Into the Borderlands…(2)

I’m really late to the game on this one as well, but I am finally getting into Borderlands (2). I played the first installment much closer to its release, and was not impressed. While the mechanics where compelling, I need more than a good replay structure to draw me into a game.

The sequel succeeds for me where the first game failed. While the story is pretty basic and generic, it is much more prominent in the early levels than in the first Borderlands. There is just enough there to draw me in, thus allowing me to enjoy the mechanics, loot system, and varied play-style of the classes – all things fairly uncommon to my experience in first person shooters.

Now that I am enjoying myself, I can confidently say that Gearbox has successfully blended the RPG and FPS genres into a single cohesive experience, and one that truly shines in multi-player, particularly with a variety of classes/builds.

I just finished my first play-through as the Assassin Zero. While I started the game going down the Sniper tree, because that felt like the logical thing to do in a shooter, I have had my sights on the Cunning tree for some time. I have yet to experiment with it, however, as it seems to be only optimal once you can reach so far.

I did find the time to respec into Bloodshed, the Assassin’s melee tree. I must say that while a singular melee attack here and there can be common in a First Person Shooter (particularly for close-quarters stealth kills), building a character to maximize their melee capability so much seems like an odd thing.

However, after having spend some time in Bloodshed (and having farmed up a decent Law from the Sheriff), I am really enjoying the play-style. This build definitely shines more when playing multi-player, but even while solo it is fairly strong – due to the large amount of self healing if you spend your points properly.

While I truly enjoyed the first play-through, and am looking forward to my next, as well as multiple DLC’s, I feel like I have to say something about the final boss battle. Now this game has been out for a while, but I will try to avoid spoilers best I can…

The final boss fight is an interesting concept, but unfortunately it sacrifices game-play in order to provide you with this ‘different’ experience. As you are trapped in first-person view of your character, fighting something as large as the final boss, in a fairly small space, is more frustrating than challenging – and more annoying than impressive.

I did eventually find a place where I could melee, as I was playing Bloodshed at the time, but this didn’t really add much enjoyment to the experience as I spent the remainder of the encounter running around attacking (and only being able to see) the boss’s feet.

Mass Effect had a few boss battles that broke the norm (as most of BL2′s bossfights are just shootouts). I can understand the appeal, and the desire to do something different, I just think that Gearbox missed the mark here. Even if the boss itself were to stay the same, the environment could easily be tweaked to still present the same challenges, without being nearly as frustrating.

More to come…

The Mass Effect

My brother purchased the Mass Effect Trilogy for me for Christmas, following a discussion he and I had regarding my wavering interesting for playing World of Warcraft, and a growing interest in returning to console gaming. I could not have had a better way to make a comeback.

At this point in time, I have completed the original Mass Effect, and am nearing the end of the second installment. I was somewhat frustrated at the end of the first game that despite the open galaxy feel, when I completed the main story-arc, the game was over and I was not given the opportunity to finish exploring the galaxy. Being that the people at BioWare are avid storytellers, I am certain this has to do with continuity, as everything I would have discovered on other planets would have been told chronologically before the events that transpire in the final chapter. And while I completely understand that from a narrative perspective, it still put a bad taste in my mouth, which is not how a developer should wish a consumer to feel upon the conclusion of a product that is the beginning of a multi-game franchise.

This did teach me an important lesson, however, and my play-through in the second game is going much slower because of it. I am making certain to consume all of the side-story content I can before progressing through the final stages of the central story, so as not to repeat my mistake. My initial experience with Mass Effect 2 wasn’t all that grande either. I understand having to lose my powers and levels and start at a base point, and I was pleased that they even found a way to explain this in the narrative. What I disliked was the way that, while much of the game-play and user interface stayed the same, there were both subtle and extreme changes.

Having to ‘activate’ being in cover, the change in team-mate display, as well as the ammunition, fuel and probe management systems were all hurdles for me; particularly having come straight from playing the first segment of the series.

Overall, the experience has been fantastic. I have often been unable to pull myself away from the console. BiioWare’s magnificent storytelling is definitely the strongest part of the series. It is an excellent scifi story, with roleplay elements added with expert precision. I look forward to reflecting to the series as a whole in the coming weeks.

Ghosts of Mars

My wife and I are on this ‘B’ movie kick, and so the other night we decided to watch Ghosts of Mars on Netflix. She had seen it before, but I had not, despite my fondness of John Carpenter. Now the movie may have been taken seriously by some way back in 2001, but compared to modern films, it certainly views like a ‘B’ movie. According to Wikipedia (a most reputable source), the movie was a failure, earning 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, and recouping only half of its $28 million budget.

The acting wasn’t too horrible, to be honest. Granted I still have trouble taking Ice Cube seriously, but most of the lead cast was pretty good. Though I question the choice of casting Jason Statham to simply have him walk around holding a gun the whole time. The supporting cast however… they offered no real support at all. Fortunately most of them have very little screen time, as the movie is essentially a zombie thriller on Mars.

