Archive for the 'Borderlands' Category

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Borderlands Review

Posted by Zubon on November 10, 2009 in Borderlands. 7 Comments

Previously: Ravious’s comments

An FPS with Diablo-style quests and loot set in the weird west. You go to the planet Pandora in search of the mythical Vault. You spend most of your time gunning down bandits. Everything has a bit of attitude.

A playthrough is on the order of 20 hours. You can shave off some time by skipping side quests and being less cautious than I was, but there are limits. First, if your recklessness gets you killed, you lose time. Second, there are levels, and skill will only get you so far if half the map can one-shot you. If you want to keep playing that character after opening the Vault, you can start more playthroughs, starting over with higher level enemies.

I am not a great connoisseur of FPSes, but it gives you fun ways to shoot things. It is neither realistic nor cartoonish, just a bit wacky. You can play 4-player coop, but there is no shooting at your friends beyond dueling. It is fun, although I do not know how lasting the fun will be after you have shot 100 of everything.

Continue reading ‘Borderlands Review’

Borderlands Theme: No Heaven

Posted by Zubon on November 9, 2009 in Borderlands. 6 Comments

Game review tomorrow, but today let’s answer the burning question: what is the song in the gameplay trailer and the final credits? That is No Heaven from DJ Champion. The MP3 is for sale at the usual places, which is probably the way to go as Amazon lists the full CD as a relatively expensive import.

: Zubon

Blame November Rain

Posted by Ravious on November 6, 2009 in Borderlands, General, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft. Closed

This week has been really “blah” all around.  There have been some exciting things.  Like a possible new boss battle in Guild Wars.  The Volume 1, epic quests becoming soloable in Lord of the Rings Online.  And of course, the Evil Empire’s RMT sale of drunk panda pets.  It’s all great, I guess.  I would probably care more if it had not rained the past two weekends.

Mostly I have been plugging away at Borderlands.  I gave up on multiplayer.  Yes, I have tried every suggestion (GameRanger, Hamachi, port opening, etc.), and 90% of the time the system refuses.  What drives me absolutely batty is that 10% of the time it lets me co-op and nothing has changed!  Until I see a fix from Gearbox, I am just going to assume I bought and am playing a singleplayer FPS.  And, quite a good one at that.

Last night I decided to head off to bed after turning in a quest, and along the way I got a purple-named revolver that shoots AoE electrical bursts.  I stayed up for another half an hour just roaming around the main zone looking for bandits to electrocute with magnum bullets.

–Ravious
she sure got the boogie

Re-Quest

Posted by Zubon on November 6, 2009 in Borderlands and World of Warcraft. 4 Comments

My buddy invites me to his Ventrilo server, so we can chat while we are in our respective games. He is running his five-man dailies in WoW, I am starting a second playthrough in Borderlands.

“So, what’s this ‘playthrough’ BS? Does anything change, or do you just do the same boring-ass quests over again? Who wants to do that?”

“Aren’t you playing WoW right now?”

: Zubon

Borderlands Ending: Potential Spoilers in Comments

Posted by Zubon on November 4, 2009 in Borderlands. 31 Comments

WTF was that?

: Zubon

Vendors

Posted by Zubon on November 4, 2009 in Borderlands. 3 Comments

You may have expressed your sympathies for the NPCs in your favorite MMO. They never get to leave their shops, and their families miss them. Perhaps they do not even have shops, eternally standing in the sun and the rain in the hopes that someone will come by with frayed rat tails to sell. The lucky ones get to wander along a track, but most of them might as well be vending machines.

Borderlands takes that step. Shopkeepers? You can meet both of them, but mostly you deal with the vending machines they set up around the world. Drop your money in and grenades come out. Drop your sniper rifle in and money comes out.

How does that work? In a sci fi setting, you can have good computers in a box that huge. How do they empty/restock them, how did they get them in these forsaken corners of the world, and why don’t they get robbed? Look, this is a game where shotguns can fire electric rockets and pistols can generate their own ammunition. Being nitpicky about vending machines will not help you when you want to set fire to the acid-spitting dog-thing.

: Zubon

Bad Design or Buggy Implementation?

Posted by Zubon on October 31, 2009 in Borderlands. 7 Comments

Continuing Borderlands/Torchlight week, there is an oddity with the scavenger quests (and possibly others), and it does not seem to affect everyone, which implies “bug” to me. It seems that, if you pick up quest objectives in an order other than the one in which the quest guide points you to them, the quest guide breaks. The little diamond on your map points to nothing in particular or perhaps one you already picked up. Luckily, the item(s) will still be in that general area, so you can just look around for a while; it helps to do this at night, when the green lights stand out.

