All Knoxx'd Up: Borderlands Coop Chronicles

The last two nights Razorburn, Chestar, DrSmooth, and myself have been playing the new Borderlands DLC The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. After playing smooth games like Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Bayonetta, and Mass Effect 2, it is a little odd going back to Borderlands. I'm amazed how janky that game is and that I still really enjoy it. I play a Siren teched up for elemental effects, so I'm always lighting things up, and the frame rate starts going all over the place. There are so many little bugs and polish issues with the game it is an astounding testament to the pull of loot and coop gaming.

Anyway, so we jump in to the new DLC, most all our characters are level 48 and we ran into the same infuriating problem that we ran into with the Zombie Island DLC. If you are four levels below an enemy the damage you do to them is so dramatically reduced that it turns every enemy into a five minute boss battle. It is fun for a little while, and they did it much better than Zombie Island, where we spent probably 20 minutes and 30 deaths trying to kill our first few zombies and our great reward, 3xp points (thanks for tell me up front that zombie kills are worth little to no xp)! I couldn't believe it, I still rage thinking about how they balanced the level differences. I digress, this time around it is a little better, at least the enemies in this new area give decent xp 1000-4000 for a kill.

The first night we didn't do much other than die, again, and again losing more and more money while we tried to kill these damn flying probes that came in pairs with shields that the U.S.S. Enterprise would be jealous of. We were really grinding but somehow having a good time, plenty of slowly whittling away at the enemies shields mixed with tons of "Hey DrSmooth, come save me" (DrSmooth is our item Santa Claus and healer extraordinaire). Some tense, funny, and frustrating moments have come out of this. When we started I had around $9 million on my character, every time you die you lose about 5%, by the time we started getting to a point where we were killing more than dying I think I was down to $2.5 million, you do the math, we died A LOT! After finally grinding up to level 49 the difficulty started to ramp down quite a bit and we started getting some goodtimes rolling with it.

We have had some funny things happen playing coop with this crew, but the standout moment for these sessions has to be Razorburn's figurative and literal crash and burn. There are new vehicles in the game, and you spend most of the time in the early sections rolling on freeways and being harassed by the previously mentioned flying probes of death. We had more than a few collisions, unintentional and intentional, go bad ending in deaths and long walks. We were all raging on how much we hate these probes and how much money we have lost because we kept dying. So Razorburn, riding shotgun in the vehicle I'm driving throws out "They're like Madden franchise updates, THEY JUST KEEP COMING". There was a noticeable pause... Razorburn realized the horrible bomb he had just dropped and committed seppuku by jumping out of the moving vehicle and off the freeway edge to his death. It almost made up for it.

I know I'm hating more than I should on Borderlands, let's just leave it at there is no way we're going to finish our coop gaming goal this month because all I want to play online is Borderlands DLC, jank and all.

No More FIRST IMPRESSIONS

It's taken a bit of monkey-wrenching, but the Wii and I have been reacquainted. Gotta admit, it hasn't been the most joyous of reunions. My interactions with Wii games, outside of your Mario-based game have been clumsy, at best. But, I purchased No More Heroes oh-so long ago, and it stares at me with longing eyes whenever I go to the gaming shelf with something new in mind. So, this month I set the goal for myself of completing it. More significantly, it will be the first Wii game I'd be completing, in the two or so years that I've owned one. I pushed myself through the game's tutorial and first mission. Read on to see how it went.

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I'm of two minds about the game, so far. I have to give it to up to Grasshopper Manufacture. They've set up a pretty comprehensive control-set for a game of NMH's complexity on the Wii Remote. Unfortunately, the Wii Remote just isn't a very good control device for a game of this type. I made my way through the initial level and boss fight, but it was awkward.

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This also couples with another, more personal problem I've found with myself: I do not do well with games that use block or dodge as a crucial component. Be it Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, or what I'm sure will happen with Bayonetta. I just want to hack away. Blocking just never really occurs to me. Hopefully, I can break this bad habit with NMH.

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On the good side of things, I am smitten with the game's atmosphere. I love Travis Touchdown, as a character and the personality he exudes. I love all of the references to geek culture in the game. Going forward, I also think I'm going to love all of the different assassin's I'll eventually take down on my way to the top.

