Posted by Joey in XBox 360
Everyone that has read just a few entries here knows I play a lot of games (points over to his ‘gamercard’). Most of the time you can find me logged into EVE Online or Champions Online. Those MMO’s have a tendency of sucking away most of my free time but I do spend quite a bit of time on my Xbox 360. Recently I have played Batman: Arkham Asylum and Halo 3: ODST. Both were interesting and well designed but have not held my interest very well. Halo was great in Co-Op mode and Batman, even though it is very faithful to the Batman mythos and is one of the best DC superhero games ever (that isn’t saying much, though), just did not hold my interest. Kicking the heads of bad guys in over and over just to get to the next boss battle has become blase. The Bat-gadgets are neat but they just seem to be more of ‘this’ and extra hit points, nothing to really strive for.
Recently on my Raptr feed (
www.raptr.com) I had seen a number of people playing a game called
Borderlands. The only real exposure I had in regards to this game was an e-mail sent from my buddy
Damon. Damon and I worked together years ago and one of the few joys we had at that job was designing items for the
Elvis Presley license. Much of what came from my office was the need for more of the iconic “Taking Care of Business” items ‘The King’ had and wore. Damon designed a number of items that incorporated the logo, many of which I sill have in my possession. One of the 4 main playable characters in Borderlands wears a “TCB” belt buckle, so Damon sent me the promotional graphics that showed it. That piqued my interest because anything that referenced “TCB” was already cool in my book.
The TCB Logo for those that are not in the ‘know’:
Originally I placed the game in my
Gamefly queue with the hopes of a speedy arrival (a hope that is hit ‘n miss at best). During my wait I continued to see people playing it time and time again on my XBL feed and Raptr. People that I knew I shared the same taste in video games with. So when I dropped by the store to pick-up a copy of
Windows 7 and pre-order
Lego Rock Band, I grabbed a copy of Borderlands.
Borderlands has been called a First Person Shooter Role Playing Game and while it has a number of RPG elements (leveling, skill allotment, semi-persistent world, missions/quests, etc.) I prefer the description of “Shoot ‘n Loot”. Because you are basically running around, shooting stuff and hoping they drop the good stuff. Though with this description one would think that game play would become tired and bland quickly, but for some reason it becomes addictive and just plain fun.
Why is Borberlands ‘fun’? I think I can boil it down to three things:
Setting – The planet Pandora is just the right mix of
Mad Max,
Fallout and
Firefly. We have spots of civilization but it’s mostly shanty towns with moderately advanced tech in weapons and commerce. When walking (and later driving) across vast areas of waste and sheet metal, you can tell that you and your weapon define the law in the area. 9 times out of 10, if it’s moving… you want to shoot it.
Character Class/Skill Tree – Much like another favorite game of mine
Diablo (and Diablo II), as you advance in level you have a skill tree to allot points within. So you may be playing a Hunter, Brick, Soldier or Assassin, but you can tailor that character to your specific play style. As I continue to play I am noticing that my original class choice, Brick, does not match my play style, which is pointing to Soldier. I guess a restart/re-roll is in the near future.
OHHH SHINY! – The game is chocked full of really neat stuff that either shoots things or blows them up! Each time I see a weapon drop from a mob or creature (yeah, birds drop huge rifles and pistols a la
The Bard’s Tale) I want to run up and see how and in what way this new toy kills stuff! One time last Friday, I spent nearly 20 minutes just comparing the different sniper rifles I had and which one to use. Between reload rate, DPS, magazine size and damage type (some weapons shoot lightening, fire and/or acid) there are over 10,000 weapon combinations! When you add that to your possible advantages from the skill tree, you will have millions of ways to meet people and kill them.
I have not had this kind of enjoyment in an ‘RPG’ since Fallout 3 and not this much fun since playing
Battlefield 2142. This game is a complete hoot, and I haven’t even tried any of the Co-Op or PvP elements as of yet! For an excellent mix of the RPG and FPS genres, I cannot recommend Borderlands nearly enough.
This game truly does not suck!
Now I’m just afraid I will not be done in time for Dragon Age: Origins.
Batman: Arkham Asylum,
Battlefield 2142,
Borderlands,
Champions Online,
Diablo,
Diablo II,
Elvis Presley,
EVE Online,
Fallout,
Firefly,
GameFly,
Halo 3: ODST,
Lego Rock Band,
Mad Max,
Raptr,
The Bard's Tale,
Windows 7,
XBox 360
Today’s blog post will probably only interest about 5% of the people that read my diatribes, if that many. This subject has been eating at me since Dragon*Con. I have been going to Dragon*Con for the last 4 years. Between eating at Trader Vic’s, Chicken ‘n Waffles, paying big bucks for autographs and standing in lines, I do actually attend a few panels. The one I have made sure to attend each year is the EVE Online panel. For those of you ‘not in the know’, EVE Online (EVE) is a Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG or MMO) set within a space faring science fiction (SyFy many may say) backdrop. EVE’s biggest difference is that all 30,000+ players participate on one server. Everybody plays in the exact same sandbox. EVE is run by CCP, which has its US offices in Stone Mountain, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, the same city in which Dragon*Con is held. Even though they are just 30 minutes from the venue, CCP has had the inability to send anything more than a ‘talking head’ to the panel. Last year, it was a single story guy that had little to no information. This year, it was 2 marketing guys and a single story guy. You would think with some marketing goobers there we would have some pretty pictures or new ‘smoke and mirrors’ promotional videos…. ANYTHING! Even those losers over at Sony Online (creators of such stinkers as Matrix Online and Star Wars Galaxies) could muster up some videos and graphics, but the CCP locals could only offer talking heads… again.
