About the Game (From The Steam Store Page)
In Distant Star: Revenant Fleet, you take control of the last remaining ships of a near-destroyed A’kari fleet, and must rebuild your forces as you battle through ancient, galactic battlefields towards a final showdown with the Orthani.
Build your fleet of up to 5 ships (from a choice of any combination of 8 classes) and upgrade their weapons and attachments which give you new and improved skills to use in combat. With hundreds of attachments to choose from, each class has many different possible loadouts.
Traverse the galaxy one system at a time - each step of the way you will face unique story events, each of which has multiple outcomes that can change with each playthrough. Choose whether or not you enter combat, flee or try to talk your way out of difficult situations - but don't think the same choice next time round will have the same outcome!
Combat takes place in small tactical RTS missions that last between 5 and 30 minutes. Enemy fleets scale to always provide a challenge for your fleet and as you progress through the game, things will get tougher still! But don't worry, you can use Tactical Pause to issue orders to your fleet and ensure you have the upper hand in battle.
All set within a beautifully designed universe with an eerily atmospheric soundtrack - Distant Star: Revenant Fleet is a game you'll be playing again and again...
Previous Playtime
0 hours
Expectations And Prior Experience
None, really. The pitch on the Steam Store says it's a combination RTS and Rogue-like, both of which are genres that I always fool myself into thinking I'm going to enjoy and then turn out to really get under my skin and annoy me. This game has mixed reviews, so this is either a game that lacks certain qualities RTS/Rogue-like fans look for (and thus might appeal to me, someone who has had a mixed relationship with the genre), or it's just a poorly-implemented version of the RTS/Rogue-like hybrid, in which case the worst aspects of both genres will hit me straight in the face.
In other words: I have no idea what to expect. The screenshots have spaceships and strategic maps, and thus are very appealing to me on a visceral level. But aside from this knee-jerk approval, I have nothing real to go on. My guess is that as long as the game is not punishingly difficult, I'll probably like it, though.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Borderlands 2 - Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep
This DLC. Seriously, you guys, this is the shit. I may be biased because tabletop roleplaying games are my other big hobby, but I loved almost every part of Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep (except the damned Dukes of Orc). More than just a series of Dungeons and Dragons references, it's as pure a celebration of gaming and nerd culture as you're ever likely to see.
The whole thing is jammed full of clever little jokes about both the absurdity and the joy of gaming, and the ultimate resolution to story was surprisingly affecting. My favorite part was how Tina's narration and the nitpicking of the original Borderlands vault hunters would suddenly shift the reality of the virtual world, turning sunny skies cloudy, changing the name of the forest, and just generally take advantage of the malleable reality of games to make jokes and keep me on my toes. Also, Mr Torgue was there.
As a way of saying goodbye to Borderlands 2, this DLC works pretty well. It was a blast seeing the fantasy versions of the various residents of Pandora (and to finally see Butt Stallion in the flesh), although I wish that Hammerlock, Tannis, and Scooter had been able to join the party. After playing this and Torgue's DLC back-to-back, I kind of wish for a notional Borderlands 3 to be all-DLC, but, of course, without a baseline reality, would something as experimental as Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep even make any sense?
Now that I've gotten through all the major plot stuff, I think it's time to say goodbye to Borderlands 2. There's still plenty I could do - pursue sidequests, grind levels, farm legendary treasures, challenge raid bosses, attempt Ultimate Vault Hunter mode, and then do it all again with the five other characters - but I've already played the game for 47 hours, and all the other optional activities could easily take hundreds more.
It's for the above reasons that Borderlands 2 is on the short list for my "desert island" game. Granted, it gets repetitive after awhile, but it's the sort of repetitive where it doesn't really need to be different because the core activity is so solid that excessive variation would be a distraction. There's just something so compelling about blasting monsters and gathering loot that I'm not sure novelty is really all that necessary. Certainly, I've gotten so into Borderlands 2 that I've been known to skip meals in my distraction, most recently earlier today (whether this property would be a boon or a danger on a desert island is difficult to say). So, it's likely that I'd only really get bored with Borderlands 2 at around the same time as I started to tire of food.
That makes walking away from the game kind of a strange experience. It doesn't really occupy the sort of mental space that can classify it as being "done." That feels like a category error to me, like asking if it is "fragrant." If anything, it makes more sense to categorize my life in terms of Borderlands 2. It can generally be divided into two periods: "playing Borderlands 2" and "not currently playing Borderlands 2."
I wonder how long this feeling will last. When I first got Borderlands 2, for the Xbox 360, it dominated my life for months. I wound up with level 50 Salvador and Gaige, and then I played the DLCs when they came out, and beat normal mode with Maia and Axton, and got about halfway through with Zer0. And I never finished. There was never a point where I sat down and said "you know what, I don't think I want to play this game any more." I just got distracted by the new, shiny thing and moved on.