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So, thus far, the game is really fighting itself with me. Gonna be interesting to see if my love of the game's setting can overcome my disdain for it's shortcomings.

Casual Attire: Robot Unicorn Attack

Grits turned me on to this yesterday. It's a flash-based game found on the Adult Swim website, and it is awesome. What you have here, is basically a modified version of Canabalt. The object of RUA, is simple: keep running. Your score increases as you run. Where it differs from Canabalt, (besides the Unicorn-bot protagonist, and that instead of running through an alien apocalypse, you seem to be running through a little girl's wishes) is that you get bonus points for "dashing" through stars and collecting, what appear to be, tiny pixies. The pixies increase in value, if you collect them consecutively. Also, the game affords you a double jump, which saved my horsey-ass many many times. As a visual bonus, as your score begins to climb, ethereal pink dolphins join you on your journey. Truly Outrageous.
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Where this game truly shines, is in it's soundtrack. While you play, a portion of Erasure's "Always" plays. I DEFY you to get that song out of your head after playing. DEFY.

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So, if you have a bit of spare time (work is always a good candidate), head on over to Adult Swim's site and wish away! I have a feeling I'll be doing more Casual Attire segments based on their fare. Grits tells me Cream Wolf is good as well. With a name like that, how could he be wrong?

Massively Effective FINAL JUDGEMENTS... Er, 2

Hoo boy. Well, if you've been looking at this blog much, you probably already know where things are going for these FINAL JUDGEMENTS. So, let's not dally. On to THE BAD.

Advertising Not really a part of the game proper, but what I feel to be the worst thing about the game was any enjoyment the advertising up to it's release denied me. Obviously, aspects of the game are, inevitably, going to have to be shown off to get people excited about it's release, but these days it's getting ridiculous how much gets spoiled in the name of that. Personally, I tried quite hard to avoid news about ME2 in an attempt to have my first playthrough be untainted. Even in doing that, advertising spoiled a couple of reveals for me. For Mass Effect 3, I'd really like to see more care paid to holding back story reveals. I feel like the brand has built up enough cred that it doesn't need to pander to news sites.

Scanning... Improved though it may have been, ME2's resource collection mechanics were still more of a tedious grind than I'd have liked it to have been. Unfortunately, I'm something of an obsessive when it comes to something like this in a game, and I quickly became uncomfortable with how much time I was spending scanning planets for just a little more, rather than enjoying the game "properly". What I did not know, unfortunately, was that there are WAY more resources available to be scanned than you'll ever need in the game. I probably could have cut a few hours off of my overall game time if I'd only known I didn't need so damned much Palladium!

Redundancies On the subject of resources, they're what you'll need to research the various upgrades in the game that you collect by either buying licences for them, or finding them during combat scenarios. One thing I wasn't fond of was that, in a couple of instances, I purchased licences late in the game with the in-game money (which is far rarer than the overkill of resources) only to find out that I'd already found and researched that upgrade somewhere else in the game. I felt a sort of bamboozled in this regard, and would have rather seen the game prompt me when purchasing something I'd already researched, rather than have me waste money in ignorance.

THE CONUNDRUM!!! As I'd posted last week, it felt at times that I was able to get too much out of the game without sacrifice. I think my experience would have been a smidgen better if I had, occasionally been forced to either compromise my morals, or sacrifice something beneficial.

Simplification ME2 goes a long way toward simplifying things like armor, planetary exploration, hub worlds, inventory, and level-up min-maxing. Occasionally, though, I miss that complication... Just a little bit.

Honestly, though, these are small potatoes. By and large, I feel like I was forcing THE BAD a little bit, in order to feel more legitimate when I gush, unabashedly during THE GOOD.

Story and Characters Mass Effect 2 takes everything from the original and makes it that much better. It could have been the rough treatment of some of your original teammates, but I found myself being embarrassed for caring about characters like Kaidan Alenko or Ashley Williams. Hell, the characters you actually get to use from the first game are 10 times more interesting than they were in the first game.

Tunnel Vision Mass Effect 2's more guided path through a series of short burst missions was a breath of fresh air from Dragon Age's never ending dungeons. One of ME2's greatest feats is that sense that you can pick it up and do at least one mission, even if you don't have much time to game.

