In which Sweep embraces the 21st century

by sweep

So I bought borderlands Completely contradicting my entire previous blog. Oh well. You read it already. You can't unread it, try though you might. Borderlands is a game that seems slightly overwhelmed by itself. It works as an adventure game, with good characters and a simple yet solid plot. It works as a shooter, with nice animations of heads exploding and an assortment of exotic weaponry. It...

So I bought borderlands

Completely contradicting my entire previous blog.

Oh well. You read it already. You can't unread it, try though you might.

Borderlands is a game that seems slightly overwhelmed by itself. It works as an adventure game, with good characters and a simple yet solid plot. It works as a shooter, with nice animations of heads exploding and an assortment of exotic weaponry. It even works as an RPG, with loot and class-based gameplay. It does all these things well. However a passable fault in one genre makes borderlands a complete nightmare in the next. There are features which are not required in a shooter but are a complete bitch to be without in an RPG. Oh how I curse for want of a minimap, for example. The quest system is frustrating to say the least - the planet is a wasteland and there is very little to orient yourself with except the map, which is zoomed in unhelpfully close by default. The map will display a SINGLE objective for your current quest, which means you could be walking past dozens of other objectives and never even know it. This usually means you bounce back and forth pointlessly to areas you have already cleared because the game didn't think it pertinent to inform you of the item you aimlessly walked past not 5 minutes ago.

In fact the entire interface is unsuitable for the pace of the game. Item management, comparing and selling items, checking your map, browsing you list of quests - are all clunky and impractical. This is fine for the shooting oriented focus of the game, but once all your enemies have collapsed in a dishevelled pile of bones and you are tasked with sorting through their mangled remains, the disorganised lack of polish really kicks hard. For a game so obviously designed for teams of 4 the multiplayer focus also seems unjustifiably neglected. The inability to trade with other players is frustrating, the server browser is complete wank, and there seem to be an awful lot of fetch quests which don't actually require 3 assistants to complete.

It's easy, and entertaining, to write criticism for something I have long held in contempt. There are aspects to Borderlands which are straight up simple awesomeness. I love the gritty sense of insanity which has swept the entire planet, the bedraggled characters and general desperate atmosphere of the game has been pitched perfectly with the great writing and style of the combat. I never thought I would be able to enjoy a game which tells me exactly how powerful my guns are by flashing numbers on the screen but finding the perfect weapon that reflects my playing style is turning into a slight obsession of mine. All I know is that it's some kind of rocket launcher...

I'm enjoying my time with borderlands, not a huge amount but enough to keep playing. I'm level 21 and I plan on finishing the game over the next few weeks. I'm actually enjoying it so much I might have to try Fallout 3...

GEARS 3 NEWS!!

I fucking hate space marines, but for some reason I just can't get enough of Gears Of War. Apparently the new details that dropped today reveal that Gears 3 will feature underwater combat against huge tentacled locust. Having read the gears novels and having blogged previously about The Fall Of Jacinto I am completely unsurprised to discover water-based gameplay. The entire COG army is living on a fucking island, they are going to have to get wet sooner or later.

Still. Stoked for that.

I'm also super excited for Red Dead Redemption and Alan Wake, games that have been a long fucking time coming, especially the latter. I'm especially excited having just heard about the Red Dead multiplayer mode which features 16 dudes just scrubbing around in the wild west. Say what you like about cowboys, I have a great deal of faith in Rockstar. I'm looking forward to some obscure Brokeback Mountain references.

Lastly

I'm now on Twitter. As the Whiskey family continues to grow I find myself using Giantbombs sister sites more frequently. Instead of re-posting status updates on each site i'm now just going to share the love via twitter. Also this means I get to see words what famous people wrote and that makes me happy. Follow me, if you want: EDIT: I got my twitter account wrong. It's

twitter.com/sexualinfection

OH YEAH!!

Speaking of Love...

I'm playing LOVE at the moment, again. It's a very chilled out laid-back work-in-progress MMO. It's made by one guy and he's a fucking cool guy. He's so cool, infact, that he made a teamspeak channel for the game which people could go on and talk to him about features they would like him to include. His name is Eskil and he is a genius. Do not make direct eye contact, for there shall be a far superior being staring back. Under his rapture you shall find yourself fucking humbled.
Seriously though, it's a cool game and it looks fucking pretty. It's hard to describe so I might make a video blog some point later this week so you can see for yourselves.

That's all folks.

Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep