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weekend recap: the sneeze and the fury

[Note:  this post may be a bit rambly and incoherent; I’ve got a bad head cold and I’m working under maybe an hour of unrestful sleep (though I also did eventually have one of the most hilariously frustrating dreams I’ve ever had).  I did make it into work for some reason, though, so if this post does get rambly, it may also get distracted.]

Things to talk about today:

  1. Had to put Dishonored down due to a weird, game-breaking bug.  May take the opportunity to start over from scratch.
  2. Gave up on Resident Evil 6.
  3. Spent some quality time with XCOM Enemy Unknown.
  4. The difference between bad video games and bad movies.

1.  I was finally starting to get into Dishonored‘s groove.  At first I was incredibly intimidated by it (as I sort of am with most stealth games), as I wanted to try to be as stealthy as possible and not kill anyone, but I kept accidentally screwing up and suddenly finding myself in sword fights (that I often lost).  After a while, though, I decided that if the object of the game is to have fun, and if the game does in fact give you options for killing people in spectacular ways in addition to making it easier to sneak around, then, dammit, I was going to play it however the hell I wanted to.  To wit: mostly stealthy, but if push came to shove, then dudes were getting shivved.  No muss, no fuss.  And so everything was going great.  I was around 45 minutes into the third mission, doing a sidequest for Slackjaw who was going to help me gain entry into the Cat Parlor (or whatever it’s called).  I completed Slackjaw’s quest, and was on my way to head back to his distillery to turn it in, when the game suddenly told me I’d failed the quest, and even though none of his men were trying to kill me, he certainly was.  I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.  Tried re-loading several times, tried entering stealthily as opposed to waltzing right in – but no matter how I entered the zone, as soon as I’d crossed some invisible barrier, the game decided I’d failed.  This was very, very frustrating (as you might imagine), and since I didn’t see any solution (beyond waiting for a patch), I decided to take it out of the 360’s tray and leave it alone for a little while.  Some quick googling revealed that a lot of people are having the same problem – not everyone, but enough for me to feel like it’s not just my own peculiar problem.  That being said, since I don’t know when the patch is coming (if indeed it’s coming at all), I might just take the opportunity to start over from scratch, now that I actually know what I’m doing.   (I’m still terrible at the melee combat, but I’m much better now at stealth.)

2.  In my annoyance at having to put Dishonored to the side, I decided to give Resident Evil 6 one last concerted push before sending it back.  To that end, I played a little bit more of Jake’s questline – his is the most action-oriented, he runs quickly, and it’s not so methodical as the other two.  Started running into weird problems early on, though, where Jake would only pick up certain objects.  In a game like RE6 where ammo is always scarce, it is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING when you’re completely out of ammunition and there’s 3 boxes RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU that for whatever reason the game won’t let you pick up.  (And not just that it wouldn’t register a button press – it seemed to imply that I couldn’t carry any more, which was the exact opposite of my problem.)  Now, between the Dishonored bug and this apparent bug, and the fact that my 360’s been making some loud noises when I start it up, I started wondering if there was a larger issue at work, even though I don’t know how a hardware issue would affect lines of code on a disc.  Still, though, I continued to push on until HOLY SHIT THE SAME ENEMY THAT I’VE BEEN FIGHTING FOR THE ENTIRE GAME SHOWED UP AGAIN.  When even your poorly-written characters are incredulous about the shit that’s happening to them, to the point where they actually say out loud how goddamned ridiculous it is that they have to keep fighting the same monster over and over again, MAYBE IT’S TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE.

3.  So, what with Dishonored’s unfortunate glitch, and RE6’s bullshit, and the aforementioned loud noises that my 360’s been making lately, I decided to go back to my PC and spend some time with XCOM Enemy Unknown, which had been getting short shrift of late.  I am very pleased to report that unlike some games I could mention, XCOM actually works as advertised.  And even on the easiest difficulty setting, it is still challenging – there’s nothing more terrifying than moving your guys into what you think is appropriate cover, only to have a bunch of thin men show up and move to your un-covered flank, blasting you into smithereens.  I lost one of my best soldiers in such a manner, as it happens, and while I exacted a swift and merciless revenge on his killers, I’m still a little bummed about it.  That this feeling is the game’s intention is what makes the game special, and that it’s executed so well is what makes it remarkable.