Yet there was a time before I got Borderlands 2. It didn't even exist, and I had no particular awareness of its absence. It didn't feel like I was missing anything back then. For it to come out of nowhere and weigh so heavily on my worldview is actually quite extraordinary. It's exactly the way I feel about Super Mario World or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Even when there is a long period where I don't play those games at all (and my SMW gap is almost entirely due to the annoyance of setting up my old SNES), they're still part of me. They inform my life, not on any deep philosophical level, granted, but in my aesthetic preferences, how I approach and come to grips with new artistic experience. At least subconsciously, every single game I play (and possibly other, similar media, like movies) are going to be judged against the standard set by Borderlands 2.
Maybe the real question is "what's next?" What incredible thing lies in my future that I don't even suspect is waiting for me, that I can't even suspect, because it will so thoroughly challenge my sense of what's possible that it will open up whole new vistas of thought. Of course, all three of the keystone games I mentioned earlier were sequels (of which, I'd played the originals), so none of them really came out of nowhere, but there's something about seeing an interesting idea get transformed from something good (maybe even great) into something sublime that makes it stick in my head.
Hell, it's entirely possible that I've already played the prototype for my next great obsession . . . or that it's one of my remaining 95 games. I guess I'll have to keep going to find out.
The whole thing is jammed full of clever little jokes about both the absurdity and the joy of gaming, and the ultimate resolution to story was surprisingly affecting. My favorite part was how Tina's narration and the nitpicking of the original Borderlands vault hunters would suddenly shift the reality of the virtual world, turning sunny skies cloudy, changing the name of the forest, and just generally take advantage of the malleable reality of games to make jokes and keep me on my toes. Also, Mr Torgue was there.
As a way of saying goodbye to Borderlands 2, this DLC works pretty well. It was a blast seeing the fantasy versions of the various residents of Pandora (and to finally see Butt Stallion in the flesh), although I wish that Hammerlock, Tannis, and Scooter had been able to join the party. After playing this and Torgue's DLC back-to-back, I kind of wish for a notional Borderlands 3 to be all-DLC, but, of course, without a baseline reality, would something as experimental as Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep even make any sense?
Now that I've gotten through all the major plot stuff, I think it's time to say goodbye to Borderlands 2. There's still plenty I could do - pursue sidequests, grind levels, farm legendary treasures, challenge raid bosses, attempt Ultimate Vault Hunter mode, and then do it all again with the five other characters - but I've already played the game for 47 hours, and all the other optional activities could easily take hundreds more.
It's for the above reasons that Borderlands 2 is on the short list for my "desert island" game. Granted, it gets repetitive after awhile, but it's the sort of repetitive where it doesn't really need to be different because the core activity is so solid that excessive variation would be a distraction. There's just something so compelling about blasting monsters and gathering loot that I'm not sure novelty is really all that necessary. Certainly, I've gotten so into Borderlands 2 that I've been known to skip meals in my distraction, most recently earlier today (whether this property would be a boon or a danger on a desert island is difficult to say). So, it's likely that I'd only really get bored with Borderlands 2 at around the same time as I started to tire of food.
That makes walking away from the game kind of a strange experience. It doesn't really occupy the sort of mental space that can classify it as being "done." That feels like a category error to me, like asking if it is "fragrant." If anything, it makes more sense to categorize my life in terms of Borderlands 2. It can generally be divided into two periods: "playing Borderlands 2" and "not currently playing Borderlands 2."
I wonder how long this feeling will last. When I first got Borderlands 2, for the Xbox 360, it dominated my life for months. I wound up with level 50 Salvador and Gaige, and then I played the DLCs when they came out, and beat normal mode with Maia and Axton, and got about halfway through with Zer0. And I never finished. There was never a point where I sat down and said "you know what, I don't think I want to play this game any more." I just got distracted by the new, shiny thing and moved on.
Yet there was a time before I got Borderlands 2. It didn't even exist, and I had no particular awareness of its absence. It didn't feel like I was missing anything back then. For it to come out of nowhere and weigh so heavily on my worldview is actually quite extraordinary. It's exactly the way I feel about Super Mario World or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Even when there is a long period where I don't play those games at all (and my SMW gap is almost entirely due to the annoyance of setting up my old SNES), they're still part of me. They inform my life, not on any deep philosophical level, granted, but in my aesthetic preferences, how I approach and come to grips with new artistic experience. At least subconsciously, every single game I play (and possibly other, similar media, like movies) are going to be judged against the standard set by Borderlands 2.