Suicidal Tendencies The final mission is epic, and that's coming from the perspective of someone who's only seen it done one way. As I'm to understand it, the Suicide Mission can play out several ways based upon how you've played the game overall. I've heard it poo-pooed in other venues, but I personally found the "What a tweest!", to be surprising and casting interesting concepts into the already rich ME2 lore.

Simplification Okay, I know I spoke earlier about how I missed some of the complication, right? Well, not nearly as much as I enjoyed not worrying all the time about whether yon armor is 3 points better than another, or if I needed to get rid of other armors in my inventory just to hold it till I got back to the Citadel to see if the armor I was saving for was better than it. Or, if putting points into personality, so I could get better options when trying to bang the hot alien chick, was a waste of time when I could put the points into a useful combat attribute instead. Or, how I could spend a couple of hours probing planets for ore, rather than driving the sci-fi equivalent of Heavy Rain's control scheme that was THE MAKO. Or, any number of other things. Point is, I got to enjoy the action, and the drama. Not so much with the worrying about the ones and twos behind the scenes.

Normandy II Much more of a living, breathing "camp", than other games I've played. The addition of Yeoman Kelly, who will tell you if you have new messages or if any of your crew members have pressing business they need to talk to you about.

All My Rowdy Friends I was really happy when I ran into so many minor characters from the first game, and ACTUALLY REMEMBERED MOST OF THEM. It was interesting to see how their lives had mov... Aw, what the hell, CONRAD FREAKIN' WERNER AND THA MOTHAF(whut, whut?!) WREX?! Do I really need to explain how good it is to see my old homies? Do I?!

Really, I could go on, but do I need to? Mass Effect 2 will is a really good game. Really good. So good that I feel sorry for the rest of 2K10's lineup having to be constantly ranked against it. The most telling thing I think that I can say about the game is that, after 56hrs of gameplay, I was sad that there wasn't any more to play. In many arenas, it would sound like hyperbole, but when I look back, I honestly think that ME2 is going to rank up there with my favorite games of all time. I cannot wait to see how they top themselves in the final chapter.

FINAL JUDGEMENT: OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!

Up next: Gonna make the big push on No More Heroes. Will I take it all the way? Stay tuned!

Resident Evil 5: Lost in FINAL JUDGEMENTS

PURCHASE

For the record, playing Resident Evil 5 coop with Grits was the funnest bit of gaming I had last year, and one of my fondest gaming memories yet. So, when Capcom released the game's first bit of campaign DLC last week, titled "Lost in Nightmares", purchasing it was a foregone conclusion. Well, Grits and I played it to completion a couple nights ago, and here's what I though.

For those who don't know, Lost in Nightmares is meant to fill in a bit of backstory referenced around the middle of RE5's campaign. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are infiltrating a mansion with the goal of confronting some really old guy who has some deep ties to the Umbrella Corporation, or something to that effect. The DLC itself ends up being a great deal of fan service, making several references to older installments in the RE franchise. Having not played any of the previous games to completion myself, this was mostly lost upon me, but Grits assures me that it was all spot on and very nostalgically touching.

The story bit itself takes around two hours to complete and, just as with the main game itself, lends itself well to multiple playthroughs. For myself, the chapter was much different than I had expected it to be, focusing much on puzzle elements rather than the balls to the wall action that much of the main campaign offers. That said, I had a great time with it once I got over my initial discomfort with it being not what I'd expected. It controls well (considering you're someone like myself, who is comfortable with the RE5 control set), is challenging, and is very satisfying, considering the price tag attached.

Also released alongside the chapter, this week, was a free "extra figures", pack and a pack consisting of a new alternate costume for both Chris and Sheva, costing 160 MS points. The "extra figures" pack contains a few new unlockables for the already charming figurine set, as well as the "Reunion" expansion for Mercenaries mode. Now, I haven't tried that part out myself, but Grits has and has told me that it is quite nice, expanding the characters you can use in Mercenaries and, by his account, mixing up a bit of how that mode is played. Perhaps he will correct me on some of this later. On the alternate costumes side, I find myself to be someone who enjoys the alternate costumes, and for about two dollars, I was happy to dole out for a Road Warrior-esque costume for Chris, and Naughty Red Ridding Hood costume for Sheva.

Overall, I have to say that the Lost in Nightmares expansion is well worth the 400 MS point ($5) price point, and if you are any kind of fan of RE5 you should pick it up.

