TV. Teevee. Telly. Television. It's been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. As you can imagine I was the weird kid who would disappear home to watch television while everyone else was out playing. Drove my mother nuts, to the point where she would kick me out of the house so that I would get some fresh air.
As a teenager I was a bit of a recluse. Not terribly sure why. I would go to school and then go home and spend most of my time with the television on. Yeah, I'd sit and scribble things: stories, games and bad drawings. All the time the comforting grumble of the television going on in the corner of the room. Film and TV are, unsurprisingly, my biggest influences when it comes to fiction. My brain is full of flotsam and jetsam from years of watching some of the most obscure things because I couldn't bring myself to hit the 'off' switch. Oh, fucking hell, does late-night Channel Four programming in the nineties have a lot to answer for*.
So. Now you know what my viewing habits were like as kid**, you get to see the special relationship I've developed with it over the years. The magpie effect of flicking around when nothing was on means I know things about programmes I didn't chose to watch. It's had the dual effect of making me more discerning and more willing to try new things. I know, for instance, bone-deep, that I ain't going to sit through an episode of a soap opera; horrible cancerous things that choke out anything else that might turn up on the air.
In the interests of community-mindedness, I'll give you a little list of the current programmes I'm watching and enjoying. Should be fun. Might show you a shocking lack of taste in your eyes, and if that's the case: FUCK YOU, YOU MALICIOUS CUNT! HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME! I'LL JUDGE YOU RIGHT BACK!
SEE! THAT'S ME JUDGING YOU! DON'T LIKE IT, DO YOU? NOOOoooOOO!
Ahem, anyway, onto the list.
Person of Interest. I'll actually start with a complaint about this – go me! Why are we in the UK a year behind on this? Not everyone has Netflix, motherfucker. Channel Five have to be applauded for showing it, but it's irritating having to avoid places because there are people who have to talk about what's going on twelve months ahead because it's so fucking good! I want to know!
The show had a bit of a slow start. The first half of the first series is almost a write-off. Then it hit its stride. It's a fantastic mix of conspiracy thriller, A-Team style good-deed of the week and comedy. It's exciting, dark and asks some big questions. Just don't tell me what happens in series three, I will have to have you killed or, at the very least, severely beaten.
The Blacklist is another bit of conspiracy and espionage, but it manages to be far darker and uncompromising than Person of Interest. We are introduced to the wonderful character Raymond 'Red' Reddington, a criminal facilitator and extremely bad man who drops himself into the FBI's lap telling them he'll give them access to criminals they haven't even heard of, the titular blacklist. Oh and he'll only talk to a particular analyst. It's murky in the best kind of way. There's no question about the people Reddington is handing over are extremely bad, but his motives aren't clear and as it goes on it's obvious a lot of the characters' motivations are uncertain. I don't know what the fuck's going on and I love it. You should jump in and not know what's going on either.
Talking about being reeealllyyyy behind on series, I give you Parks and Recreation, a comedy programme filmed in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style† and we're three series behind on this. This took even longer than Person of Interest to get into its groove, but in the third series the insanity set in and the documentary presentation gives great opportunities for characters to give silent reactions to the madness around them or getting little interviews to give their insights. For ages before BBC Four started showing it I was seeing things about Ron Swanson on the internet and got really annoyed, but now I see the appeal, he's a stand-out character in a programme of brilliant characters.
Without Community, I would never have tried Parks and Recreation. This is another one I'd been hearing about for a while and finally found the whole first series on catch up. That was a rewarding Sunday afternoon. For a while we were a year behind this one as well, but last year the Sony channel showed both series three and four. Four wasn't quite as good because Dan Harmon had been dumped as show runner, but it still managed some interesting episodes. Community relies on the interplay between the fantastic ensemble, guiding us through their time at a US community college. It starts off pretty grounded, with some odd moments, but by the end of the first series and the paintball episode it laid the groundwork for the strangeness to come. Then we have the references, you remember what I said about references, right? It's chock-full. A lot of it is self-referential, something a lot of people point out as a bad thing, but I think it's great and gets you invested in the strange family unit of the Study Group.
