I just recently bought Borderlands for the 360, and I must say that I’ve been quite taken with the game. It captures many of the things I like in RPGs and many of the things I like in FPS games. Unfortunately it also comes with the flaws I hate in both genres. With first person shooters, the fun is in the guns and the fights. The guns are solid, I love how many different guns there are. It would have been possible to just make a bunch of skins for each gun and add different colors to the shots but they went all out to make each gun unique. The unfortunate circumstance of this is that you need a party of players for the better loot to appear. Many players forget the fact that there are other people playing and each of them are searching for their gun upgrades. They also forget that there is a kick option should they get too greedy.

Diablo had a similar feel to it. If you saw a piece of equipment that you really wanted, you could let the rest of the party know, and hopefully they would allow you to have it. Unfortunately, this is not so in Borderlands. Many players will allow everyone in the party to die in order to come in, sweep the loot, and leave the game. Its infuriating to be sure. WoW has the whole Need/Greed thing going on to prevent this, and even if someone takes all the instance items, theres always a good chance that theres a equal or better item on the auction house. Borderlands doesn’t have that. They have shops that rotate their inventory, and to be honest, their weapons upgrades aren’t as great as some of the stuff you find out fighting. One great thing about Borderlands though, is if you get in a beef with someone, you can always have a duel with them, anytime, anywhere. You can prove to them that they suck by overwhelming their superior firepower with raw SKILL.

-Locke

I remember Modern Warfare 2 getting on the news for the infamous “No Russian” level, a level that could be entirely skipped if they so choose. In it, you play as an undercover agent for the good guys, harming innocent civilians in an airport to earn the approval of the bad guys.

This level got flak from the media, saying that Infinity Ward went a little too far with it. I personally thought it set a serious tone for the rest of the game, allowing for you to take up arms against true injustice. This was much like a moment in Metal Gear Solid: PO, only it was your troops being harmed.

I remember the media mentioning that this was a new low for video games, and something we had never seen before. Incidently I have recently picked up Warcraft 3 again, and I came across the mission “The Culling” where Arthas and his men kill infected civilians in order to prevent them from turning into undead. Furthermore, it was a race between you and a demon to see who could kill to 100. I understand that perhaps it wasn’t the same to people back then, Warcraft has a highly stylized form of characters. Its cartoonish almost, but to me it had the same effect as “No Russian” did. Destroying the town of Stratholme felt dirty, especially since I knew that these people were hiding in their homes, forcing you to knock in their walls to hurt them.

Just a reminder that game developers are not twisted individuals who take pleasure in making you hurt virtual people. They are artists and storytellers. All of the tragedy in the games we play are meant to take the story forward and strengthen the emotional content as a whole.

/soapbox.

-Locke

One of my favorite games of all time is Silent Hill 2. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that SH2 was the game that taught me the impact a game’s plot could have in your thought process. It’s was also the first that had me think about it long after I watched the final credits.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is the first console game to be produced outside of Team Silent. It starts with Alex Shepard, a soldier returning from a war overseas, arriving in his hometown, Shepard’s Glen. The story is great for fans of Silent Hill, but also good for newcomers to the series as well. While much of the story benefits from knowledge of the previous games, it stands out well as a solo title.

The music is exactly what you would expect of the series, moody piano, industrial and ambient sounds, and brilliant vocal work bring this mystery to life. Akira Yamaoka, the composer of the series comes back, changing the musical style to fit the character and the story.

The graphics are really nice, although I wish the character models could be a little better. I don’t mean to be picky, but, sometimes the characters faces look…dull. Frightened or surprised expressions don’t come off as such. SH2 pulled off great facial expressions without today’s technology. The environments are really well made, Double Helix did a great job capturing the look and feel of Otherworld.

The game play is great, despite some issues with combat; its not that I don’t like the new system, I love it really. Its just that sometimes, fighting enemies without a block button gets tedious, especially since the block mechanic is integrated with the dodge button. I also really miss free exploration, walking the streets of the town was one of biggest factors of immersion in the game.

I recommend this Silent Hill to all the fans, its a worthy entry to the series and really adds more to the lore of the games. To any gamer who is interested in starting this series, give this game a try.

Playing Dissidia made me want to play Final Fantasy games that I haven’t played before, so, I decided to play the last sprite game before everything turned 3D, Final Fantasy VI (on the GBA).

Let me once again point out that I never played this game. I always wanted to, but never got around to it. It’s one of those games that everyone seems to have nostalgic memories for. I don’t have any of those for this game, so I’m going to just plain tell you what I thought about it. Because the world must know!

Overall, I really liked it. Every character has a great backstory, and the main plot itself was entertaining. The combat uses the traditional ATB system, which is always fun. The game really started getting good when you get Espers. Once you get these little guys, you can really start customizing all of your characters, which is my favorite part.

My only real complaint lies with the difficulty. It’s pretty easy, but I heard that the GBA version was made to be slightly easier than the other versions on purpose. So I guess that’s okay. BUT, it’s gets crazy hard at the end. You suddenly find yourself in an open world with little direction to your next objective. At this point, I had to bring out the strategy guide, just so I could figure out what to do next. Now, I guess that’s supposed to be part of the fun, finding out what to do on your own, and what order you want to do everything, but I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t want to wander aimlessly.

Anyway, the only thing that stopped me from finishing this game was the very last dungeon. It basically requires you to level and equip twelve different characters. Realizing that this would most likely require hours of grinding, I decided to call it quits. I really hate leaving a game unfinished like this, especially when I’m so close to the end, but I don’t have the time to finish it.

Otherwise I’ll never get to the next Final Fantasy game on my list, a newer one, Crisis Core. I’m hoping on playing Final Fantasy IX after that, but we’ll see.

And how are you supposed to know to wait until the timer ALMOST runs out for Shadow to come back?! He said to leave him behind! He said he’d be fine!

Video games! Thanks to Christmas, I’ve been playing a lot of video games lately, so here’s the ones I’m currently playing or recently finished and/or lost interest in after a while.

Gyromancer
It was a lot of fun for a while, but it got boring pretty quick since it lacks any real customization of any kind. The gameplay is fun, maybe even more fun than Puzzle Quest, but in my opinion, Puzzle Quest is superior because of it’s depth. You can increase your stats however you want, choose your special skills, and everything is awesome.

I really love the music though.

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time
A lot of fun. Many explosions are to be had, and I really liked the time puzzles with Clank.

Biggest con: that strange frog gun thing.

Infamous
Lightning powers are my favorite powers of all time, so this game is super awesome for me. It’s crazy amounts of fun. I spent the first hour or so just running around getting all the collectibles on my minimap, in addition to frying bad guys.

I love all the powers and I thought that the ending was satisfying.

Assassin’s Creed 2
I definitely liked the gameplay better this time around, but there’s something about the first one that I still like better. The story maybe? Anyway, Assassin’s Creed 2 is exactly what I expected, more of the same, but even better. It was a lot of fun.

Dissidia Final fantasy
Epic, but gets kind of boring after a while, I thought. It feels great when you finish a long fight with your finisher though. It also makes me want to play old Final Fantasy games.