Checking if I was the only one with this problem, I found many defenders of the current implementation. Their theory is that this is intentional behavior, that the quest guide is only supposed to point you in the general area. Some lean heavily on “scavenger hunt,” which is arguable even though scavenging has a meaning prior to (and hence yielding) scavenger hunt. They must believe that the first few quest points are exactly on the right spot as a way to ease you into it, at which point the real difficulty kicks in with no notice.

The sad thing is, I cannot say with surety that they are wrong. (Some of course claim surety that they are right. Dev comment, anyone? [Update: Scott provides, yes, a developer "known bug" quote.]) I have seen far worse “working as intended” statements. Anyone have the classic CSR response quote on the Everquest raid boss that spawned below the world, something like, “This is a challenge!”

: Zubon

Borderlands – The Almost MMO

Posted by Ravious on October 30, 2009 in Borderlands. 11 Comments

Welcome to another exercise in the futility of defining an MMO.  It’s one thing in the MMO ‘sphere that we just cannot seem to stop doing.  My whole job is based on the power of words (the difference between “a” and “the” can destroy companies), and that just makes this whole conundrum worse.  Anyway, forewarned and caveated ye’ be.

Borderlands could be an MMO.  I am sure Gearbox is cringing right now, but the game came so close.  Borderlands came to the MMO meeting.  Sat down, drank coffee.  Listened to Habbo Hotel cry.  Ignored World of Warcraft.  Laughed at Darkfall’s jokes, and generally had a good time.  But, when it came for Borderlands to step up to the microphone and say “My name is Borderlands, and I am an MMO.”  It ran out of the conference room instead leaving all its good notes on MMOs and many on RPGs behind.

Gearbox Software make FPS games.  They make good and great FPS games.  I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since Half Life: Opposing Force.  Yet, there is no excuse for this.  They chose to dabble in the dark arts of RPGs and will be held accountable.  My bottom line in case you tl;dr redline on me is that Gearbox tried to create their FPS-RPG-[MMO] mashup like an American baseball fan trying to recreate cricket from watching just a few bowls.  (I’ve tried to understand cricket; I’ve tried so hard.) Continue reading ‘Borderlands – The Almost MMO’

Borderlands Bulletpoints

Posted by Ravious on October 27, 2009 in Borderlands. 8 Comments

Actually just for Bonedead, it will be a numbered list.  Heretoforth:

  1. It is very much in some large venn-diagram with MMOs, but the face of its father is squarely in an FPS.  It has kill ten rats quests, pick ten flowers quests, and quest chains.
  2. It would be an MMO if persistence was irrelevant.  Up to 4 players can play at any time, but one player owns the persistent world.  All players will still advance their own quests, achievements, etc.
  3. The gun-porn loot pinata is crucial.  The more people playing the better the loot.  Solo players might get bored pretty quickly.  If opening up an MMO loot pinata does not give you some twinge of serotonin, this game might not be for you.
  4. PC users have to deal with opening ports. GAH!
  5. The graphics are great even at low settings.  I’ll take cell-shaded stylized graphics over hyper-realism anyday.
  6. The level disparity is ridiculous.  The game punishes players for going much above their level, but anything below the level gets popped pretty easily.  I’ve also heard that grouping up with a higher leveled friend equals advancement city.
  7. Did I tell you about the magical gun-porn loot pinata that can give you a shotgun that shoots rockets!?
  8. The story is good, in that, there is just more reason to use the brand new guns that dropped out of the vending machines and puke piles to put more bullets in to enemies.  It doesn’t pretend to be any heavier/complex than the actual game is.
  9. The classes are generally good, but some seem a lot slower due to the cooldown on each class’s one skill.  I am sure it is balanced on some level, but it doesn’t feel that way when I have to wait nearly two minutes to use mine every time while my Siren friend pops hers every half-minute.
  10. For Bonedead especially, Nine Toes has three balls.

–Ravious
and that’s why we call it a “zoo”

Steam ID

Posted by Zubon on October 26, 2009 in Borderlands and Team Fortress 2. 3 Comments

I keep forgetting to mention: I am Zubon on Steam. Feel free to add me, and we can shoot at/with each other. Borderlands is almost here. I’m a Team Fortress 2 regular, but I never got much use out of Left 4 Dead.

: Zubon