Review of 2K’s Borderlands
I’ve spent the better part of the past weekend playing through Borderlands, a new first person shooter with RPG elements from 2K. I had fun playing so here are my thoughts on the game.
What was interesting: I liked the Diablo similarities where you get procedurally generated loot for killing enemies. While it can be cumbersome at times to sort through all the drops it did certainly feel satisfying when you found the rapid-fire-rocket-launcher-of-lighting-your-enemy’s-face-on-fire. The tech tree part was fun too, I played as a Berserker and leveled up my ability to punch people to death instead of the tried and true shooting method. The missions that you picked up, while mostly formulaic, kept me engaged enough to want to keep playing to see what happened next. Finally, I really enjoyed the voice acting for a couple of the characters, especially the hillbilly who offers you vehicles (”Get you one!”)
What was ok: The vehicle sections were about as mediocre as I expected, and felt very reminiscent of Halo Warthog Jeep (alas, no flying motorcycle or tank). The plot was entirely throw away as far as I was concerned (I’m searching for some secret treasure vault? Who gives a shit?) but luckily the game didn’t really shove it down my throat too much. The game had a nice visual aesthetic with some cartoony/serious graphics, but after a while things started to blend together and I got tired of the whole junkyard look and feel. It’s too bad they didn’t explore different environments with different colors more! The boss fights were generally good, with some memorable tangles, but there were too few bosses to break up the game play.
What sucked: After a while things started to get a little bit repetitive, especially in the enemy department. By the end I was just playing for the sake of playing, not because I wanted to see the next exciting thing. Some of the fetch quests were kind of annoying too, especially when it clearly felt like a fetch quest.
What I missed: The multiplayer! Everyone tells me this is one of the best features of the game, but I only played through single player. After I find my gold trial I’ll give the co-op and death match modes a shot and see how they play out, I’m sure they’re a ton of fun.
Overall I think Borderlands was a lot of fun, and it appeals to me even though I’m not usually into FPS-es. I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot, especially if you like playing with friends. Accept its flaws and you’ll have a good time.
January 18, 2010 | | Comments Off
Category: Games
Tags: 2K, Borderlands, Diablo, FPS, Halo, multiplayer, procedural, repetitive, rpg
The Fire Hose D&D Campaign Begins!
Here is a guest post by Josh Diaz, a good friend of mine who has been helping me out with this D&D campaign. We’ll start a separate blog of our D&D adventures, more on that soon. And with that I’ll turn it over to Josh!
On Monday evenings, a group of heroes gathered in a crowded town square, uniting to help protect their homelands. At the same time, a group of game developers gathered in a dingy dungeon, to help learn the origins of their craft.
That’s right, Fire Hose is running a D&D campaign! I was invited by our Dungeon Master, Eitan, along with a select group of the realm’s finest scholars and sharpest blades, to come around and play in a game of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. 4th Edition is an updated version of the long-running game, and some of the design changes look back to both the original ‘tactical wargaming’ history of its predecessors, while also drawing on the immediacy and class balancing of modern computer and video games.
The rules are long, bookish, and copyrighted — so I’ll direct your attention to Eitan’s simple, but beautiful world. As Dungeon Master, Eitan is artist, writer, programmer *and* executable: he sets up the world our characters will inhabit, and keeps everything moving while we react to new events. As such, he’s come up with a little slice of a world that was richly represented with just a little bit of advance work. Pulling from real-world sources, our characters meet in a small and frozen town stuck on a peninsula behind a mountain range. ‘What’s exciting about a small frozen chunk of isolated no-man’s land,’I pretend to hear you ask? Well, in this case, the town is host to a small magical gateway that leads to a much larger town, and acts as kind of a trading post for the peninsula and it’s inhabits. With a hook like that, characters drawn from all over the world — an elf scholar who came to visit the big city from his wooded homeland, a dragonborn mercenary from a rural mountain rookery — are given both a reason and the means to gather. But if we can get there, where else can we get? And *who* else has access to the portal?
Oh, I haven’t mentioned the invasion, the ambush, or the kobold slingers with their potions of explodey doom yet. But one of the neat things about D&D is that in the course of play, you always end up with more threads than you planned, and that just means there’s something to think about for next week. Adieu!
July 31, 2009 | | Comments (1)
Category: Events, Games
Tags: adventure, D&D, diaz, dragons, dungeons, fantasy, game, josh, kobold, playing, role, rpg
What We’re Playing: Grow Cube
Got a few hours to kill? Are you really into trial and error? Then do I have a game for you! Grow Cube is a fun and addicting little game in which you add elements to a cube and watch them interact. It seems simple but the combinations possible through trial and error make the game really interesting. It’s also wicked cool to see the little dudes do their thing and run around the environment. While the end goal may not be clear I can assure you that you will know when you’ve won.
If you like the game I’d recommend checking out all the other offerings at by EYEZMAZE, like the Grow RPG. I might do a separate blog post on that one later.