4.  The wife and I re-watched Prometheus this weekend.  We’d seen it in the theater, and I can’t speak for my wife but I found it to be one of the most disappointing movie experiences I’d ever had.  Part of this is certainly because my own expectations were sky-high – those trailers looked absolutely amazing, and I was very much looking forward to what was appearing to be a well-made, hard science fiction / horror movie.  Instead, what I got was an exquisitely photographed piece of shit, with plot holes larger than the actual movie, stock characters that were loathsome when they weren’t being mind-bogglingly stupid, and Guy Pearce in some of the worst old-man makeup in cinema history.   I am not surprised (but still disappointed) to report that it’s even worse upon a second viewing.  Frankly, it was the sort of terrible that is normally associated with video game storytelling – indeed, one might make an apt comparison here to Resident Evil 6, another highly-anticipated game that ended up being a piece of shit in part because of its awful approach to narrative.  At least with Prometheus, the movie ends, eventually, thankfully, and I never felt like it was my fault that it was so terrible; it’s not like I could ever get better at watching it.  Whereas with RE6, I’m sure I could get better at shooting enemies, even if the game is maddeningly inconsistent at telling me if I’m doing any damage; I could also scour every nook and cranny of every level in order to find hidden skill point packages, and then replay every level over and over again to find those same skill point packages, and then eventually have enough points so that I can level up my characters with more powerful weaponry, higher ammunition counts, better defensive skills, etc.  This, in turn, might make the combat a little less dreary (if only because I could get through it a lot faster).  The game’s narrative problems, though; that’s not something I can improve with skill points.

maybe the last RE6 post for a while

As noted here and elsewhere, today marks the release of 2 probable GOTY contenders, XCOM Enemy Within and Dishonored, which means that any plans I might have made to finish Resident Evil 6 will most likely be put on hold for the foreseeable future.  I’m sure no one will mind/notice.

That being said, I played one more chapter of the Chris/Piers storyline last night, putting me at 2 chapters into each story.  I had to fight a boss that I’d already beaten (in Jake’s story), but even though I now had a much better idea of what the hell I was supposed to do, I still had a very difficult time doing it.

Part of the problem, as you’ve surely heard by now, is that each storyline has its own gameplay style/focus.  Leon’s story is classic Resident Evil – slow, methodical exploration of scary-looking buildings.  Jake’s story involves a lot of running, jumping and obstacle avoidance.  And the Chris/Piers story is mostly combat-focused – Chris is a machine-gunning heavy, and Piers is a sniper.  That each story has its own style is fine, I suppose, but why then is each story bogged down by the same contrivances?

Specifically, Chris/Piers start each mission with very little ammunition.  This is a classic staple of the Resident Evil experience, but in this particular case it is literally nonsensical.  Considering that Chris and Piers are military personnel, why the fuck are they chronically low on ammo?  How would they expect to win any battles or kill any monsters without bullets?  (I am reminded of a similar complaint during a pivotal scene in the movie Aliens – “What are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?”) 

Indeed, if Piers is the sniper, why does he almost never have any sniper ammunition, especially considering that his other weapon is a piece of shit machine gun that requires at least 5 headshots just to slow an enemy down?  This makes absolutely no sense, and consequently leads to extreme frustration; I spend most of my time running around kicking dudes to death just to save my ammunition (even though I have not yet sufficiently leveled up my sniping skills so that it would make much of a difference – Piers jerks his scope around as if he’d drank 8 cups of espresso before heading out into the field, making long-distance sniping comically impossible).  In a way, I suppose it actually helps that the J’Avo – the mutated insurgents in the Chris/Piers storyline – display some of the least impressive AI I’ve ever seen in a game this side of 1998; they either stand in place, oblivious, or they run right past me.  (However, their snipers are better than Oswald, those fucking assholes.)

So, to get back to the top of this post – I’d already beaten this boss as Jake, who doesn’t have that much ammunition to begin with.  But I figured Chris and Piers, being military dudes with powerful guns, would be able to take the B.O.W.s down with a little more finesse.  No such luck; I had to do the same exact shit in the exact same way, still receiving no apparent feedback as to how I was progressing – and this time, without being able to rely on my weapons.  What’s the point?  I didn’t learn anything in the 2nd encounter that I hadn’t already learned in the 1st, except that I had a better idea of who Chris and Piers were (though I didn’t need to replay the boss to learn that stuff).