The most recent addition to my watching is Brooklyn 99. This is an odd one, because it has a bog-standard police procedural as its basis with all the beats and tropes the genre has, yet it's all wrapped up in a comedic skin. Yeah, I know a lot of police procedurals have elements of comedy in them, and Castle is even described as a comedy-drama, but the writers will ditch any semblance of comedy trappings in favour of a dramatic storyline. Brooklyn 99 is straight-down-the-line funny. Yes, there's a case of the week, and it forms a big part of each story, but the characters' eccentricities make up the rest of the bulk. It could have been fucking awful, but it, amazingly, works.
There are others, like the slew of crime dramas I watch, like Castle, Rizzoli and Isles, Elementary‡ and Bones, but the ones above are the programmes I feel most excited about watching of a week. I highly recommend them if you can get access to them.
* Now a bit of a sad imitation of its gloriously vibrant and mad landscape. Late-night television, in general has become a depressingly conformist precession of gambling shows. That made me a little sad, writing that.
** Or reiterated for some of you. Yeah, I'm looking right at you, dude.
† As pioneered in The Office. One I never did get around to watching in either its original UK run or its US incarnation.
‡ That I think in a lot of important ways is far superior to Sherlock, though I did enjoy that too.
Will
Wednesday 26 March 2014
Wednesday 19 March 2014
Grinding On.
Looks like I wasn't done with talking about Borderlands 2, after all. How curious. I will move away from this subject, I promise. Seriously, I don't want to flog a dead horse, it only gets messy.
I'll just reiterate, though, Gearbox did a good job on building what they'd created with Borderlands. They've created this fun and addictive game. The only reason there was so much for me to complain about is because I've spent so much time going through the game. Having clocked up so many hours* playing the game the flaws are magnified. The fact I'm willing to spend so long playing the game says as much on its own.
You see all that content? Some of it coming out over a year after the game was released is still pretty fucking impressive. And their still rolling out fixes and support** in that same time. While they might look like they're not sure how to handle some of the gameplay stuff, they do have a handle on the technical stuff.
So Gearbox did a good job. We clear on that?
It still could have been so much better. My main gripe with it is the nature of the loot drops. I'm not going to go into it, but this gives a good overview: Evolution of Loot. I'll give you some time to look through that. It's a big fucking post.
One thing I'd like to point out is '1 in 30'. It's the standard drop rate for a lot of the bosses in the game of their best equipment. This doesn't sound bad, but when you think about it, it veers quite hard into the stingy territory, especially when you consider some of the bosses can be very challenging. Yes, it's better than the one in ten thousand chance normal enemies have to drop top-tier gear†, but it still leaves you at Stingy Station with a bit of straw clamped in your teeth.
You shouldn't need to fight the one boss anywhere near that number of times to get their best gear. Getting to and fighting one boss ten times is a tedious exercise of Sisyphus-like proportions, thirty times can be brain-mushing. And because it is probability and as close to random as technology allows you're likely to find yourself fighting that boss a lot more times to get the piece of gear you want. There have been some horrifying statistics posted about how much chance you have of getting certain pieces of gear and they go into the hundreds before it starts to look decent. That's not fun. A game should be fun. No it shouldn't just hand you the good stuff the first time you hold out your hand, but it shouldn't point and laugh at you when you're trying to get it while tripping over your grey beard‡. Rewarding you for your persistence in a half-way decent manner without taking a grinder to your patience.
I've thought about how they could do this with my non-codery brain. My suggestion can't be implemented in Borderlands 2, unfortunately, though I do hope Gearbox tweak the drops before they finally have to walk away. Perhaps for Borderlands 3? Maybe? Perhaps? Dudes? Please?