Maybe the real question is "what's next?" What incredible thing lies in my future that I don't even suspect is waiting for me, that I can't even suspect, because it will so thoroughly challenge my sense of what's possible that it will open up whole new vistas of thought. Of course, all three of the keystone games I mentioned earlier were sequels (of which, I'd played the originals), so none of them really came out of nowhere, but there's something about seeing an interesting idea get transformed from something good (maybe even great) into something sublime that makes it stick in my head.
Hell, it's entirely possible that I've already played the prototype for my next great obsession . . . or that it's one of my remaining 95 games. I guess I'll have to keep going to find out.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Borderlands 2 - Mr Torgue's Campain of Carnage
So, on one level, all of Borderlands 2 is basically the same, right. You go to a place, you kill the things that are there, and then you pick up a bunch of guns. No matter what anyone says to you on the ECHO recorder, it's all going to boil down to that.
That being said, sometimes the messages you receive to give you a thin excuse to blast the hell out of random enemies are freaking hilarious, and that is the case the with Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. Mad Moxxi and Tiny Tina are used perfectly, egging you on with their own unique brands of insanity, and the titular Mr Torgue is a delight.
I have a theory (expounded several times before) that the Borderlands 2 writing is at its best when it gives you permission to act as if you were playing a video game, and Mr Torgue is a further example of that particular virtue. He is CONSTANTLY SCREAMING IN EXCITEMENT, and is clearly enamored with the spectacle of the game's violence. He is a pure concentration of everything "macho" (he once wrestled a shark wearing a bolo tie) while retaining a childlike innocence that makes it more a celebration of excess than "Dr Pepper Ten"-style overcompensation.
As you know, we are all about celebrating excess here at the decadent gamer blog, so Mr Torgue quickly became one of my favorite video game characters. I mean, everything about him is incredibly goofy, sometimes cringe-inducingly so, but that is the essence of his charm. As much as we sometimes dress it up with serious examinations of theme, the hobby of playing video games is silly more often than not, and it's nice to have a character who embraces that silliness without making fun of it. I kind of wish there was an optional "Mr Torgue commentary track" for every video game in existence.
My only complaint about this DLC is the final boss. So, after fighting your way up to the top of Pandora's Ultimate Baddass Tournament bracket, your rival for the championship substitutes a giant robot dinosaur, Badassasuarus Rex, in his place in the championship fight. Now, on the face of this, it's great. My first thought was "I approve of every part of this plan." Yes, it's cheating, but as I mentioned before, Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage is a celebration of spectacle, so fighting a giant robot dinosaur is more or less the perfect way to round it out.
Except the damned thing reflects bullets. I hate this mechanic with a fiery passion that can scarcely be described. For literally dozens of hours at a stretch, I can make it through the game with a philosophy of "deal so much damage it doesn't matter if half my shots miss and I have no effective defense," and then these stupid bullet-reflecting bosses come along and make me aim and take cover instead of standing out in the open like a moron. It's a jarring and unfortunate reminder that I'm not actually good at the game.
So, this DLC was mostly incredibly fun, with a great new character and some hilarious performances by a couple of the main game's MVPs, but then it fell apart in the last ten minutes and unnecessarily whiffed what should have been an easy climax.
That being said, sometimes the messages you receive to give you a thin excuse to blast the hell out of random enemies are freaking hilarious, and that is the case the with Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. Mad Moxxi and Tiny Tina are used perfectly, egging you on with their own unique brands of insanity, and the titular Mr Torgue is a delight.
I have a theory (expounded several times before) that the Borderlands 2 writing is at its best when it gives you permission to act as if you were playing a video game, and Mr Torgue is a further example of that particular virtue. He is CONSTANTLY SCREAMING IN EXCITEMENT, and is clearly enamored with the spectacle of the game's violence. He is a pure concentration of everything "macho" (he once wrestled a shark wearing a bolo tie) while retaining a childlike innocence that makes it more a celebration of excess than "Dr Pepper Ten"-style overcompensation.
As you know, we are all about celebrating excess here at the decadent gamer blog, so Mr Torgue quickly became one of my favorite video game characters. I mean, everything about him is incredibly goofy, sometimes cringe-inducingly so, but that is the essence of his charm. As much as we sometimes dress it up with serious examinations of theme, the hobby of playing video games is silly more often than not, and it's nice to have a character who embraces that silliness without making fun of it. I kind of wish there was an optional "Mr Torgue commentary track" for every video game in existence.
My only complaint about this DLC is the final boss. So, after fighting your way up to the top of Pandora's Ultimate Baddass Tournament bracket, your rival for the championship substitutes a giant robot dinosaur, Badassasuarus Rex, in his place in the championship fight. Now, on the face of this, it's great. My first thought was "I approve of every part of this plan." Yes, it's cheating, but as I mentioned before, Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage is a celebration of spectacle, so fighting a giant robot dinosaur is more or less the perfect way to round it out.