I’m starting to wonder, now, why I’m so determined to see this game through to the end; the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

it gets better

1.  This weekend was insanely busy for me, and so I’ve advanced no further in Resident Evil 6 since Friday night’s session.   Here’s the weird part:  despite everything that annoys me about it, I must admit that I kinda want to keep playing it, even if I can’t really explain why.  I suppose it’s partially because I want to check out the 4th campaign, which only unlocks after you finish the first 3.  Finishing the first 3 campaigns, though, looks to be a rather sizable time investment, which may be a problem, because…

2.  …have you seen what’s coming out this week?  Between XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dishonored, both of which are getting superlative reviews, my plate is full.  Not to mention that Episode Four of The Walking Dead lands later this week, too.  I think my earlier pronouncement of 2012 being a huge disappointment is about to get kicked in the ass.  I’d kept an eye on Dishonored but only ever considered it a rental, something to check out in an idle hour.  From everything I’ve read, though, it looks like it might be my GOTY.  (So much for keeping my expectations in check.)

3.  I did play around an hour’s worth of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, thinking it might be fun to play with the wife.  I shall not be making that mistake again.  The solution to the tutorial mission’s crime – which is to say, the very first thing you play – is so convoluted and insane that I found the game impossible to take seriously.  The voice acting is stilted beyond belief – and it’s certainly not aided by some of the poorest lip-syncing in recent memory (seriously – if you can’t get it right, don’t even bother trying).  I’m sending it back ASAP.  I love a good adventure game, but this one’s flaws outshine whatever strengths it may have.

4.  On the mobile gaming front, I’ve been addicted to Super Monsters Ate My Condo, an updated release of  PikPok / Adult Swim’s strange yet endearing puzzle game.  It’s a vastly improved package over the original, with meta-missions and challenges and power-ups and boosts and the rest of it.  The only bummer is that you can’t listen to your own music while playing; otherwise I’d never put my phone/iPad down.

5.  I feel terrible for saying this, but I think I’m going to give up on Torchlight 2.  I squeezed in another hour or so over the weekend and I just don’t care about what I’m doing.  I may still be burned out from Diablo 3, or maybe I’m just turned off by how “cheap” T2 continues to feel.  Oh well.

It is entirely possible that a new Couchcast will arrive this week, depending on schedules.  I’m also hoping to line up some new guests for future episodes, too, just to keep the thing moving.  (I’m well aware that tiny podcasts for tiny blogs are not necessarily the most compelling content to seek out, but I’d like to get better at the format.)

do/do not: RE6

Do I?  Or don’t I?

My rental copy of Resident Evil 6 arrives either today or tomorrow, and I’m legitimately torn between sending it right back unopened, and actually giving it a go and seeing how far I can sit with it.

I have no great allegiance to the franchise.  I think I talked about this when I talked about the demo last week, but to recap:  I never owned a PS1, but I played a little bit of RE2 on my friend’s console – definitely jumped off the couch when the dog jumped through the window, but the controls never felt quite right in my hands.  I bought Code Veronica for the Dreamcast, and I remember sort of enjoying it, though I never finished it.  When I finally bought the Wii, RE4 was one of the first games I bought for it, and I hated it.  I fumbled around in the first chapter for 20-30 minutes, fighting the controls, and finally gave up.  RE5, on the other hand?  Loved the hell out of it.  It was goofy, silly, and not at all scary; but it was also gorgeous, and the controls made sense, and it did more to encourage multiple playthroughs than almost any other game I could think of – there were so many cool things to collect and unlock and upgrade.

To say that RE6‘s reviews have been mixed is to put it incredibly kindly.  Looking only at the scores and pull quotes, you would think that the reviewers were sent completely different sets of code, from completely different builds.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a discrepancy in scores in such a high-profile game.   I don’t know what to believe.  (Though the arguments I’ve heard against playing the game sound pretty goddamned persuasive.)

Here’s my deal:  I’m not really playing anything at the moment.  I’m sorta doing a second playthrough of Borderlands 2 in True Vault Hunter mode*, and at some point I want to give Torchlight 2 another try, and I’ll be devouring XCOM next week.  But if RE6 were to arrive today, it wouldn’t be displacing anything in my agenda.

And yet… I’m not in the mood to have my time wasted.   Like I’ve said before – RE4 was universally loved, but I hated it.  RE5 was met with relatively solid and respectful reviews, but I ended up loving the hell out of it.  The reviewers are all over the place on RE6, but the reviewers I generally trust all seem to be in agreement that it’s a massive disappointment… even though they also agree that the game has an astounding amount of content (which scratches that same itch that RE5 satisfied so thoroughly).  I’ve heard that it’s at least as long as one playthrough of Borderlands 2, which is, what, 40 hours?  Jesus.

