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

How did Sleeping Dogs Bombed?

Critically acclaimed, Sleeping Dogs is going to sell about 3 million copies at retail in total for year end 2013. That's a real poor performer and you wonder why a game like that could bomb so badly when GTA games rake in billions in revenue.

Wait a minute, what the heck is Grand Theft Auto being brought into the picture? Didn't everyone say that Sleeping Dogs was highly original? Well now you know.

Sleeping Dogs is in essence a GTA rip off. From the open world mission based scenarios to the driving, and car stealing. It's the same. What people expected was that there would be more creativity in execution instead of being just another GTA clone. Truth is, Square Enix didn't try hard enough. I gotta give it to them for spending all that money on the Voice Talents for the cut scenes, which are fabulous. I love the Hong Kong atmosphere and the wonderful departure from the GTA nonsense which have seen done to death. But it just doesn't go far enough.

What Went Wrong??

From the onset, playing both sides wasn't going to cut it. You had Wei Shen, who is an undercover cop doing stuff for both the Law and Outlaws. Damn, that's confusing. This makes the whole gameplay outlandishly myopic as most of the Police Cases are often boring, you get to use a gun for most of these pursuits but using one in daytime just causes the game to kick up its heels and go belly up. I remember testing the AI to see if it could respond when a gun was fired on a desert island. It did send the Marine Police after me which I manage to dispatch with a few well aimed shots. Then you had the utter stupidity of seeing a street cop suddenly running up from the water's edge to arrest you. This is indeed damn silly.

The health bar makes no sense. If you ate or slept to rest, your health regenerative powers doesn't improve one bit. Did someone miss out on something here? In a fight, you have no idea on how your health is holding up as there are two health circles to take notice of. It was downright confusing as you didn't know you were too low in health to take on 9 dudes.

The gameplay failed me. I hated the stupidity of picking locks and installing bugs. If Square Enix made it less GTA and more like Far Cry, it would have been a better game. 

Where's my Car Dude?

As you progress, you'd realize that much of your missions are related to driving and racing. I love the way the environment of HK wraps around you as you drive about but that's about it. The racing? It's second rate. I think that it would have been a tad better if the cars could have been upgraded to give better performance but that took too much time to develop and was omitted. And you can't steal a car to race either. This could have been fun but the game designers just didn't allow you to do it. It could have been a great racing game if you had to steal your ride and you had a fixed time frame to find the correct spec car just for it.

I do like the touches where you could race around with the flares in place to show your route but it could have been made better if the circuit was fixed by route with the customary arrow showing the way. Instead of running into humans along pedestrian walks, the route could have been better designed. For example, the racing on bikes could have taken you round to mainly alleyways instead of the main streets and pedestrian walk ways, where street furniture is placed to confuse you.

Turkey Shooting

I love my guns but there is no way to store them. Fuck. I think as a crook or a cop, you should be given a chance to own a weapon even after it runs of bullets. Instead you get to pick up weapons at places where some fool drops them and shoot them until you run out of ammo.

The shooting experience is good. You get rewarded for head shots. But this is something that the games gives very little to you. Gun play is kept just for mission that are related to it. You can't use a gun in a knife fight, the cops will come after you. This is very stupid. There are missions where I came into with a gun but are not allowed to use it for fear of arrest as this causes you to lose your gun.

There are no gun shops. You cannot bring a machine gun back to your hotel, drop it onto the floor and hope it stays there. You cannot keep ammo. You cannot buy ammo. You have no access to the types of guns to your liking. This is all very stupid.

I remember that I had to kill a cop to get access to a shotgun. Once it ran out of ammo, you are left to use your fist. There is no way for you to  holster your machine gun or shotgun. WTF? The moment you run around with it, it is in plain sight and people will flee and cops will come get you.

Brawling is Boring

It is true. After a while, you get really bored with it. It is fine that you need to learn moves, some of which are too complicated for the gamepad to handle. I realize that the responsiveness of the controls is a problem. It just doesn't quite register the button hits fast enough.

To ante up on your brawling skills you get to collect 12 Zodiac idols. Fine. That I can take. But the game revolves around brawling for most of the police and triad work. Finding stuff and fighting enemies is based on how much skill you have accumulated on this. There are some pretty insipid moments. Like when you get confronted in a 12 to one fight and the moment you step away to catch a breather, all the dudes are gone! And there are also invisible enemies that suddenly become visible out of thin air. One moment you are shooting in front of you and someone pops up behind you from nowhere.

For those of you who love the hand to hand fighting, it is generally acceptable. It is probably a lot better than GTA in that respect but you have to learn and remember those moves in order to use it.

 

Poor UI and Navigation

There is a lack of finesse in the UI design and UX you get from it. The lock picking is probably the most stupid. The rest, well, it feels like a 1980s game. Trusted that the gamepad has limited potential in creating a gratifying response, too little attention has been paid to the overall quality of the game. The user experience (UX) is pretty fucked up. You don't get to ante up on health as you are totally oblivious to it and you can only see it once you buy and eat food.