Having my cake and eating it too: The Mass Effect Conundrum

Let's not beat around the bush. I am in love with Mass Effect 2. Frighteningly so. To further hyperbolize, I feel like the rest of 2k10 is going to have a hard time stacking up to the experience that ME2 has given me so far. There is, however, something I've been struggling with. Something that the game is giving me, but I'm really not sure I deserve. I present, for your consideration, The Mass Effect Conundrum!

Anyone who's played the game is well aware of it's morality mechanics. It's hardly a new concept. You have a choice of whether to play the game as a Paragon, or a Renegade, and much of the game can differentiate based upon these choices you make. I'm the type of person who will choose the White Hat, good guy route the first time, every time. Still, no big. Mass Effect 2 has taken the game in a direction I like, where things are in more of a morally gray area. Good people do bad things for misguided reasons, and bad people are the way they are for unfortunate reasons. Things like that. The issue that I wrestle with is that, whereas I like that I've been able to get everything I want out of the game being a pure-hearted Paragon, there's a part of me that wishes that the game would ask me to sacrifice.

A large part of the game hinges upon whether or not you can gain the loyalty of your various crew members. Once gained, these characters unlock special powers and are more likely to survive through the end of the story. Early on in the game, I was asked to make a moral choice which conflicted with my Paragon leanings. I believed that, if I stuck to my guns, that I would lose the loyalty of this character. I saw things through, as a Paragon, and realized that I could gain this characters loyalty by disregarding his wishes and, basically, guilting the character into being loyal to me. This is good for me, for greedy reasons. I got what I wanted and didn't have to compromise my morals.

Since then, the part of me that loves Mass Effect for it's closer-to-life morality has been wrestling with this. Should this be okay? Would my experience have been more memorable if I'd had to choose between compromising my morals to ensure the safety of a crew member, or stay true to myself but allow this character to potentially expire? I put this question to the great leagues of people who don't read what I write and ask you, can you solve the Mass Effect Conundrum?!

Girl You Rocked My World: Bayonetta Final Judgement

I finished Bayonetta this morning around 2am. Here is the short of it. This game is original Xbox Ninja Gaiden, faster, with more weapons, and a hot ass. If you have ever enjoyed any of the recent Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry games you owe it to yourself to try this game. Highly recommended.

Bayonetta is so Japanese it hurts sometimes, the story makes little to no sense, the enemies are some crazy interpretation of Christian angels, and there is bad j-pop music all over the place. Between this and Neon Genesis Evangelion, every time I hear Sinatra's 'Fly Me To the Moon' all I'll be able to think about are weird Japanese angels. The combat music for Bayonetta is a version of that song. Is there some cultural thing with Japan and that song that I'm not aware of?

The deceptively simple core game mechanic that really makes this game feel like an evolution over it's predecessors is 'dodge'. Ninja Gaiden and especially the horrible Ninja Gaiden II could fall into a 'block, wait, strike' loop that could feel slow and frustrating after a while. Devil May Cry focused so much on the player always attacking that the game could feel like there wasn't much of a challenge from AI. Bayonetta keeps the action amazingly fast paced with challenging AI by dodge only, no blocking. The dodge mechanic is super fast, maybe 1/3rd of a second, and you can even keep your combo going through a dodge if you have the skill. To top it all off there is a great bonus for skilled timing with the dodge. If you dodge just before an enemy attack hits, the game goes into slomo for a few seconds allowing you to pull off some really crazy combos. This fast paced gameplay loop is really compelling and rewarding.

The game control is near perfect in it's responsiveness, you really see a benefit from the 60FPS this game is pushing. Surprisingly the game is fairly accessible, there are so many simple combos in the game that button mashing works great, and looks cool. Don't let this fool you into thinking there isn't deep skill below the surface. Much of the more destructive combos require a half second or so 'pause' in the middle of the combo, (example Y, Y, 'Pause', Y,) it really takes a cool head to keep the timing in check when crazy stuff is happening.

