you can ONLY hear people on your friends list in chat (and vice versa so you won’t be spamming public chat with weird half conversations.) It’ll also block that ever so pleasant after match hate mail you might get from time to time. It can allegedly have some odd effects in some games but for the most part muting all of the insufferable shitheads that plague Xbox Live is easily worth any negatives I can think up. I just wish it were a tad more accessible so that one could simply toggle it on and off for those moments when you might actually want to work together with your teammates and the like but I guess that might go against the spirit of everyone having voice on Xbox Live. *shrug*
"Molgrun the Wary at level 7."
On the PC front I really haven’t been playing much lately. I grabbed a copy of the collector’s edition of Lord of the Rings Online for dirt cheap and decided to check it out after not setting foot into (onto?) Middle Earth since beta. Other than the utterly ridiculous patching system I had to endure I had fun. I still contend that it is an excellent game but it definitely feels “slower” and a little bit less exciting than some of the other post-World of Warcraft MMOs out there. Actually, it very clearly feels to me like a good pre-WoW theme park style MMORPG that they’ve bolted on lots of WoW influenced features to, which I suppose is probably pretty accurate. That said like Turbine’s other current MMORPG offering, Dungeons & Dragons Online, I could easily see myself playing LOTRO if I had a regular, small group who I liked to run instances and the like with. I played my Dwarf Guardian for just 15 or so levels before I felt WoW itself calling me back.
It has been quite a while since I’ve really played WoW besides occasional romps with some low level characters my girlfriend and I play but as I mentioned before I finally purchased the Wrath of the Lich King expansion recently and have now finally decided to start working my main character up to level 80. I’ve only been playing it very sporadically when the urge and/or boredom strikes and it has been working quite well for me so far. The new content is, for the time being, pretty fun (if not more of the same) and no matter how sick I get of it I always find it hard not to appreciate what Blizzard has done with WoW over the years. It still feels like the most complete, most polished, and best bang for your buck MMORPG out there.
"Borderlands: not your kid's cartoon violence."
Speaking of MMORPGs Star Trek Online was a game that I was pretty hyped up for around this time last month but unfortunately due to waiting on some features and fixes I wanted patched in and the horrible stability of the game servers during the first few weeks after launch I really haven’t played much STO since it officially launched last month. I’m sure I’ll get back into it sooner or later but for the time being Cryptic kind of missed the boat on hooking me in.
Finally, back to the Xbox 360 I started playing Borderlands. I’d had my eye on Borderlands since first hearing about it but when it finally came out it just didn’t seem to equal the sum of its parts. Of course, next thing I knew peer reviews started rolling in and people loved it. When I heard how good co-op was in particular I knew I had to grab it to play through cooperatively with my girlfriend.
It is very much a traditional FPS combined with the quest, skill, and loot systems of an MMO. Actually, I’d probably equate the loot system with more loot centric games such as Diablo and its ilk. It sounds kind of disjointed and odd but it actually works well enough. The game definitely has some issues (which I’ll probably expand upon more in a later entry) but the combination of the random loot-a-thon treadmill and the furious combat is fun and very addictive. In fact I think I may need to cut this short and continue the hunt for more purples…
As usual my Xbox 360 screenshots were shamelessly swiped from elsewhere. The LOTRO one is mine though!
Zombie Overlord
I somehow hadn't mentioned this yet but the next game I decided to tackle in my Xbox 360 backlog was Overlord. Overlord came out near the launch of the 360 and had caught my eye early. The whole "evil" angle that sort of parodies other fantasy worlds seemed pretty humorous and, of course, the whole concept of ordering minions around seemed pretty awesome.
The minions are indeed cool. As a Games Workshop fan they remind me a lot of Snotlings or Nurglings. I love "sweeping" my giant horde of minions over to an enemy to have them envelop it entirely, hitting it from every direction, hanging on to its back, etc. It's actually kind of brutal now that I think about it. You also can't overlook the whole pillaging angle of it - when you sweep your minions over of an area with containers they all smash and grab items, bringing anything you'd want back to you, while equipping any armor and weapons they can use while gleefully shouting "for me!" Very cool.
One thing I didn't expect was some of the more RPGish aspects - the ability to customize your character a tiny bit, along with your tower. There are some other interesting things you can do in your tower as well. I feel like if all of these things were fleshed out a lot more in the recently announced Overlord II it could make the game appeal more to other audiences.
"Decidedly less awesome than I look."
The setting is pretty enjoyable with it's whole fantasy world flipped on its head kind of thing though the story itself isn't anything too amazing thus far. You play the generic fantasy bad guy (who looks an awful like Sauron) trying to rebuild his evil empire all while subjugating the locals and smashing all of those pesky "heroes" that roam the land. An odd thing about it is up to the point I've played I haven't really been put into many situations where I'm doing inherently evil deeds - most of the quests in the story line are actually somewhat good, or at least neutral, and the heroes and other enemies you kill are usually portrayed as being corrupt or not having been so good in the first place. I'm especially amused by the portrayel of the evil Halflings in the first area - what's not to love about the idea of roaming packs of Hobbits going around raiding villages, taking slaves, and generally being anti-social shits when they're not busy at their massive feasts and smoking their pipeweed?
I suppose the main idea is that you can be sort of a benevolent dictator - ruling the land with a population that for the most part actually appreciates you on some level. If you're so inclined you can however purposely be a bit of a dick, doing overtly evil things on the side, eventually resulting in a more vicious, fear based reign. For instance, early on in the game I found some stolen food that some villagers asked me to return to them. I could have returned it to them but instead I decided to keep it all for myself. Of course another thing the local peasants don't seem to like is when you casually slaughter them. *whistles* Another time while hanging out with some Elfy types I decided to burn down their "sacred grove" just for the hell of it. *shrug*
I almost never play the "evil" side in games that give you such choices but this time I figured "what the hell!" This is a game built around playing a bad guy so I might as well go all out instead of trying to be a goody two shoes like I usually am.
More on Overlord when I finally beat it.
"Get back outside!"
I've played a lot more Left 4 Dead since we first picked it up a couple of weeks ago. Playing it co-op with friends totally reminds me of how much I love playing games cooperatively period. I love all of the cool, unique stories we always end up with after a L4D session. Making memories and such.
The second time I played it I was joined by only NetworkShadow and we ended up making it all of the way to the end of the first act. Of course I was viciously knocked off of the side of the building by the last tank which was a pretty crappy way to die. At least when no one is there to notice and point and laugh. Then I got to watch NetworkShadow frantically try to survive the rest of the onslaught by himself which was actually pretty damn entertaining. I thought he was going to make it, honestly. For the record, I was bitterly rooting against him...
"Standing victoriously over a tank."
The next time we played all four of us got together. We got to the end of the second act and, hilariously, when the ship finally showed up to rescue us I immediately ran my ass off towards the dock, missing almost the entire last zombie push but accidentally leaving all my teammates to be slaughtered. Hobotix ended up making it to the boat, barely, but Radium and NetworkShadow ended up biting the dust... Oops!
Another time with all four of us we made it to the end of act 3 but NetworkShadow died before we made it onto the plane. It was quite an epic battle with all of us almost dieing multiple times. So fun!
"Up close and personal."
I've said it before (on the podcast, in particular) but Left 4 Dead is one of those games that dieing and/or doing bad in is actually fun. Maybe simply because it's a shared experience but perhaps also because the game sort of pits you as the loan survivors struggling against the odds to make it out of alive so it's not entirely unexpected when you don't. Either way I'm not complaining...
Overlord screenshot lifted from somewhere else since I can't easily take HD console screenshots.