I had hoped that Sleeping Dogs would not be a copy of GTA, but because it is, it becomes quite a messy affair when it comes to navigating vehicles. The camera spins all over the place when you are driving round corners instead of focusing on the road ahead. It gets very annoying as you try to out speed your opponents in racing and have the camera spin all over when you turn into a corner. This is very bad. The driving experience should be top notch since you spend most of the time going from one place to another. Why not put in the MTR if you don't want people to drive around? The taxi is pretty lame way to get around.

Conclusion

UFG have taken a safe route by copying GTA in the hope to piggy back on a successful franchise. To be fair, GTA 5 is going to produced at a cost over US$200 million. Wow. Now I have no idea what Blizzard/Activision pumped into the game before it got canned and later picked up by Square Enix. But I can assure you that it is no where near the US$200 million mark.

The concept was good to go but the game execution on how it dealt with UX was very poor. The progression is stuck on rails. If you don't complete one particular mission, you can't go on to the next. You can of course spend your time doing stuff like looking for idols and health shrines to boost your mojo but beyond that, the open world exploration gets a tad boring.

The weakest elements is the looting mechanism. It should be made in a way where each sector of HK was off limits to you until you complete all the levels required in one sector. The reason for this is simple. There is a finite amount of RAM memory on consoles and to flesh out a sector or region of gameplay, you have to restrict it to loading the next region. To get cash, you get to run over parking meters to get a few bucks. Right...like there was a lot of thought that went into that.

Gambling, a favorite with the Chinese is no where evident besides the racing and cock fighting. They should have added an element where you can go to wager bets in Macau, the Las Vegas of the East.

I love the concept. The voice acting is superb, the urban design and idea of a game based in Hong Kong but unfortunately, it just didn't go deep enough as it plays too much like GTA. If this was their intention, then they have done themselves a huge disservice.

Categories: open world, PC, PS3, rpg, sleeping dogs, true crime, Xbox 360

Splinter Cell Blacklist: A final farewell to Sam?

Sam Shepard makes his final appearance on the current generation of video game consoles, as well as the PC, as part of a slew of farewell gifts from the old stalwarts of the heady 80s who have silently evolved into the most prominent publishing and software development company the finicky yet deadly world of video games.

As the story goes, Shepard has a brand new voice which doesn't differ that much from the old one. Naturally, the gamers of today who are considerably more knowledgeable but surprisingly quite clueless were cajoled by wicked gaming sites into making a huge outcry about the whole voice acting thing. A new big ass Hollywood star was roped for the voice acting and has truly done a fine job of portraying the cold and murderous protagonist. The subject is now officially closed and the idiocy of it all has been quickly forgotten.

But as the games story goes, bad old Sam has been given a new lease of life. Some big wigs have decided to put Sam in charge of an unconstitutional group consisting of highly specialized agents in the hopes of finding and smoking out an organization hellbent on subverting the very foundation of the good old USA. That's bad news. Its also a bad situation that requires the wrong man for the right job. Enter Sam and his team of misfits, crazy enough to follow the ex-Third Echelon super agent over the cliff if they have to. Such a team has merits, but if this team should get their asses in a sling, the US Government will disavow any knowledge of them without batting an eyelid. What the government doesn't know is that if they give Shepard enough rope, he will hang them all.

So off we go one Shepard's most perilous mission that takes him and his new team to exotic locations as diverse as Uptown Afghanistan, the Iraqi Boardwalk and Downtown Chicago just to name a few. There's absolutely no time for sight seeing or looking up whorehouses here. Such a shame, I always wanted to take a picture with a $10 hooker in Iraq.

The action moves at the players pace. This time around Ubisoft have added a new element to the old hide and shank game play. Players may opt three different play styles that gives the game a lot more depth and replayability. Choosing to be a Ghost is basically the old 'No Alerts, No Kills' challenge from the Metal Gear Solid games. Then there is the Panther, striking from the darkness all the while remaining hidden from view. Finally, my favorite, Assault, which is the no holds barred, kill em all and blow em up style. The choice of play styles is highly dependent on the gear and weapons a player must choose before committing to a mission. Pick the right toys for your style and off you go.

The graphics are a step up especially on an old SD TV where the degree of darkness is as cruel as some of the locations in Dark Souls. Playing this game on it highest difficulty with a shitty SD TV is actually unlocking the hardest level of all. Unfortunately, Ubisoft will not be giving out prizes for unveiling that secret. Of course, with expert use of Sam's goggles things get a little brighter and a little more bearable. There's nothing worse than hearing some mangy mutt growling close by and then end up getting your nuts bitten off without warning. Unlike Game Fuhrer's old hound from hell, Brutus, these stinking dogs do not respond to treats, imitating the masters voice or the old stone throw fake out move.

While the single player missions offer a lot of fun and laughter in the many ways of murder, the story about Sam and the bad guys is a rather gritty one. Fraught with treachery, brutality and some pretty dramatic moments that alter the course of the game quite drastically. For instance, during rescue missions, if the guards are some how alerted, the scenario is altered to include a fire fight that has Sam worrying about the encroaching enemy and the fragile life of the rescued prisoner which is constantly at risk during a shoot out.