Except the damned thing reflects bullets. I hate this mechanic with a fiery passion that can scarcely be described. For literally dozens of hours at a stretch, I can make it through the game with a philosophy of "deal so much damage it doesn't matter if half my shots miss and I have no effective defense," and then these stupid bullet-reflecting bosses come along and make me aim and take cover instead of standing out in the open like a moron. It's a jarring and unfortunate reminder that I'm not actually good at the game.
So, this DLC was mostly incredibly fun, with a great new character and some hilarious performances by a couple of the main game's MVPs, but then it fell apart in the last ten minutes and unnecessarily whiffed what should have been an easy climax.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Borderlands 2 - Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt
I was all set to start with some serious social commentary about this DLC. I was rehearsing it in my head, thinking about how I wanted to word my observations as I mowed down enemies and moved through he level. Then I got to Jackenstein.
That fucking guy. I'd beaten him before, but I don't remember how I did it. This time, I died dozens of times and had to exploit a glitch in the arena terrain to snipe at him (sniping, me). The problem was that Jackenstein only had a few weakpoints and if you miss those points, your bullets bounce off and may strike you. Thus my usual "strategy" of throwing a huge number number of powerful, but inaccurate attacks at anything that moves was completely counterproductive.
It was very frustrating. I wound up growling with rage and shouting out profanities more than once. I may have gotten through it thanks to some shady tactics on my part, but that anger is going to be my dominant memory of this DLC for some time to come.
Anyways, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is kind of racist. Not hugely racist. You don't need to buy yourself a white sheet while playing it or anything. It's just it does that thing that science fiction sometimes does where it takes nakedly racist fiction from days gone by and tries to rehabilitate it, but does a really half-assed job about it.
Like, it's not fooling anyone if you take some offensively portrayed Africans, but call them Glorps. And no matter what strange, alien sun hangs in the sky "savage" is not a noun.
Where it gets tricky is that the thing that makes Sir Hammerlock appealing is his intellectual descent from old-school adventure fiction. It's fun to think of him facing down danger by being unflappably posh at it. It's a neat variation on the gleeful psychopathy that characterizes the inhabitants of Pandora.
I think I'd have really enjoyed the DLC's initial pitch. Hanging out with Hammerlock in the wilderness, enjoying some manly bonding while hunting strange monsters sounds like an incredible time. It would have been nice to have seen the bizarre creatures that would have emerged from the designer's imaginations. And, of course, killing for killing's sake is entirely all right with me (in the game, in the game).
The main downside of this is that I'd miss out on Nakayama, who is one of the more entertaining video game villains. He's a real wannabe villain who's barely in control of his evil scheme and is creepily fascinated with Handsome Jack. It's funny the way his composure disintegrates over the course of the story. It's also a nice change of pace to have an enemy who acknowledges your power as an unstoppable force of destruction. His anticlimactic death was the highlight of the DLC.
So, on the balance, I'd say Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is a swing and a miss. I want to hang out with Hammerlock, and I loved fighting Nakayama, but the presentation of the common enemies was just the slightest bit icky. I'm finding that the main thing the DLCs are inspiring in me is a wish for another Borderlands sequel.
That fucking guy. I'd beaten him before, but I don't remember how I did it. This time, I died dozens of times and had to exploit a glitch in the arena terrain to snipe at him (sniping, me). The problem was that Jackenstein only had a few weakpoints and if you miss those points, your bullets bounce off and may strike you. Thus my usual "strategy" of throwing a huge number number of powerful, but inaccurate attacks at anything that moves was completely counterproductive.
It was very frustrating. I wound up growling with rage and shouting out profanities more than once. I may have gotten through it thanks to some shady tactics on my part, but that anger is going to be my dominant memory of this DLC for some time to come.
Anyways, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is kind of racist. Not hugely racist. You don't need to buy yourself a white sheet while playing it or anything. It's just it does that thing that science fiction sometimes does where it takes nakedly racist fiction from days gone by and tries to rehabilitate it, but does a really half-assed job about it.
Like, it's not fooling anyone if you take some offensively portrayed Africans, but call them Glorps. And no matter what strange, alien sun hangs in the sky "savage" is not a noun.
Where it gets tricky is that the thing that makes Sir Hammerlock appealing is his intellectual descent from old-school adventure fiction. It's fun to think of him facing down danger by being unflappably posh at it. It's a neat variation on the gleeful psychopathy that characterizes the inhabitants of Pandora.
I think I'd have really enjoyed the DLC's initial pitch. Hanging out with Hammerlock in the wilderness, enjoying some manly bonding while hunting strange monsters sounds like an incredible time. It would have been nice to have seen the bizarre creatures that would have emerged from the designer's imaginations. And, of course, killing for killing's sake is entirely all right with me (in the game, in the game).