For those that have not played EVE Online, its number one complaint is the extremely steep learning curve. This graphic was making its way around the EVE forums about a year ago, but it is almost a perfect example of what people have to deal with when trying to play EVE.
This ‘advantage’ of EVE makes its players a very loyal lot, but it makes adding new players extremely hard. You cannot just pick-up the game and go out and begin shooting ‘rats’ in an asteroid belt. EVE itself has very poor documentation and trying to find out information about the game can be very difficult. This question came up many times in this panel and each time the representatives of CCP sitting behind the table, wearing the CCP corporate shirts, pointed to PLAYER GENERATED CONTENT! Yes, the company itself cannot support its own game and has now relied on its own customer base to provide support and documentation. I will repeat, CCP depends solely on unpaid CUSTOMERS to provide the documentation and information to play its own game. I was completely dumbfounded that corporate representatives would admit (though not directly) that they were so lacking in the most basic of customer support. As the panel went on, the CCP Reps continued on about how they are the #3 MMO in the world. I can only assume World of Warcraft is #1 but #2 eludes me. CCP seems to be fine to rest on its laurels and continue on its road of mediocrity because as poor as they may be, EVE is the only viable space based MMO out there… currently. CCP really needs to get its act together and quickly. Their position as the only player in the SciFi genre MMO field is coming to an end with two HUGE powerhouse franchises looming on the horizon.
The first is
Cryptic’s Star Trek Online which is expected to launch its closed beta testing (a ‘perk’ in the purchase of Lifetime or 6-month subscriptions to Champions Online) in the next 6 months. With the recent blockbuster movie in theaters this summer, the re-release of the original series and movies on Blu-ray, the Star Trek franchise is at its greatest height in the last 20 years. With Cryptic’s success with City of Heroes and Champions Online, coupled with the marketing power of Atari, Star Trek Online will be a force of contention right out of the gate.
The second is
Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:TOR) which according to rumor has already begun its closed beta sign-ups. This game should not be confused with the epic failure
Star Wars Galaxies that started well but entered a tail spin that caused it to crash into the ground nearly 6 years ago. Where SW:TOR has a leg up is its proven development studio. BioWare, the creators of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Balder’s Gate, Jade Empire and Mass Effect, will be taking their RPG creation to the MMO arena. With only a few story videos and other ‘smoke and mirror’ marketing items, SW:TOR has created such buzz in the MMO community, you would have thought it was the cure to cancer.
Unless EVE makes some MAJOR changes in the way it handles its business and customer support its grand ‘sandbox’ will only have a few trolling cats in the next year. Its time to get a swift kick in the ass and projects like DUST 514 may help, but have just as much chance of pulling needed resources away from the important projects. I fear that complacency has infected the CCP team and they will be the dying elephant for 2010.
About 6 Months ago, I picked up an Asus EEEpc 900 off of the internet geek site “Woot!“. For those that are not familiar with the EEEpc, it’s Asus’ bare-bones line. It’s a netbook with a Celeron M (pre Atom) processor and only a 4GB SSD. Now I have upgraded the SSD to 16GB so that I could put Windows 7 on it (which runs very well) and I have also installed a touch screen. The touch screen upgrade has been compared to putting spinners on a Yugo, but it makes it really easy to use while on the couch. Because of the extremely small hard drive and trying to get maximum portability, I decided to only install Google Chrome and a few utilities to keep the machine clean. Any spreadsheets, documents creation, and e-mail would be done in the ‘cloud’ as an experiment. Can I do it? Can I only do work in Google Apps? Is this really possible?
When I first began this experiment, I only tracked a few number crunching items for my online life within
Eve Online. Tracking purchases and interest (before the bottom fell out of
EVE Bank… BLARG!). Now I am using Google Docs to do word processing work on the road. This blog entry is being written in Google Docs so that my editor (the great
Katie McAwesome) can look it over and make sure I am not a complete grammatical fool. It works just as well as Word… and no matter what machine I am on, I can log into Google Apps and continue my work. Having an unlocked HTC Touch Pro that I can use as a USB modem on my netbook makes connectivity much easier, but the idea of the ‘cloud’ is growing on me… I guess we will see how this turns out.