Anyway what I thought would be a variation on the RNG reliance. The RNG sounds good in principal for the loot drops, but, as many people have seen it actually turns out to be very unfair. I think the game should note when you've fought any boss. Each time you fight a boss, a little note to say no loot was dropped and to start with there's that one in thirty chance at the good gear. If by, say, the fifth boss fight without a drop the game starts to incrementally put its thumb on the probabilities scale. Each time a boss is fought that doesn't drop its best loot the game weights the probability more and more until it hits a high probability, like one in five. Once a boss drops its highest level loot the count resets. Not perfect, by any means, but it would redress the imbalance gamers feel. Or just really make it more likely to find good stuff across the board, that could work too.
That's the important thing that's forgotten in the reliance on the RNG, it's how the people playing the game feel. Whether or not its completely random doesn't always register in our emotion-fuelled ape-brains. We get pissed and start to see negative patterns where there aren't any. We feel like the game is mocking our efforts§. That's not a feeling to be engendered by a game, characters in a game, perhaps, but we shouldn't feel like the company behind the game are sniggering every time we kill Hyperius and get a pile of white gear§§. It's childish to think they might be, but in the halucinatory haze you find yourself in while farming§§§ it's easy to start thinking it.
This unwillingness of the game to part with its most prized items leads to behaviours that are considered cheating: duping and gibbing. Gearbox have gone to great pains to wipe out gibbing in particular, but neither would be the problem they are if drop rates were more generous, less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Père Noël. Never going to get rid of people cheating, but minimising it by making game mechanics feel more fair to the players.
No, we don't need these weapons or equipment – well maybe some of it to make progress in the hardest level of the game, but we want it. Gearbox created the demand for it for those of us with the particular brain damage that makes us crave it, but they haven't quite furnished the supply. Would it be so difficult for the unsung heroes of the games industry, the quiet programmers and coders, to bump the drops more in the player's favour? That's the main aim, to create a game with even more lasting appeal, without doing it in a cheap way.
There are other criticisms, like the poor Krieg and Maya players who got shafted in the Overpower levels, but I think I've gone on long enough about the subject, don't you? Next time something different, I think.
* I'm now too terrified to calculate it. My self-esteem can't handle that kind of knock.
** The most recent one redresses, a little, one of the stingiest drops in the game. That's pretty cool, I have to say.
† Which is just jim-dandy, sir. You don't want some schlubby gimp basic enemy dropping the best stuff, that would just be weird and make it pointless to fight the bosses once you've finished the game. Yes, I do see the merit in replayable bosses, that's pretty cool. I just don't agree with the low possibility of good gear.
‡ Yes, even the ladies, because nature is cruel and hates everyone.
§ Especially those fucking loading screens where it shows a parade of some of the rarest items in the game. Three Pearlescent weapons in a row? You fucking cunt!
§§ If you don't get the reference, don't worry. Or maybe you should, you made it this far not knowing what the fuck I'm talking about. What's wrong with you?
§§§ A term I discovered last year for fighting the one enemy over and over again to get a piece of equipment. It's about as boring as my explanation sounds.
Will
I'll just reiterate, though, Gearbox did a good job on building what they'd created with Borderlands. They've created this fun and addictive game. The only reason there was so much for me to complain about is because I've spent so much time going through the game. Having clocked up so many hours* playing the game the flaws are magnified. The fact I'm willing to spend so long playing the game says as much on its own.
You see all that content? Some of it coming out over a year after the game was released is still pretty fucking impressive. And their still rolling out fixes and support** in that same time. While they might look like they're not sure how to handle some of the gameplay stuff, they do have a handle on the technical stuff.
So Gearbox did a good job. We clear on that?
It still could have been so much better. My main gripe with it is the nature of the loot drops. I'm not going to go into it, but this gives a good overview: Evolution of Loot. I'll give you some time to look through that. It's a big fucking post.
One thing I'd like to point out is '1 in 30'. It's the standard drop rate for a lot of the bosses in the game of their best equipment. This doesn't sound bad, but when you think about it, it veers quite hard into the stingy territory, especially when you consider some of the bosses can be very challenging. Yes, it's better than the one in ten thousand chance normal enemies have to drop top-tier gear†, but it still leaves you at Stingy Station with a bit of straw clamped in your teeth.