The main downside of this is that I'd miss out on Nakayama, who is one of the more entertaining video game villains. He's a real wannabe villain who's barely in control of his evil scheme and is creepily fascinated with Handsome Jack. It's funny the way his composure disintegrates over the course of the story. It's also a nice change of pace to have an enemy who acknowledges your power as an unstoppable force of destruction. His anticlimactic death was the highlight of the DLC.
So, on the balance, I'd say Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is a swing and a miss. I want to hang out with Hammerlock, and I loved fighting Nakayama, but the presentation of the common enemies was just the slightest bit icky. I'm finding that the main thing the DLCs are inspiring in me is a wish for another Borderlands sequel.
Borderlands 2 - Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty
The Captain Scarlett DLC has the most elemental video game plot imaginable - there is a treasure, and between you and the treasure are a whole bunch of things that need to die. Kill the things, find the treasure. Which is great, because ostensibly that's what the whole Borderlands series is about, but upon further reflection is kind of weird, because I have to ask myself - why did it take so long to get to this.
Like, for the first Borderlands game, it makes a certain sense. They thought the bait-and-switch plot would be more compelling than it turned out to be ("you're looking for a legendary treasure, but then it turned out the ancient Vault actually housed a deadly monster - GASP!"), and when they discovered it wasn't, they made the General Knox and Claptrap Revolution DLCs as a sort of apology to the fans.
But they must have gone into Borderlands 2 having learned from that experience. And, while the game doesn't make the mistake of promising you treasure and then not delivering, it also does not have a really great "ZOMG, look at all those treasure chests" moment (maybe when Lilith teleports you into Marcus' back room, but I'd argue that it doesn't count because there's no buildup to it, and it happens so soon after a tragic loss for the "good guys" that you don't really get the proper sense of triumph).
So it's weird that once again the "amoral quest for obscene wealth" portion of the game is relegated to a DLC. You'd think that once it became obvious that there was significant pleasure in the mere physical act of opening a horde of treasure chests that it would be something you'd want to include in the main game.
Which is to say Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty is a fine DLC when taken as a whole. It just gets tricky when you try to break it down to its constituent parts. Captain Scarlett herself is a fun character who might be a good addition to the Borderlands universe (her constant telegraphing of her inevitable betrayal is such a "Borderlands" thing to do), if only we had more time to get to know her. Unlike, say, Mad Moxxi, she doesn't get any great and memorable moments that ensure she'll come back again and again. Which is a shame, because the potential is definitely there.
If only the same could be said for Shade. It's really the presence of this obnoxious character that drags down the whole DLC. I get what they were going for. The sole survivor of a failed colony, delirious from dehydration and so deep in denial about the deaths of all of his friends that he pretends they're alive in some kind of macabre puppet show and then latches onto you with stalker-like intensity due to the sheer desperation of his loneliness sounds like it ought to be a fun comic conceit, but the execution . . .
I think it falls flat in two places. One, if you're going to have a character whose whole shtick is "he's annoying because his backstory is horrifying" then you really need to lay on the pathos, like, super thick. Have the facade break from time to time, and each time it seems like his story is as bleak as it can get, reveal something else that makes things worse. You're playing a tragedy for laughs, so you need to make the audience gape at the scope of your audacity. Really earn those necrophilia jokes.
The other problem with Shade is that he's not a sand pirate. By showing up as the first person you meet, he front-loads the pirate-themed DLC with a non-pirate-themed introduction. He'd have worked much better as a character if you'd already been working with Captain Scarlett for awhile, and she made you walk the sand-plank off her sand-ship and you wind up stranded on a sand-desert island where you're only hope of getting off and getting revenge on the sand-pirate who betrayed you is working with this delusional weirdo.
Just a thought anyway. Even with these flaws, I still enjoyed playing the DLC, and if it wasn't perfect, then at least I got to open a shit-load of treasure chests. That was cool.
Like, for the first Borderlands game, it makes a certain sense. They thought the bait-and-switch plot would be more compelling than it turned out to be ("you're looking for a legendary treasure, but then it turned out the ancient Vault actually housed a deadly monster - GASP!"), and when they discovered it wasn't, they made the General Knox and Claptrap Revolution DLCs as a sort of apology to the fans.
But they must have gone into Borderlands 2 having learned from that experience. And, while the game doesn't make the mistake of promising you treasure and then not delivering, it also does not have a really great "ZOMG, look at all those treasure chests" moment (maybe when Lilith teleports you into Marcus' back room, but I'd argue that it doesn't count because there's no buildup to it, and it happens so soon after a tragic loss for the "good guys" that you don't really get the proper sense of triumph).
