Weapon Up! Borderlands The Pre-Sequel

Pandora's most lovable warlord, Handsome Jack, is no more after Borderlands 2 so someone has to invent a new storyline. Enter the Pre-Sequel. 

To cut to the chase, all you need to know is that the whole game happens on the moon of Elpis, which brings us to the evolution of the entire gameplay. Here you have zero gravity and no air, so for air-breathers, you are pretty fucked when you don't have a canister of oxygen on hand. 

Fortunately, there are plenty to be had in the form of enemies. Picking one up is as easy as killing them. Well, that said, you gotta kill quite a number of them to shore up your oxygen supplies. 

Now, the characters aren't new. All of them featured in this game were Non-Playable in previous Borderlands titles. Athena, Nisha, Wilhelm and, Clap Trap the Fragtrap (no it doesn't kill only gay enemies). This time round you play the role of the bad guys, who aid Handsome Jack in his quest to control Pandora...well on the way to control is as he's nothing but a lowly programmer working for Hyperion. 

How do you kill?

Each character has a special ability and for Athena, she has a shield which can absorb damage and used as a killer frisbee. Nisha is by far, the least gifted as she is just a sheriff with a taste for hunting (reminds me of Zero in BL2 with a totally useless talent). Wilhem has the ability to summon drones, Wolf and Saint. Now Wolf attacks enemies while Saint heals and protects. Lastly, you have Clap Trap. If you ever choose this character from the beginning to play with, the game will ask you "Are you sure?"...TWICE just to deter you from taking it on and there is good reason. Claptrap is the best and most powerful character in the Borderland universe. Its ability range from not having to worry about breathing oxygen (fuck yea...I am a robot) and can summon various subroutines to deal damage to enemies like having a missile turret back you up in a firefight to a Doppelganger Victoria Secrets model of himself with fiery wings that flies against and damages enemies. It can also go into a 'berserker' mode where you do combat arm to arm with a sickle. 

Gameplay

No gravity and no oxygen. Those are the two biggest changes to the game. Aside from that, everything is the same. You get the same open world concept of play, and the game story is like a puzzle where you complete each mission to reveal more of what is ahead of you. 

Along the way, the game is spruced up with a wicked sense of humor. Entertaining nonetheless and a huge distraction when you make your way around Elpis (which rhymes with Elvis...the inspiration for Brick from BL1....geddit?)

Is it fun? Well only if you play with a pal. Most of the missions require you to kill someone or get something. Playing alone will take time and it is far more difficult to do this alone. What's more, you start off with only two weapons on hand and you have to get points to increase the number of weapons you can have at your immediate disposal. Weapons classes are the same, you have pistols, assualt rifles, sniper rifles and sub-machine gun so those familiar with this have no problems selecting what works best for you. 

What are you In for?

Those of you who hated Borderlands previously will not like this one bit. This FPS shooter isn't linear. It's not COD or Halo. It's not about going from point A to point B but rather exploring the terrain to find your mix of missions. The gameplay remans one of the most unique and there is no reason to doubt that 2K Australia could not have pulled this off. 

Story scripting is nothing sort of remarkable, and the whole game will keep you playing for hours on end. 

Of course there are the same annoying aspects of the game such as having the same enemies pop up whenever you re-enter an area which you had previously cleared. This deja-vu gaming is probably the most distracting but you have to remember that every single enemy you kill is rewarded through points and once you get enough of it, the skill-tree opens up many upgrades. 

Co-op play is best. I can't think of a better way to take on this game as some of the missions are very difficult to complete alone. There are no levels of difficulty to choose from as everyone starts off as a neophyte with puny weapons and a immature skill tree. Working your way up to the point where you have access to better weapons is probably the only goal you have in your cross hairs as you take on the big bosses in later missions. 

Borderlands is a great game. It might not be the billion dollar hit of COD but as an FPS, it deserves a place in the top 3. 

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Categories: 2K, Borderlands, fps, PS3, Xbox 360

Sniper Elite 3 is as mediocre as it gets

So you like to play a sniper who goes after his enemy without them ever knowing you were around. Sounds like fun but did you play any of the Sniper Elite games? You have? Then there is nothing new to tell you. Let's get to the jist of this before my fingers fall asleep. 

Sniper Elite 3 takes place in Africa during WWII. Not a fun place to be but it has its moments. There are no rogue camels to shoot or recalcitrant Arabs wanting to declare Jihad on you. All you get are Italian and German troops. I have nothing against Italians or Germans in Africa. I am here to kill them so let's get on with it. 