So…

Like I said last week (or whenever it was) – I played the demo with no preconceptions and no expectations, and even though I only played one campaign (of the available 3) for around 10 minutes, I wasn’t really all that impressed with what I saw.  It was hard to know how much of that was due to the state of the code (the demo does say that it’s not based on a final build), and how much was due to it being actually shitty.  And I don’t know how much shittiness I’m willing to put up with, especially when it comes to a franchise that I have no real strong feelings towards.

A lot of my waffling here is partly because I had too much caffeine this morning and needed something to write about; I’m not, like, agonizing over this.  But it’s also because I’m torn between (1) wanting to be part of the conversation and (2) being aware that I’m not a professional game journalist and thus the conversation is really just a soliloquy.  You’re not going to be missing out on anything here if I don’t end up writing about it.

And yet… I’m just so goddamned curious.  RE6 appears to be one of the highest-profile flops of the last few years, perhaps even of this entire console generation.  But even with its control issues and weak story and everything else that’s wrong with it, there’s also a lot of stuff in it that sounds quite interesting (at least in theory).  That mode where you can jump into a stranger’s game as an enemy?  That sounds inspired.  (Even if it’s inspired by Dark Souls.)

As it happens, the rest of this week and the upcoming weekend is going to be incredibly busy for me anyway, so I’m not sure I’d get all that much time with it before XCOM starts pre-loading.  Which ultimately leads me to ask… why bother?

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* In case you don’t know, True Vault Hunter Mode is basically New Game +.  You keep your current inventory, your level, and your badass perks, and then you start all over again with enemies that are also levelled up.  I’ve played it for around an hour or so, and have already looted an amazing shield, shotgun, and sniper rifle.  (Still looking for a better assault rifle, though; it’s my default weapon and I’ve been using the same one for the last 6 hours of playtime.)

weekend recap – a much better ending

The big news is that I finished the Borderlands 2 campaign.  Ended at  level 33; put in approximately 40 hours.  Did a lot of the sidequests, but not all of them; it’s a little exhausting, frankly.   And yet, it must be said that it’s a tremendous game, vastly improved over the first – and especially as far as the ending is concerned.  I am torn between starting over in True Vault Hunter mode (which makes the game harder, but where you get much better loot), or starting over with a new character (I’m intrigued by the Siren and the Gunzerker).  I may very well decide to take a break from it, however – it’s a lot of fun in short bursts, but over the course of a long marathon it becomes a little tedious and I end up running to my next objective instead of shooting my way through.

I’ve been struggling to determine the game’s pleasure loop – the thing that keeps me so engaged and eager to press on.  Yes, there’s tons of loot, and there isn’t a single empty crate in the game, and I’d easily say that the ratio of usable loot to trash was far better than the year’s other loot-heavy game, Diablo 3, where I’d spend literally dozens of hours before finding something worth swapping out (although it should be noted that the Auction House played a large factor in that particular instance – I found far better stuff in the AH than I ever did in the game).  But loot is, ultimately, junk – there’s so much of it that it ceases to mean anything after a while, and money eventually becomes no object.  (Which is handy, since I died repeatedly during the final gauntlet – the one right before the final boss, the one that ends with a gigantic Constructor bot – so much so that I ended up losing over $20,000 in resurrection fees.)  The actual shooting itself is fun, although reloading is still a bitch.  The story isn’t terribly engrossing, though it should be noted that the characters are really well written and acted.   I suppose I’m drawn to the exploration of the world – and what a huge and varied world it is – although the game threw so many enemies at me that I never felt that I had the time to truly savor every nook and cranny.

(Honestly?  I’m kinda wanting to go back and re-explore Skyrim on my PC, now that it’s been almost a year since I last played it and don’t really remember everything about it.)

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I also dabbled a little more in Torchlight 2.  It’s… OK.  It’s very hard to not constantly compare it to Diablo 3.  And while I had my problems with D3 – especially in terms of how choppy and laggy that game could be – it can’t be denied that D3 looked fantastic, and (when it ran smoothly) it felt fantastic.  T2 is a far smoother experience than D3, which is very much to its credit, but… well… left/right clicking doesn’t seem to pack the same sort of punch.  It also – and I hate saying this – looks cheap.  Like a top-down World of Warcraft, except somehow with less clarity.  (My PC isn’t a screaming graphics machine, but it’s not shabby, either, and I’m running it with everything turned way, way up.)  I’m not doubting the game’s credentials, or diminishing the work that went into it – Lord knows I loved the hell out of the first game and was eagerly awaiting the sequel – but it feels like a budget title (which, lo and behold, is how it’s priced).  I need (and want) to spend more time with it, of course, both offline and on, before making up my mind; it just makes an underwhelming first impression, I guess, which is a little disappointing.