So it's weird that once again the "amoral quest for obscene wealth" portion of the game is relegated to a DLC. You'd think that once it became obvious that there was significant pleasure in the mere physical act of opening a horde of treasure chests that it would be something you'd want to include in the main game.
Which is to say Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty is a fine DLC when taken as a whole. It just gets tricky when you try to break it down to its constituent parts. Captain Scarlett herself is a fun character who might be a good addition to the Borderlands universe (her constant telegraphing of her inevitable betrayal is such a "Borderlands" thing to do), if only we had more time to get to know her. Unlike, say, Mad Moxxi, she doesn't get any great and memorable moments that ensure she'll come back again and again. Which is a shame, because the potential is definitely there.
If only the same could be said for Shade. It's really the presence of this obnoxious character that drags down the whole DLC. I get what they were going for. The sole survivor of a failed colony, delirious from dehydration and so deep in denial about the deaths of all of his friends that he pretends they're alive in some kind of macabre puppet show and then latches onto you with stalker-like intensity due to the sheer desperation of his loneliness sounds like it ought to be a fun comic conceit, but the execution . . .
I think it falls flat in two places. One, if you're going to have a character whose whole shtick is "he's annoying because his backstory is horrifying" then you really need to lay on the pathos, like, super thick. Have the facade break from time to time, and each time it seems like his story is as bleak as it can get, reveal something else that makes things worse. You're playing a tragedy for laughs, so you need to make the audience gape at the scope of your audacity. Really earn those necrophilia jokes.
The other problem with Shade is that he's not a sand pirate. By showing up as the first person you meet, he front-loads the pirate-themed DLC with a non-pirate-themed introduction. He'd have worked much better as a character if you'd already been working with Captain Scarlett for awhile, and she made you walk the sand-plank off her sand-ship and you wind up stranded on a sand-desert island where you're only hope of getting off and getting revenge on the sand-pirate who betrayed you is working with this delusional weirdo.
Just a thought anyway. Even with these flaws, I still enjoyed playing the DLC, and if it wasn't perfect, then at least I got to open a shit-load of treasure chests. That was cool.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Borderlands 2 - 20/20 hours
I'm actually at 21 hours, but since I was so close to beating the game at 20 hours, I decided to hold off on writing a post.
So, Borderlands 2's story is just a thin wisp of nothing. That's not a criticism, just an observation. You want to kill Handsome Jack and stop him from reviving an ancient monster. You do this mostly by going to places and killing things, gathering macguffins, and listening to Handsome Jack insult you. There's a twist about 15 hours in where a couple of major characters die, but it's one of those twists that's so structurally obvious that it does not come at a surprise.
If the plot isn't anything to write home about, the texture of the game, the details of the world and the characters are more than enough to hold my interest. From Lilith's brash psychopathy to Sir Hammerlock's genteel loquaciousness, to Handsome Jack's unfathomable dickishness. Around every corner is something fun to see, some joke to enjoy.
It's a good background for the relentless shooting and looting gameplay. On the one hand you have this mindless, almost compulsive activity, and on the other you have this clever and amusing commentary. It's a perfect blend of rhythms to hold my interest for hours at a time.
How best to describe what I'm like when I play Borderlands 2? You know how there are these movies and tv shows where the writers are clearly ignorant about video games, so they portray the "gamer" character as zoned out in front of a flickering television, seemingly oblivious to both the world around him (and it's almost always a "him") and the horrifying noises coming from the television, clearly in a semi-comatose state caused by sensory overload from the orgy of violence in front of him?
Yeah . . .
There's just something about the combination of short-term mayhem, long-term character-planning, and constant accumulation of new weapons that sends me into a blasting, grinding, hoarding fugue.
My favorite character is Salvador, the Gunzerker. He gets the ability to wield two weapons at once, and his playstyle encourages holding down the trigger buttons and just unloading with everything you have all the time (once you've snagged the abilities that make that possible, that is), and it's just such an amazing experience. I'm constantly at the brink of catastrophe, cackling with homicidal glee (metaphorically . . . mostly) and much like Pandora is a perfect video game world, Salvador is a perfect video game character because his prescripted screaming tracks perfectly with my spontaneous reactions to the game itself. It may not be sophisticated or deep, but it is clever, and when he goes berserk and screams "BERSERK SCREAMING!" he is speaking the language of my heart.
It's a strange paradox of my nature. Most of the time, many would describe me as staid, methodical, and risk-averse, but in certain games that give me the opportunity to attack, I'm the sort of player who lets the red mist descend over his sight and just goes all-out on offense. That makes Salvador my favorite character, but honestly, I take the same approach with all the other characters.