You shouldn't need to fight the one boss anywhere near that number of times to get their best gear. Getting to and fighting one boss ten times is a tedious exercise of Sisyphus-like proportions, thirty times can be brain-mushing. And because it is probability and as close to random as technology allows you're likely to find yourself fighting that boss a lot more times to get the piece of gear you want. There have been some horrifying statistics posted about how much chance you have of getting certain pieces of gear and they go into the hundreds before it starts to look decent. That's not fun. A game should be fun. No it shouldn't just hand you the good stuff the first time you hold out your hand, but it shouldn't point and laugh at you when you're trying to get it while tripping over your grey beard‡. Rewarding you for your persistence in a half-way decent manner without taking a grinder to your patience.
I've thought about how they could do this with my non-codery brain. My suggestion can't be implemented in Borderlands 2, unfortunately, though I do hope Gearbox tweak the drops before they finally have to walk away. Perhaps for Borderlands 3? Maybe? Perhaps? Dudes? Please?
Anyway what I thought would be a variation on the RNG reliance. The RNG sounds good in principal for the loot drops, but, as many people have seen it actually turns out to be very unfair. I think the game should note when you've fought any boss. Each time you fight a boss, a little note to say no loot was dropped and to start with there's that one in thirty chance at the good gear. If by, say, the fifth boss fight without a drop the game starts to incrementally put its thumb on the probabilities scale. Each time a boss is fought that doesn't drop its best loot the game weights the probability more and more until it hits a high probability, like one in five. Once a boss drops its highest level loot the count resets. Not perfect, by any means, but it would redress the imbalance gamers feel. Or just really make it more likely to find good stuff across the board, that could work too.
That's the important thing that's forgotten in the reliance on the RNG, it's how the people playing the game feel. Whether or not its completely random doesn't always register in our emotion-fuelled ape-brains. We get pissed and start to see negative patterns where there aren't any. We feel like the game is mocking our efforts§. That's not a feeling to be engendered by a game, characters in a game, perhaps, but we shouldn't feel like the company behind the game are sniggering every time we kill Hyperius and get a pile of white gear§§. It's childish to think they might be, but in the halucinatory haze you find yourself in while farming§§§ it's easy to start thinking it.
This unwillingness of the game to part with its most prized items leads to behaviours that are considered cheating: duping and gibbing. Gearbox have gone to great pains to wipe out gibbing in particular, but neither would be the problem they are if drop rates were more generous, less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Père Noël. Never going to get rid of people cheating, but minimising it by making game mechanics feel more fair to the players.
No, we don't need these weapons or equipment – well maybe some of it to make progress in the hardest level of the game, but we want it. Gearbox created the demand for it for those of us with the particular brain damage that makes us crave it, but they haven't quite furnished the supply. Would it be so difficult for the unsung heroes of the games industry, the quiet programmers and coders, to bump the drops more in the player's favour? That's the main aim, to create a game with even more lasting appeal, without doing it in a cheap way.
There are other criticisms, like the poor Krieg and Maya players who got shafted in the Overpower levels, but I think I've gone on long enough about the subject, don't you? Next time something different, I think.
* I'm now too terrified to calculate it. My self-esteem can't handle that kind of knock.
** The most recent one redresses, a little, one of the stingiest drops in the game. That's pretty cool, I have to say.
† Which is just jim-dandy, sir. You don't want some schlubby gimp basic enemy dropping the best stuff, that would just be weird and make it pointless to fight the bosses once you've finished the game. Yes, I do see the merit in replayable bosses, that's pretty cool. I just don't agree with the low possibility of good gear.
‡ Yes, even the ladies, because nature is cruel and hates everyone.
§ Especially those fucking loading screens where it shows a parade of some of the rarest items in the game. Three Pearlescent weapons in a row? You fucking cunt!
§§ If you don't get the reference, don't worry. Or maybe you should, you made it this far not knowing what the fuck I'm talking about. What's wrong with you?