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Also finally tried the XCOM Enemy Unknown demo; oh man.  OH MAN.   Did the very first mission – the ultra-tutorial – and didn’t even do the base stuff before logging off and keeping the rest unspoiled.  I am READY.  (I played it with a 360 controller instead of mouse/keyboard; still felt like a true, solid experience, and it looked great on my PC.)

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Finally, I must pass along this pre-alpha footage, released over the weekend, of the forthcoming HD remake of Abe’s Oddysee.  I don’t know that I’ve written all that much about the Oddworld games recently, but the short version is that while I’d always been into videogames, I more or less stopped playing altogether between 1993 and, say, 1998 or so – the college years.  I grew up with an Atari 2600, and then played a lot of my younger brother’s Sega Genesis, and that was pretty much it for me until a work colleague bought a PS1 and the Oddworld games (alongside Crash Bandicoot and a Cool Boarders game, I think).  The Oddworld games immediately brought me back into the fold – they were intelligent, they were funny, they were absolutely gorgeous, and they were fun to play with a friend – tossing the controller back and forth after each death, trying to figure out each new dastardly puzzle.  And so looking at this remake – the developers would call it a reimagining, anyway – is making me all sorts of giddy.  Those first two Oddworld games hold a very special place in my heart, and seeing them get this sort of loving treatment for a new audience makes me very happy indeed.  I’m especially intrigued at the change of getting rid of the screen-by-screen design in lieu of a fluid, continual level – back in the old days, one of the ways of fixing a tricky puzzle was simply to step back into the last screen, thereby resetting the next one.  What they’ve done here is changed the enemy AI so that if they’re alarmed, they’ll go on a short alert, then go back to their predefined state, rather than simply resetting (since that’s now impossible).   Anyway, check out the footage – it looks fantastic.

good advice

Via Eurogamer:

How do you get a job in the game industry? According to Valve, all you have to do is give yourself one.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek delivered a talk this afternoon to a packed audience at Eurogamer Expo with one clear message to budding developers: “Create something.”

“There you go. And that’s it. It’s that easy,” he said.

“I’m being serious. There are no gatekeepers. There are no requirements. There is no prior experience that you need. Just make something.”

One question Valve is often asked, Chet said, is if I don’t have experience, how do I get experience when every job requires experience? “Here’s the deal on that. Life isn’t fair. It’s not their job to give you experience. It’s your job. The best resume you can do is make something. So do it.”

Chet recommended indie devs participate in indie game forums and get involved in online developer communities to get valuable feedback on their work. He also suggested uploading games to Valve’s own Steam Greenlight website and commenting on others.

“How do you get yourself a job in the games industry?” he continued. “This is the answer: you just give yourself one. It’s that simple. You’re in control of your own destiny. Make your resume and ship it to the world.

“At Valve we’ve been thinking about this a lot. We get asked this all the time. Our simple answer used to be: just go make something. But really you want to do more than that. You want to create something, then you want to release it, you want feedback on it and you want to keep getting better.”

“To be clear, we’re not the only place you can do it. Look up other places as well. I mean we’re working at it. We’re iterating on it. We released Steam Workshop. We released Steam Greenlight. Coming up soon we’ll release software on Steam. Let us know how we’re doing. Let us know what you guys would like to see. What would help you guys.

“And then today, when you get home, take what ever ideas you have and whatever computer you have, whatever software you have, scope it down to something you can ship. Start working on it. Every day you come home from work, work on it some more. Show it to your friends. Talk about it. Get feedback on it. Play test it. And when it’s ready, release it.

“There, you just gave yourself a job in the game industry.”

Chet said those who try to get jobs without having created something, “you’re coming from a point of weakness”. “Nobody knows you. You’re just a piece of paper. You’re really easy to dismiss.” Those who are hard to dismiss, he said, are those who have made something.

Chet stressed that games don’t have to be big to attract attention. In fact, he recommended being smart about the scope of projects.