Which is kind of the great and terrible thing about Borderlands 2. It makes me want to delve deep into it, to play new game+ and new game++, to try different characters and different builds with those characters, to collect a whole menagerie of exotic guns and to beat all the optional bosses. It's a set of goals that will potentially take hundreds of hours (I know, because I spent hundreds of hours on the console version and didn't get even halfway there). It's a black hole of time that is incredibly pleasurable and very addictive.
The thing is, if it weren't for the blog, I'd want to get addicted. I have been before, and it was great. I was lost in the glorious chaos of the game's frantic battles. This time, it will have to be different. I'll have to modulate my expectations and make a plan for eventually coming down.
As far as I can foresee, the way it's going down is this - I'll start up True Vault Hunter mode and fight my way to Sanctuary, then start up the DLC, going in chronological order from Captain Scarlet to Hammerlock's Hunt, then Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, and Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. My hope is that by waiting to play the DLC until True Vault Hunter mode, I'll be able to evade the level cap on the normal game and allow the level-scaling to keep up with my character's advancement. It might be possible that I'll gain enough levels to blow past 50, in which case Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode could be more difficult than necessary (though that's academic, because I don't intend to try it).
After I do all that stuff, my plan is to just walk away (after writing a neat blog post, of course). That's easier said than done, because even after the numerous hours and four DLCs worth of events, I'll have just started the real game. But it will be an interesting test of willpower to see if I can do it.
So, Borderlands 2's story is just a thin wisp of nothing. That's not a criticism, just an observation. You want to kill Handsome Jack and stop him from reviving an ancient monster. You do this mostly by going to places and killing things, gathering macguffins, and listening to Handsome Jack insult you. There's a twist about 15 hours in where a couple of major characters die, but it's one of those twists that's so structurally obvious that it does not come at a surprise.
If the plot isn't anything to write home about, the texture of the game, the details of the world and the characters are more than enough to hold my interest. From Lilith's brash psychopathy to Sir Hammerlock's genteel loquaciousness, to Handsome Jack's unfathomable dickishness. Around every corner is something fun to see, some joke to enjoy.
It's a good background for the relentless shooting and looting gameplay. On the one hand you have this mindless, almost compulsive activity, and on the other you have this clever and amusing commentary. It's a perfect blend of rhythms to hold my interest for hours at a time.
How best to describe what I'm like when I play Borderlands 2? You know how there are these movies and tv shows where the writers are clearly ignorant about video games, so they portray the "gamer" character as zoned out in front of a flickering television, seemingly oblivious to both the world around him (and it's almost always a "him") and the horrifying noises coming from the television, clearly in a semi-comatose state caused by sensory overload from the orgy of violence in front of him?
Yeah . . .
There's just something about the combination of short-term mayhem, long-term character-planning, and constant accumulation of new weapons that sends me into a blasting, grinding, hoarding fugue.
My favorite character is Salvador, the Gunzerker. He gets the ability to wield two weapons at once, and his playstyle encourages holding down the trigger buttons and just unloading with everything you have all the time (once you've snagged the abilities that make that possible, that is), and it's just such an amazing experience. I'm constantly at the brink of catastrophe, cackling with homicidal glee (metaphorically . . . mostly) and much like Pandora is a perfect video game world, Salvador is a perfect video game character because his prescripted screaming tracks perfectly with my spontaneous reactions to the game itself. It may not be sophisticated or deep, but it is clever, and when he goes berserk and screams "BERSERK SCREAMING!" he is speaking the language of my heart.
It's a strange paradox of my nature. Most of the time, many would describe me as staid, methodical, and risk-averse, but in certain games that give me the opportunity to attack, I'm the sort of player who lets the red mist descend over his sight and just goes all-out on offense. That makes Salvador my favorite character, but honestly, I take the same approach with all the other characters.
Which is kind of the great and terrible thing about Borderlands 2. It makes me want to delve deep into it, to play new game+ and new game++, to try different characters and different builds with those characters, to collect a whole menagerie of exotic guns and to beat all the optional bosses. It's a set of goals that will potentially take hundreds of hours (I know, because I spent hundreds of hours on the console version and didn't get even halfway there). It's a black hole of time that is incredibly pleasurable and very addictive.
The thing is, if it weren't for the blog, I'd want to get addicted. I have been before, and it was great. I was lost in the glorious chaos of the game's frantic battles. This time, it will have to be different. I'll have to modulate my expectations and make a plan for eventually coming down.
As far as I can foresee, the way it's going down is this - I'll start up True Vault Hunter mode and fight my way to Sanctuary, then start up the DLC, going in chronological order from Captain Scarlet to Hammerlock's Hunt, then Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, and Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. My hope is that by waiting to play the DLC until True Vault Hunter mode, I'll be able to evade the level cap on the normal game and allow the level-scaling to keep up with my character's advancement. It might be possible that I'll gain enough levels to blow past 50, in which case Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode could be more difficult than necessary (though that's academic, because I don't intend to try it).