§§§ A term I discovered last year for fighting the one enemy over and over again to get a piece of equipment. It's about as boring as my explanation sounds.
Will
Wednesday 12 March 2014
Pointless or Ahurgaflurgan?
I may have mentioned before that I enjoy Borderlands 2. I may have mentioned something along the lines of being a little addicted to Borderlands 2. You probably don't get the scale to which I threw myself into this game. It's so bad I'm embarrassed* to talk about it. Really, I shouldn't even be admitting to it. Am I creating strong enough picture? No?
Right. I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game. I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt** month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.
This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons. I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet. I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.
Anyway. Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle†. Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game? Who can say? I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.
I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.
Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we? From the outset it's a pretty game. The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is. Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this. Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi. Lovely.
We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap. There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her. Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game. I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game. In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful. Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.
The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS. I'm staring directly at you COD. It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness. But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care. Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.
That brings us to the extra content. So much of it. A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads. I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them. It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles‡ just a little pull of the sac.
What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for. You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid. Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on. And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs. That adds up to a lot of extra stuff. And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.
The whole package is crammed full of references. Brimming over, dammit. I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you. There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in. There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes. Am I seeing things? Hmmm.
There is a lot to like in this game. Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.
Of course, it isn't all good. I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work. You're not getting off that lightly, oh no. I have things I want to say and I want to suggest. As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this. Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter. It's all just honking in the dark.
I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them. Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.
What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it. The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked. This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together. Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it. For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.
Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks. It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable§. Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game. Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.
Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this. Actually, more than shades. Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that. It was a fantastic idea. Gets the interest again. But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry. There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo. One, in weapons that carry hundreds. A lack of awareness there, Gearbox. Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets. It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players. This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important. WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach. A tad strange, don't ya feel?
For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship. Something other than the golden keys. Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something. See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.
They added a third playthrough to the game. It was designed to be very tough. The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game. It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players. In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible§§. How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters? Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic. I can't say that was well-thought out. It's one of the things the first game got right. You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.
Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics. Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies. What the fuck? Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit? Is that really a desirable goal for a game? I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered§§§. I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.
The rarities of equipment is all fucked up. It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are. Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items. It's not rewarding. At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur. Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty. I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons. And remember these are rare enemies already! If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity. I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that. It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?
Players want to feel rewarded. It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating. Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that. S'not rewarding. Players want rewards not grinding chores. The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.
And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses. This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal. I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good. That's only part of it. Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies. It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.
There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing. There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough. Don't you people ever sleep!
* And mortifying. Don't forget mortifying.
** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of. I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.
† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months. Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year. Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.
‡ Or ovaries. Whichever, it all adds up to the same.
§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.
§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense. They're talking out of their arse.
§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point. The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.
§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes. I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.
§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
§§§§§§ Because it will happen. They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.
Will
Right. I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game. I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt** month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.
This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons. I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet. I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.
Anyway. Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle†. Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game? Who can say? I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.
I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.
Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we? From the outset it's a pretty game. The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is. Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this. Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi. Lovely.
We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap. There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her. Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game. I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game. In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful. Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.
The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS. I'm staring directly at you COD. It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness. But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care. Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.
That brings us to the extra content. So much of it. A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads. I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them. It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles‡ just a little pull of the sac.
What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for. You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid. Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on. And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs. That adds up to a lot of extra stuff. And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.
The whole package is crammed full of references. Brimming over, dammit. I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you. There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in. There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes. Am I seeing things? Hmmm.
There is a lot to like in this game. Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.
Of course, it isn't all good. I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work. You're not getting off that lightly, oh no. I have things I want to say and I want to suggest. As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this. Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter. It's all just honking in the dark.
I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them. Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.
What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it. The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked. This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together. Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it. For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.
Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks. It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable§. Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game. Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.
Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this. Actually, more than shades. Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that. It was a fantastic idea. Gets the interest again. But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry. There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo. One, in weapons that carry hundreds. A lack of awareness there, Gearbox. Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets. It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players. This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important. WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach. A tad strange, don't ya feel?
For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship. Something other than the golden keys. Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something. See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.