The film does break one of the rules of story-telling, by presenting us with a flashback within a flashback, but really what detracts from its value are the television quality camera angles and framing. I honestly expected much better from a director of John Carpenter’s reputation. The ending itself is astonishing, clearly an attempt to leave it open for a sequel, but is by far the cheesiest portion of the entire film.

The film may be superior to Jason X, its competitor by one year, but that isn’t setting the mark very high. (Although Jason X’s $16 million gross actually yielded a profit.) Not nearly enough setup to make you care about anything, and poor execution. I’ll stick with Shaun of the Dead, thank-you, and its not even in space.

Rise, Thunderfury!

This past weekend on a typically boring clear of Molten Core, the amazing finally happened; Garr, keeper of the Right Half to Thunderaan’s Eternal Prison, finally gave it up. Now granted, I only got the Left Half off of Baron Geddon fairly recently, since the onset of Cataclysm, but not for a lack of trying. My Warrior has been around for a long time. He reached level 60 in January of 2006, and was then a Dwarf on Eonar by the name of Mathayus. It wasn’t until sometime that summer that I joined a raiding guild and became one of their Molten Core/Zul’Gurub off-tanks. I spent a fair amount of time as fury in those days as well. So true to the tale or not, I see this as a six-year journey that has finally come to an end.

Last night, I summoned the Prince of Air, Thunderaan. My warrior, like thousands of other players before me, is now a wielder of Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. Actually obtaining this weapon in vanilla would have been amazing, but I never even managed Quel’Serrar back then. Unfortunately the guild I was in was behind the raiding curve at the time, and being the 2nd off-tank didn’t help my case any either. (When we did eventually get a Quel’Serrar, it certainly was’t for me.) Of course I do have a level 80 version of the dragon-slaying blade now, but that was still not as momentous an event as Thunderfury. Getting the weapon now may not make it very useful, but it is still a feather in my cap, something that I am glad I managed to do before the eventual decay of my World of Warcraft subscription.

That being said, running old dungeons with this weapon in hand has been a lot of fun thus far, the proc is really impressive, and makes me feel we need more weapons like this. There have been plenty of Legendaries added to the game, certainly during this expansion to say the least, but none of them, to my knowledge, have quite the visible effect on combat that Thunderfury does. Yes you may be able to leap from a rooftop and gain batwings (which is pretty sweet), or proc a duplicate spell, or deal a bunch of AoE damage. Even the proc based weapons off of Deathwing are not this impressive. When fighting a group of mobs with Thunderfury, the unmistakable happens with regular occurrence, one or more of the creatures becomes entangled in a powerful cyclone. The effect is even more impressive the larger the opponent.

Now you could argue that the potency and uniqueness of this weapon is there because, quite honestly, it was the weapon of Thunderaan, son of Al’Akir the Windlord, one of the Elemental Lords, originally defeated and pushed to the elemental realm by the Titans. Even Dragonwrath, the legendary staff bound to the spirit of a powerful dragon, Tarecgosa, pales in comparison to something of that magnitude. After all the Dragon Aspects of the Elements, and their dragonflight broods were created by the Titans to replace the Elemental Lords.

Of course, you could debate who is more powerful, the Dragon Aspects, or the original Elemental Lords… but really? My point is, more legendaries and cool and all, but more legendary legendaries would be even better.

The BBC and me

Having once again reached the end of fresh content available via Netflix streaming (or so we thought), and having nothing currently released in our disk queue, the wife and I decided to turn our sights on a more recent addition to the Netflix library, television shows produced for BBC.

It all started with Torchwood, a spinoff series of Doctor Who (which is something they mention quite often, but only occasionally truly reveal), about an organization which protects England from the secrets and dangers associated with the existence of extraterrestrial life. Now, like most sci-fi series before it, Torchwood gets off to a rocky start, but by the ‘end’ of the series, its a very good show overall. The final two seasons are setup more like miniseries, only having a handful of episodes, and focusing on one large overarching idea.

From there, we started Outcasts – which is about a human colony on the planet of Carpathia, following some horrific nuclear conflict on Earth. The production value of this series is quite good, and largely stems from the fact that while it is set on an ‘alien’ world, there are little to no special effect shots, just the well constructed cast running around fabulous sets. This is something that reminds me of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, as it managed to achieve the same thing most episodes, with the obvious exception of exterior shots of the fleet.

We have blazed through the first couple seasons of another show eventually brought over to the United States, called Being Human. It revolves around three housemates, just trying to get by and enjoy their lives. The catch is, they’re a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire. Zaniness akin to Buffy the Vampire Slayer often ensues, and while it is certainly not quite as well done as the other two shows, it is certainly more lighthearted and just as entertaining.