After I do all that stuff, my plan is to just walk away (after writing a neat blog post, of course). That's easier said than done, because even after the numerous hours and four DLCs worth of events, I'll have just started the real game. But it will be an interesting test of willpower to see if I can do it.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Borderlands 2 - 11/20 hours
What makes Borderlands 2 so great is that it is a "gamer's video game." Now, I don't mean this in any sort of elitist "only true gamers can appreciate the magnificence of Borderlands 2" sense. Rather, Borderlands 2, taken as a cultural artifact, only makes sense coming from a background of "gamer" culture (I use the quotes because this culture is not just one of video games, but includes a penumbra of other works like science fiction and action movies, comic books, and literature that are related only in the sense that they are all things that "gamers" like, however you might be inclined to identify such people). This may not sound like much of a strength, but I believe that Borderlands 2 manages to thread the needle of using its cultural context to enrich and inform the game without seeming to exclude or alienate players who don't share the culture (although, admittedly, this comes from someone who is on the "inside").
It's not just the game's numerous pop-culture references. The world of Borderlands 2, Pandora, is a video game world. Beyond simply being "a world in a video game," Pandora operates on video game logic. Its inhabitants act like video game characters. Everyone you meet is ludicrously bloodthirsty. Violence is treated like an amusement. Killing is a hobby. And that's just the "heroes." Outside the walls of Sanctuary, everything (with the exception of certain quest-giving NPCs) is constantly trying to kill you.
And maybe, in an idle moment, you might think that perhaps Pandora is a savage dystopia, and that, far from being a struggle between shades of grey (the notion that it is a black and white conflict is too absurd to even entertain), it is really just black vs slightly smudged black, and in the end the only difference between Handsome Jack (the villain) and Lilith (your ally) is that Lilith is not a sadist - to the degree she takes childish delight in her gruesome murders, she does not specifically find pleasure in the suffering of the people she kills.
And when you think those thoughts, Borderlands 2 can seem like a really grim story in a bright, candy-coated wrapping, but then, the thought creeps in . . . killing things is the fun part of the game. Having a ridiculously high kill-count, complete with exploding heads and human enemies flailing around as they're consumed by fire and acid, is kind of the whole point. So what's really going on is that the characters' agendas align with yours as a player.
Can you really condemn that? Would it not be hypocritical to do so?
That's the brilliance of Borderlands 2's writing. It doesn't matter. Thought about logically, the characterization is monstrous and worldbuildng untenable, but when you're actually playing it, it somehow tracks right along with your thoughts. "I want to go to that place and kill everything I see. Why? Because I love explosions, and they might have valuable loot. Oh, I get to do that? GREAT!" The result is that the game feels comfortable in a way few games can manage. It's rare to have a game that uses its medium to such a profound advantage (off the top of my head, I can think of Brothers, Bioshock, and Saints Row IV.)
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go murder some people.
It's not just the game's numerous pop-culture references. The world of Borderlands 2, Pandora, is a video game world. Beyond simply being "a world in a video game," Pandora operates on video game logic. Its inhabitants act like video game characters. Everyone you meet is ludicrously bloodthirsty. Violence is treated like an amusement. Killing is a hobby. And that's just the "heroes." Outside the walls of Sanctuary, everything (with the exception of certain quest-giving NPCs) is constantly trying to kill you.
And maybe, in an idle moment, you might think that perhaps Pandora is a savage dystopia, and that, far from being a struggle between shades of grey (the notion that it is a black and white conflict is too absurd to even entertain), it is really just black vs slightly smudged black, and in the end the only difference between Handsome Jack (the villain) and Lilith (your ally) is that Lilith is not a sadist - to the degree she takes childish delight in her gruesome murders, she does not specifically find pleasure in the suffering of the people she kills.
And when you think those thoughts, Borderlands 2 can seem like a really grim story in a bright, candy-coated wrapping, but then, the thought creeps in . . . killing things is the fun part of the game. Having a ridiculously high kill-count, complete with exploding heads and human enemies flailing around as they're consumed by fire and acid, is kind of the whole point. So what's really going on is that the characters' agendas align with yours as a player.
Can you really condemn that? Would it not be hypocritical to do so?
That's the brilliance of Borderlands 2's writing. It doesn't matter. Thought about logically, the characterization is monstrous and worldbuildng untenable, but when you're actually playing it, it somehow tracks right along with your thoughts. "I want to go to that place and kill everything I see. Why? Because I love explosions, and they might have valuable loot. Oh, I get to do that? GREAT!" The result is that the game feels comfortable in a way few games can manage. It's rare to have a game that uses its medium to such a profound advantage (off the top of my head, I can think of Brothers, Bioshock, and Saints Row IV.)
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go murder some people.
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