My first play through on normal difficulty ended with 12 hours on it, with dying a retrying I probably hit 15 hours. It felt great almost the whole time, my biggest complaint is a late game sequence where they change the game to a fairly long (10 minute) level where the game plays like Afterburner or something. Kind of a cool break, but the unforgivable is the controls are Y-Inverted, no way to change it, even when my normal game controls are set as normal (the default is Inverted, what the hell?). That part in the game really frustrated me, luckily I was able to make it through on the second try. The end sequence is long, wild, and beyond belief. Crazy battles that escalate in varied and huge ways, and when the credits roll, there is still some really cool stuff left.

The worst thing about Bayonetta is maybe that it has broken me a little... Right after finishing Bayonetta I started thinking about what I should play next. Mass Effect 2, Assassins Creed II, Brutal Legend, I have plenty to choose from. Then I though about how comparatively slow those games are going to feel after what I just experienced, and I decided to wait a bit and not unfairly start those games off on a bad foot. I need some time to decompress from the non-stop-awesome. Even worse the game follows in the footsteps of Resident Evil 5 allowing continued play with all the stuff you got from the last one, and tons of unlockables. This game is just begging me to hit it 4-5 times while I try to get better level medals, more weapons, and crazy costumes.

I think me and miss Bayonetta are going to be spending a lot of time together this year...

Lord Razorburn's Pinball FX "Excalibur" table JUDGEMENTS

The quick recap of my feeling on the base-game of Pinball FX for Live Arcade is: Big Fan. As thus, I end up buying every single damned table that comes out for the thing. Last week, Zen Studios quietly released a King Arthur-themed table, titled "Excalibur". Being true to form, I bought it & here is what I think, so you don't have to...

PASS!

After my slight disappointment with the Earth Defense table's "Over gaminess", I was glad to see a table that returned to a more real-life feel. That feeling evaporated entirely upon my first couple of plays on the table. The glaring deficiency of this table is that the left lane is far too open. Several of my initial shots bounced off something in the middle and went there, directly. First, to trigger the ball-save, second to lose a ball. Let me be clear, this happened REPEATEDLY. Enough to lead me to believe that the table is either flawed, or meant to be played with more of a Tilt-mentality. As that I am a Gentleman, I find the idea of playing with Tilt as a strategy, rather than a mistake just isn't Cricket. Also, to be honest, The Bullwinkle and Street Fighter II tables have kind of spoiled me. These public domain properties Zen's been using come off as kind of boring. I am now, hypocritically, jealous of Zen Pinball's Ninja Gaiden table.

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Pinball FX, at it's base, will set you back 800 MS points, or $10. I highly recommend it. The Excalibur table, will set you back 200pts, or $2.50. I recommend half an Arby's Roast Beef, instead.

January Complete: The Final Push

Finishing Dragon Age turned out to be a chore. I talked about it a little bit before, the game overall is good. It's a Bioware game in every way, compelling characters that you want to know everything about, interesting story that gives you meaningful choices, and some rough technical edges. I played the PC version and found it to be far superior to the Xbox 360 version, which I spent a little bit of time with. Even with the higher end graphics the game still looks like ass at many points, it doesn't look like a game that should come out in 2009.

Regardless of the hate, the characters and story got a hold on me pretty quickly. I really had to push myself to finish the game, given my compulsion to do everything. I found the Dwarven area to be the biggest offender of taking too much time. I greatly enjoyed the end sequence landsmeet and the choices you can make there. I think I reloaded and tried over four times to see all the things that could be done. Anyway if you have lots of time and love getting to know bisexual elves, self-serving mages, and hot rogues this game might be for you!

Surprisingly the highpoint of January's gaming was the RE5 professional run with Razorburn. I was expecting our 5th run-through to be a trudging grind for an achievement. Something about RE5's story is like watching Friday or Venture Brothers for me, it gets better every time. Things that are awkward or dumb transform into endearing moments.

I gave Razonburn a ton of crap for wanting to use infinite ammo cheats because I like to roll alpha... I must concede that killing major bosses with a few rockets before they can even really finish their intro was pretty awesome. Some how we were able to push though in two awesome nights.

I'm really excited for the Gold Edition/DLC, I can't wait to play as Josh during the story and as Excela in Mercs mode, should be goodtimes.

So Febuaray is here... My goal is a simple one, to finish two games in one short month. I am going to finish Bayonetta, and probably Brutal Legend or Assassin's Creed II.

Our goal is going to be to hit some ModernWarfare 2 coop, which I am really looking forward to.