They added a third playthrough to the game. It was designed to be very tough. The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game. It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players. In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible§§. How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters? Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic. I can't say that was well-thought out. It's one of the things the first game got right. You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.
Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics. Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies. What the fuck? Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit? Is that really a desirable goal for a game? I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered§§§. I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.
The rarities of equipment is all fucked up. It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are. Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items. It's not rewarding. At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur. Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty. I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons. And remember these are rare enemies already! If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity. I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that. It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?
Players want to feel rewarded. It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating. Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that. S'not rewarding. Players want rewards not grinding chores. The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.
And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses. This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal. I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good. That's only part of it. Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies. It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.
There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing. There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough. Don't you people ever sleep!
* And mortifying. Don't forget mortifying.
** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of. I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.
† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months. Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year. Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.
‡ Or ovaries. Whichever, it all adds up to the same.
§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.
§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense. They're talking out of their arse.
§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point. The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.
§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes. I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.
§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
§§§§§§ Because it will happen. They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.
Will
Wednesday 5 March 2014
The David Cameron Nightmare Seed.
Hello, people. How are you today? Good? Filled with nonsense and joie de vivre? Want to have that stripped away from you in the most brutal way possible? Of course you do.
Really look at it, ignoring its graininess*. Many of you know this smug, horrible avatar of greedy privilege. Some call him reptilian, but I think that gives reptiles grounds to sue. See those shark-like dot eyes, black with caustic ideology. I bet you can hear his voice, spouting shit so corrosive it's easy to believe his heart doesn't pump blood, but pure bile**.
Now imagine that face, hovering over you, flushed red† with sweat. Perspiration forming rivulets and running down his nose to drip into your eye. Hair plastered to his head. His arms shake with the effort of keeping him above you. He grins at you in post-coital goofiness and withdraws his rapidly diminishing erection, wiping it on your thighs as he does.
He flops down onto his side with a long, drawn-out sigh. He reaches across to his discarded trousers, fishes in the pockets, pulls out his wallet and peels off few notes. These notes he carefully shoves into your mouth until you gag, his post-coital smile still in place, never. As you are about to vomit he lets go and punches you in the face.
Not pretty.
Now, if you're Scottish, think about that. Think about any future Prime Minister of any party, sitting in Westminster, erection and fists at the ready. I could say so much more, but I'll leave that there for you to think about.
* Maybe I should have black-and-whited it.
** Or you're a Tory and think he's a capitalist hero, in which case I am sorry for your illness.
† Redder, if you want to be entirely accurate. I'm always going for accuracy. Except for when I can't be arsed.
Will
Look at this face:
Really look at it, ignoring its graininess*. Many of you know this smug, horrible avatar of greedy privilege. Some call him reptilian, but I think that gives reptiles grounds to sue. See those shark-like dot eyes, black with caustic ideology. I bet you can hear his voice, spouting shit so corrosive it's easy to believe his heart doesn't pump blood, but pure bile**.
Now imagine that face, hovering over you, flushed red† with sweat. Perspiration forming rivulets and running down his nose to drip into your eye. Hair plastered to his head. His arms shake with the effort of keeping him above you. He grins at you in post-coital goofiness and withdraws his rapidly diminishing erection, wiping it on your thighs as he does.
He flops down onto his side with a long, drawn-out sigh. He reaches across to his discarded trousers, fishes in the pockets, pulls out his wallet and peels off few notes. These notes he carefully shoves into your mouth until you gag, his post-coital smile still in place, never. As you are about to vomit he lets go and punches you in the face.
Not pretty.
Now, if you're Scottish, think about that. Think about any future Prime Minister of any party, sitting in Westminster, erection and fists at the ready. I could say so much more, but I'll leave that there for you to think about.
* Maybe I should have black-and-whited it.
** Or you're a Tory and think he's a capitalist hero, in which case I am sorry for your illness.
† Redder, if you want to be entirely accurate. I'm always going for accuracy. Except for when I can't be arsed.
Will
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)