We have yet to actual dive into any Doctor Who proper, but it is sitting in our queue waiting for us. I have not seen any of the more recent series (2005+), but look forward to it.

There are of course some cultural references that we don’t get, but they’re surprising fewer than you’d imagine, though at times, with all of the shows, the ambient sound is mixed just high enough to make certain dialogue difficult to dissect through some of the thicker accents. What I do enjoy about nearly everything we’ve watched from the BBC thus far is there isn’t as much of a fous on villain of the week that is so commonplace in American television. Over here, if you happen to miss an episode, they don’t want that to be detrimental to your enjoyment of the series, after all they want you to watch all the commercials, so non-cable shows in particular cling to this superficial style of storytelling.

These series all, to an extent, have larger ideas they are dealing with, and drive the plot through the characters, as opposed to the other way around. It reminds me of the good episodes from the various Star Trek series, where the story and the characters are evolving together in a way that makes sense, and continues to compound and grow as the series goes on.

Well done BBC, well done.

The Man of Steel

It still seems a far ways off, but I am both looking forward to and apprehensive regarding the new Superman film. As of yet, I honestly have no reason to dislike any of the casting, nor the direction they have gone with the costume. It certainly seems to fit the most recent incarnation of his costume in the comics, at any rate. As I pause to reflect, it really is just the bad taste left in my mouth by Superman Returns that causes me to have any apprehension at all. They did, finally, manage to put together a creative team that did Batman justice, despite how awful Batman and Robin was. One of the things from Superman Returns I had hoped they would fix was the cape, leather, vinyl, or whatever stiff material Brandon Routh’s cape was made of may have had the right texture given the rest of the outfit, but it just didn’t look right. Even the blanket I’d tuck into the collar of my shirt as a kid flowed better than that. While it seems to me from some of the promotional footage they are leaning toward creating the cape in post production, I truly hope that isn’t the case in every scene, regardless of how far technology has come since the live action Spawn film.

Superman is a character that has been close to my heart since I was a child, and was my first published piece of artwork at age 3 or 4 in Humpty Dumpty magazine. Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of the character will forever be iconic to me, and many others. And this was the one saving grace of Superman Returns, Brandon Routh did an excellent job at mimicking Reeve’s performance. The characters is alone, struggling to find his place in the world, something we can all relate to. Even more than that, however, is his constant battle with responsibility. Superman isn’t amazing simply because of the things he can do, but the things he doesn’t do. Take a moment and read Superman: The Dark Side, which has him snatched from his path to Earth by the DC Universe’s most vile tyrant Darkseid, only to have him end up on Earth being super, despite having been raised as a child of Apocalypse.

He does the right thing, through and through, good is good and bad is bad, there is no room for grey in Superman’s eyes. It is this clear cut and yet childish view of the world that continues to bind me to the character.

Why the sudden Superman rant you ask? I am thoroughly looking forward to being able to get my Superman license plate here in the state of Ohio, once they figure out what the slogan will be, since “OHIO: Birthplace of Superman” got shot down, since – you know, he was born on Krypton.

Teenage Mutant (Alien) Ninja Turtles

Now, TANT just doesn’t have the same ring to it, so I am hoping they don’t try to change the title.  That being said, I have hopes that perhaps by making them aliens instead of radioactive mutants, Bay hopes to target a slightly older audience with this film, appealing to the matured taste the original audience now has. The later comics, which I actually have some knowledge of, actually focus more on invaders from Dimension X, after the Shredder has met his demise, and the story continues in that direction, as earth is continually seiged by members of Krang’s race. Perhaps by making them aliens rather than mutants, the fight with the foot clan can again be simply the introductory story, rather than being stretched out over a decade.

The only thing that worries me, truly, is the short period of time it seems must pass before something can be rebooted. That, combined with the fact that this means going forward the TMNT movies will be dealt with in a completely separate continuity that the television series, which I guess it was before, to be honest, causes some concern. While their parents attend opening night of this new vision of the Heroes in a Half Shell, their children will be at home watching a far more familiar incarnation on Nickelodeon. Oh, you didn’t now that Nickelodeon was also relaunching TMNT?  Well they are, and if the new cartoon series lasts more than a season, it will be in full swing by the time Bay’s reimagining hits theatres. No doubt the two will incredibly conflict and contradict one another, which is where my concern truly comes to light.

Why the pairing of two disjointed entertainment outlets drawing from the same phenomenon? The same thing happened with Transformers, but in reverse.  The live action movies gave rise to a newer incarnation of the animated series, complete with versions of the characters inspired by the feature films. Did they share continuity, definitely not. I cannot say that I am against us living in a world where a thirty-something father gets to discuss Transformers with his elementary aged son, but this layering of continuities has to lead to confusion somewhere. And that is where I think they’ve pushed the regurgitation of content too far.

/rant