Now I didn't know that I had completed the game after playing it. That's how bad it was as you meander around the desert landscapes hoping your enemies won't hear your gun shots. The game is surprisingly short for starters. You could order a pizza and finish the game when it's delivered to you. Ok, I am being cynical. I hate the game. 

Why I hate the game is clear. It offers nothing new to the third person shooter genre. What's more it suffers from sloppy story telling. Like the part where you go out to rescue a bunch of English servicemen, and instead of running out of their jail cell, they just stay there and tell you to move on while the have a wank. The lost transitions that connect the story together is very badly written. The cut scenes are no better, it just feels very messy. 

Another problem I had was the load outs are restricted to just your sniper rifle, a Welrod bolt action pistol and a Stern gun. God sakes, those were the guns I got in the previous Sniper Elite. Where is the variety? This has to be a joke. When you up your experience points, you get to choose only from three types of weapons for first, secondary and third. There is no knife for you to melee your enemy so walking close to them would only lead to more fart attacks. 

You are allowed to carry one rifle, which can be upgraded once you have scored enough points to take the Gewehr 43, which remains my favourite rifle of choice. The game hasn't evolved but devolved since the last instalment.  Completely dumbed down for an idiot. You can't melee your enemy while being confronted head on and the only choice is your guns. If you ran out of ammo for all three weapons, you might as well do a river dance to distract them. 

Enemy A.I hasn't changed either. The lot of them you face up to are tone deaf. If you pack a Luger 08, and took a shot at them, it has the same effect as a silenced Welrod. Go figure. 

If you care to look around, the gameplay borrows heavily from Hitman. You crawl around hitting your targets in the most silent manner but even if you don't play that way, the tone deaf enemies you are facing won't know the difference. You can blow up a truck nearby and the guys won't even hear a whisper or bother to check out what the loud explosion was all about. Which lead me to think either they are very lazy or Buddhist. 

The slo-mo sequences where the bullet enters the heard, heart or balls are all there. I don't know why people get turned on by such fetishes but it is a utter turn off for me. And this gets extremely annoying in a action packed sequence, the last thing you want is to see how you blew that guy's left kidney in slo-mo when there are heaps more shooting at you. 

Trusted that you should play this game slowly or risk dying quickly doesn't really apply at all. Instead you have morons who shoot when they are shot at and even if you created a ruckus outside their camp won't even ring a bell for them. 

There are so many ways the game could have improved over Sniper Elite 2 but Rebellion, the coders behind the game didn't think you want them. The lack of firearm choices is one deafening omission. You get to pick a Panzerschreck as a secondary weapon which you know won't work against troops. Creative liberties like this spoil the game experience for the gamer. Also missing from the equation is the anti tank sniper rifles used during WWII. These can be used effectively against a half track but in the game you need the Panzerschreck to snuff out a truck. I do like the idea that mines only damage a Tiger tank, but should dynamite be used to blow it up? Hey, I could write a better game outline than that mute they have who produced this crap. 

There is also the use of trip wires to blow oncoming enemy. Stupid really when they don't really come after you in the first place. The idea of this game is that you shoot them from afar and even if they do come after you. You won't be expecting a huge onslaught. They come at you one at a time, as if ordering pizza.

Ammo is another problem as you pick it off the dead. Now as far as I know, you can't possibly pick off Welrod ammo from a German but in the game you can. I would have preferred that the player discharge all his ammo or pick up Axis gun and ammo instead. There are very few intense moments and your only fear on the field is another sniper with his sights on you. But in the game, even an enemy with a MP40 machine pistol will do you damage from a long distance. Come one! Can't you throw in a Stg44? Was this famed assault rife so difficult to render to the point you had to reuse the old design of the MP40 from the previous Sniper Elite?? 

Conclusion

Being a realist, and an avid vintage gun fan. More attention should have been given to gun dynamics and gameplay. The game's landscaping is beautiful and breath taking, you can't help but admire the talent behind them but the game itself is a huge disappointment.

How many ball busting shots do you have to make before you get tired of the shooting? Or for that matter, the morons who you battle with who have the IQ equivalent of their shoe size?

Morally, the developers have done a huge injustice to the game and they can't deny this rushed effort just to appease the crowds who were happy with their previous instalment. Sorry but I don't buy such crap.


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Categories: action, snbiper Hitman, third person shooter, WWII

Call of Duty: Advance Warfare

With a billion dollar franchise to boot, you can hire just anyone so why not a two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey?

However the question everyone has on their lips is does the game deliver? Does it in any way revitalizes the FPS genre? It's got a spiffy new HUD for display....wow.