“People have made some of the dumbest, stupidest things that have made us laugh, that we’ve passed around, then we started talking about them,” he said.

baby time

So, here’s the news:  I’m going to be a father.

The whys and wherefores and everything else is not necessarily appropriate for this particular blog; just know that it took a very long time, and science was ultimately involved, and we are very happy, and the baby’s due in April.

(This is also the previously alluded-to reason as to my current financial situation; with a baby on the way, I can’t be buying new games and consoles and stuff all the time.  Even if I really, really want to.)

I had a dream yesterday morning about impending fatherhood.  (Partially inspired by the floating city in Borderlands 2, actually, now that I think about it.)  In the dream, I was surrounded by everybody I’d ever met, beaming with pride for our future child, happy and full of love for everyone and everything.  At the same time, the island of Manhattan was suspended over a gaping sinkhole, thousands of feet deep, and any time I walked past a crack in the sidewalk I could peer into the abyss underneath, and I’d get a horrible sensation of vertigo.

This is, in fact, what having a baby actually feels like – tremendous excitement, yet colored with the slightest tinge of unfathomable dread of the unknown.  (Thank God for anti-anxiety medication, is all I’ll say.)

Certainly there are lots of big life things that I feel that I’ve got to start thinking about and getting serious about – career, money, etc.  (And, of course, lots of smaller things to think about, too, like:  maybe it’s time to get rid of my Rock Band equipment, since it’s taking up an awful lot of space that we’re going to need.)

I was hoping to have some profound statement to end this post with, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just really happy.  We shared the news with our friends yesterday, and so today I’m sharing it with you.  Thank you for reading and sharing this part of my life with me.

weekend recap: many dead things

I probably added around 12-15 hours to my Borderlands 2 campaign after Saturday’s post.  I have a lot more to say about it.  But before I do, there’s a couple other things to talk about:

– Firstly, one can’t talk about cel-shaded graphics without talking about Jet Set Radio, and when I needed a break from Borderlands 2 this weekend I remembered that I’d downloaded the XBL demo of Jet Set Radio HD.  I’m thrilled that a lot of beloved old games are getting HD remasters, but I’m also noticing a recurring problem – the games always played better in my memories than in my hands.   (The Tony Hawk HD thing from earlier this summer also comes to mind.)  JSR looks absolutely fantastic – after all these years, that art style is still brilliant – but it also feels incredibly stiff in my hands, and I found myself making the exact same mistakes in maneuvering that I did 10 years ago (or however long ago it was).  That being said, I still love the HD remastering treatment, and I can’t say it enough – I would LOVE to see a Skies of Arcadia remaster.  FACT:  JRPGs don’t have the same control problems that 3D action games do.  Let’s make this happen!

– Speaking of demos, I also played a tiny taste of the demo for Resident Evil 6.  There are three different chapters in the demo, and I played around 10 minutes of the first one on the list.  (I’m not a big enough fan of the franchise to really care about it one way or the other; I’m well aware that I’m one of the only people on the planet that thinks that RE5 is a much better game than RE4.)  So, the biggest thing, obviously, is that you can move while aiming!  Welcome to 2012!  And yet, it’s still incredibly awkward-looking!  I sometimes feel that the developers of these Japanese mega-franchises – RE, MGS, FF, etc. – live in a hermetically-sealed bubble, unaware of the advancements in animation, storytelling, and general gameplay conventions that have transpired over the last 20 years.  I appreciate their slavish devotion to keeping each game true to its roots, but, I mean, Jesus Christ.  Have they never seen people walking around and carrying guns in other games or films or TV shows?   Besides that, it should also be noted that the graphics look a little rough – RE6 is nowhere near as nice and clean and crisp as RE5, though this may be because the demo is an early build.  In any event, I didn’t really have RE6 very high on my priority list, and this demo didn’t really do anything to change that.  It’s still on the GameFly queue, for whatever that’s worth.

– At some point this weekend I received an email that included a code for the first DLC for Darksiders 2 – Argul’s Tomb.  As much as I love that game, I’ve gotta say that this little self-contained mini-adventure was a little… meh, actually.  I hate using that word unless I have to, but that’s pretty much the best way of putting it.  It’s around 2 hours long, there’s no achievements, it’s very combat heavy, and none of the loot I picked up was particularly good.  It’s free, though, so it has that going for it, which is nice.

– I am an idiot.  I wanted to try out Steam’s Big Picture Mode on my HDTV this weekend, but it wasn’t until I’d moved everything around that I realized that my PC didn’t have an HDMI out, and that I didn’t have an adapter.  Oh well.