After COD Ghost, every terrorist organisation has been done to death. Thus COD Ghost was a sharp departure from the previous COD storyline as it does not in anyway resemble old world sensibilities. We are introduced to modern warfare where technology plays a part in deciding the fate of man.

So here we have Advance Warfare, a sci-fi take on the FPS genre that has no invading aliens but man's greatest enemy...himself. Activision has hired Kevin Spacey, to reprise his "House of Cards" role in the form of a power mad Jonathan Irons. As for you the player, you get to play a loser soldier without an arm called Jack. That's all you need to know buddy as you sit back to take the ride.

Iron's character borrows heavily from post-911 CIA/NSA self deluding goals. He's the power behind the intelligence and he lets things happen so that more wars are fought.

So what does Advance Warfare bring to the FPS genre? Plenty. No more puny weapons, we now have Exo Skeleton suits and Gundam like armor. The war is not fought in space but on Earth. The weapons have gotten way more intelligent to appeal to the typical iPhone owner. Thus the game pad experience is somewhat limited to pushing this or that button at the correct moment. Beyond that, it's just aim and shoot.

Advance Warfare copies the skill tree from Borderlands to poor effect. Each level you complete gets you points to which you can redeem to up your capability. More grenades, and even more battery power for your exo-suit. Everything is good to go and there is even a cloaking device which you can become invisible. Spiffy. Now is there a story behind this? Well yeah. It reads more like Michael Bay movie.

The game play doesn't change, it has very intense moments and a blockbuster feel to it. The action is fast...gets almost as boring as COD Ghost but avoids it by proper story pacing. I hated flying the jet planes, and the drone controls don't make sense. I happen to use RC controllers in Mode 2 and there is no choice for taking that up. You just have to relearn the controls.

With the FPS concentrated on technology, it does get monotonous. Unlike Battlefield 4, you don't have a choice of load outs before every campaign. And the guns in Advance Warfare, feels very artificial. The gun play itself is pretty boring. It has none of the challenges of COD: Modern Warfare 2 in terms of repeat play. You can pare down the recoil in the Skill Tree and that might sound awesome but trust me, it's no great shakes.

The token black dude in a block buster game is back!

The game's sandboxing is very annoying to say the least. There are times where I want to hide in a corner only to find that outside the boundaries of the sandbox. It was as if the programmers got careless and didn't bother with gamer's experience. There are places where you can jump which they don't allow you to and for the Exo-suit's varied capability, the features are locked before the start of a new level so you don't get to choose the features you want.

The story telling is better this time round. The COD Ghost borders on the ridiculous so with a sci-fi storyline thrown in for Advance Warfare, it paces very well. I must say that in the end, when Jonathan Irons tells you why he has declared war on the US for all its excess, you can't help but rally in and support him. Politically speaking, he might just be right but your job isn't to support him but to kill him in the end. How I wish I had a choice of which side to take on because I really do feel for Irons by the end of the game. That is probably one reason I won't chase him down in the end. The other reason is that you don't get to use your good arm to beat him into a pulp as your Exo suit is disabled. This takes the fun out of fighting and to some extent, poor story telling from the producers. Your character is nothing more than a one arm gun slinger at this point. Once you expend all your ammo, you have a knife. Enough said.

The entire COD franchise suffers from Deja Vu. You have seen it all before an for some reason you can't help but think if there is life on Mars half way through the campaign. It certainly be more fun if we invaded them for a change. So who knows? That might just be the case for the next instalment.

Conclusion

Advance Warfare is a polished piece of work and though lacking in repeat play, it would satisfy the FPS player immensely. The graphics rendering has improved by leaps and bounds and if you are in for a ride, there is no going wrong on this. I didn't have the chance to check the multiplayer mode's side features as I felt it was a waste of time. Multiplayer options will be nice if you have a good internet connection but mine just pure sucks.

I must say Advance Warfare has none of the excess of COD Ghost. It still is a bit way off from Battlefield 4 in terms of repeat gameplay. For me at least, the repeat play is inherently destroyed by the sand boxing of the levels. You step out a bit too far you get a warning that the game will end if you don't return to it. The concept of repeat play is lost among the designers who like to pigeon hole your gameplay to a strict route. This takes the fun of having a go again with a different tactic or weapon, hence you don't get a choice of weapon loadout.

As a stand alone game, Advance Warfare is a much better game than COD Ghost. If that is the only motivation you need to buy the game, then you will enjoy it.

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Categories: advance warfare, call of duty, Co-op, fps