– It’s just as well, anyway, because had I gotten it to work, I would’ve ended up playing Torchlight 2, but with a keyboard and mouse on my couch, which would be weird.  I did spend 5 minutes with T2, actually, but the honest truth is that I think I’m still recovering from my Diablo 3 overdose, and left- and right-clicking for hours and hours just doesn’t seem all that enticing.  I will get to it eventually, though.

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OK.  Let’s get back to Borderlands 2.  I’m now around 24 hours in, and my commando is probably level 23 or 24.  (I really ought to write that stuff down before I begin a post.)

For the first dozen hours or so, I only had around 3-4 quests in my to-do list at a time – a main story quest, and then some optional side stuff.  Then a major story event happened (you’ll know it when you see it), and when I shook the dust off and got back to the main city, I’d found that the game suddenly opened wide up, and 20 new side-quests appeared in my quest log.  And so, now, I’m tackling all the side stuff, because the side stuff is, quite frequently, absolutely brilliant.

I have come to appreciate that the game does not take itself seriously.  At first, a lot of the dialogue came off as silly and adolescent (there literally is a “Bonerfart” joke – or is it “Fartboner”?) but as I’ve delved deeper into the side quests and gotten to know the characters a bit more thoroughly, I’ve seen that the game’s got some serious depth in its writing – even if, as I said on Saturday, the overall narrative lacks any real weight.  There are 2 moments that stand out in particular, and I’ll try to keep them spoiler-free (while at least alerting you as to where they are):

1.  Mission:  The Overlooked: “This Is Only A Test.”   The end of this mission was the first time that I’ve literally laughed out loud during a game since Portal 2, probably.  It’s a totally unexpected, expertly delivered, and deeply satisfying punchline, all of which comes after a very tough firefight and (at least for me) a reluctance to even do the thing I was asked to do, being that I didn’t think it was going to work.  (Fuckin’ Dave.)

2.  I can’t remember the mission name, but it was a side mission I was doing in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, which ultimately resulted in discovering the true nature of the relationship between Tiny Tina and Flesh-Stick (two characters that I’d met under completely different circumstances, 10 hours previously).  I normally hate how games use tape recordings to tell stories – it feels lazy and contrived and has become almost as ubiquitous as crates – but in this particular case the final reveal was shocking and very, very dark, and when I think about it now I’m not sure there’s a better way to tell that particular story.  Especially since there was no real reason to even include it, and especially since I very nearly walked right over it without even knowing it was there.  This made its discovery hit surprisingly hard, and caused me to think about my last interaction with those two characters in a much different light.   (It called to mind a similar hidden, optional thing I discovered in Psychonauts – during Milla’s psychedelic training level, there’s a hidden room where you discover a rather horrible truth about Milla’s past.  It’s a moment that rings true, though – it’s not manipulative or hollow – and so it carries a great weight.)

*    *    *

I find that even as I’ve improved a great many of my skills (including dramatic (and very necessary) reductions in my reloading time), I still get fatigued with the game’s core action.  This is not the game’s fault, of course – I’ve had a long-standing fatigue problem with the entire shooter genre, and it’s a tribute to everything else that Borderlands 2 does so well that I’m still as heavily invested in the game as I am.  I have no problem fighting my way to an objective, but once I’m done, I run like hell all the way back – I’ll throw down a turret if I have to, to thin out the crowd, but my overriding attitude is “fuck it, I’m done shooting.”  I’ve killed so many goddamned things already, and I’m not even sure that I’m halfway through the game, which makes me shudder at the thought of how many more goddamned things I have to kill.   (Especially if there are Threshers.  Oh, how I hate threshers.  Relentless bullet-sponging bastards, all of them.)

It would be nice if there were other things to do besides shooting, I guess.  (Well, there is a quasi-murder mystery in Sanctuary, but it plays out quite a bit differently than the one in Skyrim.)  I’m not saying this game needs box-pushing puzzles or crafting or anything, and I know I’ve not even come close to seeing everything there is to see and so it’s entirely possible that I’ll run into something that doesn’t involve heavy pressings of the trigger buttons over extended periods of time.   But.  The game’s relentless action can be a bit exhausting, is all I’m saying.

the first few hours: Borderlands 2

I really need to keep a notebook next to my bed.

I woke up this morning after a long Borderlands 2 session last night, and knew right off the bat that I was going to write a huge thing today.  I had this whole epic premise mapped out in my head – partly about what Borderlands 2 represents in terms of overall achievement in game design and what it is about open world RPGs that are so compelling and addictive, but also that there were three specific elements that a shooter needed to shine in order to be considered “successful.”  I know that one of these elements was graphics; I specifically remember that one of them wasn’t narrative (and I had a pretty convincing reason as to why such an important element in most games was not entirely the most important thing in a shooter); and I think that I made a distinction between the quality and variety of the weapons and the actual pleasurability of firing them.  I remember lying in bed, saying to myself, “I should really write this down so that I can put it in the blog later”, and then not doing that, and now, of course, I can’t remember what the 3 things were, and it’s entirely possible that this brilliant post of mine is now forever lost.

Anyway.  My earlier post this week about feeling like I hadn’t played enough of Borderlands 2 in order to write about it?  I’ve now played enough to talk about it.  I’m around 10 hours in with my Commando, and I think I just hit level 13 before I turned it off in order to come to the coffeeshop where I’m currently sitting and trying to remember what the hell I wanted to talk about.

Regardless of whether or not I can reclaim that brilliant premise I had in my half-awake state this morning, I can certainly say that I am of two minds about the game.

On the one hand, it does so many things really, really well.  The meta-challenges and the “Badass Rank” in particular are brilliant – the game tracks pretty much every single thing you do and how you do it, and so during every other firefight you’ll get a bonus for, say, setting 100 enemies on fire, and every time you achieve a new Badass Rank you get an opportunity to increase a certain stat – weapon damage, shield recharge, etc. – and so it’s constantly encouraging you to be incredibly thorough in how you explore the world, which is handy because (a) that’s how I like to play these sorts of games anyway, and (b) there’s SO MUCH GODDAMNED LOOT.   The designers have smartly done away with certain conventions such as fall damage and limited sprinting – you can fall off any mountain and run as far as the day is long and that’s just fine with me, thank you very much.

In a way, this game makes a very convincing argument that from this point forward, all shooters should be like this – open world, RPG progression, endless customization.  You’d never mistake Borderlands for Skyrim, obviously, but you can certainly see the resemblance between the two.

On the other hand, the game has a bunch of weird quirks.  One of the game’s selling points is that it has eleventybillion guns, and even within the first hour you’ll find more guns than you can carry.   This is a problem, though, because your inventory is SEVERELY limited in the beginning (and is somewhat expensive to upgrade), and so you will almost always be struggling with what to keep and what to throw away.  The game smartly includes a system where you can tag stuff in your inventory so that you’ll automatically sell it when you get to a vending machine – but vending machines are few and far between.

And one of the more annoying problems with these guns is that reloading takes FOREVER.   The game addresses this by making reload time an upgradeable ability – and certainly I’ve begun to notice a difference as I’ve been sinking more and more points into improving that specific stat – but it makes the shooting of guns a pain in the ass, which is a somewhat significant problem in that shooting guns is all you do.

My brilliant reasoning for omitting narrative as one of the three most important qualities in a shooter is a bit murky now that I’ve forgotten how I’d phrased it, but in any event I think the point I was trying to make was that in almost every shooter (at least in terms of the single-player campaign), you are never driven forward by WHY.  Indeed, you are driven forward because of SPECTACLE and CRAZY SHIT BLOWING UP and because clearing out a room lets you enter the next room, which will be visually and spatially different than the room you’re currently in, and it’s fun to see new things.

In more specific terms, I have no idea why I’m doing any of the things I’m doing in Borderlands 2, even though I am compelled to do all of them, especially the optional stuff, because when I finish a mission I get XP and maybe a new shield or grenade mod or something.  Indeed, there are a few recurring characters from the first game, including this weird ghostly AI that has a direct line of communication with you, and I remember that there was a reason for that in the first game but it wasn’t particularly memorable, and I am similarly at a loss as to what she’s doing here.

And the thing is, it’s clear that a great deal of thought went into crafting the dialogue in this game, and the voice acting is pretty strong (if a little goofy), and there’s lots of funny bits all over the place.  But there’s a difference between snappy dialogue and a compelling narrative, and if there is a compelling narrative in this game I am yet to see it.  Let me say again that I’ve been playing for 10 hours already and when I’m done writing this post I’m going to head back to my apartment and play for another 10-20 before this weekend is through, and I’m looking forward to it, even though I have no idea where the story is going, and even though nobody (including me) seems to care.