Apart from the solo missions, there are a variety of co-op tasks to perform where Sam and a fellow agent must work together as a team. One bad foul up can lead to a mission going bad in an instant. With the variety of play styles; players can experiment with different tactics and maneuvering to out smart the overwhelming enemy force. Not all the baddies are smart but eventually they will use pincer and flanking maneuvers or overlapping fields of fire to either surprise or pin down the two agents and finish them off with a few well cooked grenades. Death is cheap in co-op mode. Only smart play will see the missions through. Lowering the difficulty works too.

Finally, there's the Spies Vs Mercs online multiplayer co-op that guarantees hours of fun with 4 vs 4 match ups and a variety of game modes that not too dissimilar from ones found in a host of other multiplayer shooters. Death Match, Capture the Flag etc done in a Splinter Cell sort of way. To be honest, this is one mode that has not been fully explored due to our horrendous "fraudband" connection speeds. Unfortunately, the extremely expensive broadband pricing we are forced to pay acts as a deterrent to the lower income groups from the smaller towns and villages from having access to the internet. This is the most effective type of censorship, and boy, I wish Sam was here to do something about this.

Conclusion

For good old Sam, its business as usual. With a bold new story and a pretty innovative level up system, Splinter Cell Blacklist stands out as one of my favorite Sam Shepard adventures. Hopefully, this will not be his last. If you are a fan, then buy this game at all costs, for those new to the series, don't worry, with the huge amount of 'Tenchu' inspired stealth games that have been released this past year alone, it is unlikely that you won't be familiar with this one.

Splinter Cell Blacklist 

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Categories: Blacklist, Co-op, PC, PS3, Spies Vs Mercs, Splinter Cell, Stealth, Ubisoft, Xbox 360

Hitman Absolution: How Agent 47 failed at the Boxoffice

Back in November 2012, the eagerly anticipated Hitman series was jump started by Square Enix to compensate for it's lack of mojo over the years—giving credence that Agent 47 may have contracted cancer and had to get a dose of Chemotherapy. That said, it wasn't entirely a good idea as the new team that developed it took too much creative license to make a turgid and long winded game which tested the nerve of players. 

Now the game isn't that bad. It's just that it isn't that good. First, let's pick out the good points. The Glacier 2 graphics engine is pretty cool. Gives you that film like 24 frame look and it is buttery smooth. The playing environments are beautiful, and there are lots of things to admire besides the scenery. Much more has been given to flesh out the characters, along with a in-depth story line, making this third person shooter feel almost like a RPG game. 

Therein lies the problem. Hitman is a shooter and by turning it on its toes, the developers lost it. 

WTF Gameplay

There is nothing really new about the game. Pick out weapons, kill the targets and hopefully stay saintly as Karma will come back to haunt you....but it doesn't. 

The new "instinct" capability is similar to that of the "sonar" or "tracking" ability of other well known games and thanks to its slow pace of play the problem is further compounded with long cutscenes in between levels. These developers were thinking of making it more like a movie, but the dialogue isn't one bit interesting to listen to. There are no witty clips or characters to begin with and even though the story is strong, the effort to create character depth just fails. Game designers got carried away with making a holier Hitman with a heart of Gold. 

The biggest issue I have so far is the AI engagement. It is plain stupid. The AI will for instance catch you unaware or ignores you totally even if you are fully armed and standing within 20 feet of Agent 47. Myopic characters? You bet. 

Then there is the sneaking around. Apparently, you are encouraged NOT to face up to danger and be a Gandhi like Hitman, scoring only points for people you are suppose to kill. If you get blasted by a bodyguard with a gun, you are suppose to sneak away and hide like a mouse. Killing him will earn you negative points. 

Then there are times when you just want to go in and take them out. But the game resets your ammo stash to the number of digits on your hands and even prevents you from choosing guns which you have picked up on a previous level. WTF? All a sudden, the game is to be played on rails  judging from the melee option. You have to follow a fixed set of buttons to melee instead of a one swipe whack. This slows the gameplay down with slo-mo sequences which could be best used in a documentary about life on Mars. 

The next WTF moment is that you have no control over the arms you have in your stash. You are only allowed to pick up pistols for pistols and can't swap a pistol for a machine gun. What is the point of picking up small funny pistol when the gameplay could be enjoyed with a sub-machine gun?

The lack of signature weapons is also another problem. Agent 47's Silver Ball silenced shooter is only available to you at a gun shop. I got so frustrated playing Gandhi (nice guy) to get it that I blew my top and KILLED everyone there just to progress to the next level—earning myself enough negative points that would be the hallmark of my world score. 

On other levels, when the Cops are alerted, they seem to be able to shoot through crowds of people and hitting you while you can't hit them unless you kill the bystanders. Since when do cops fire with bystanders as human shields? And to make matters worst, there are numerous levels where you end up killing more cops than bad guys once your cover is blown. WTF? Are they thinking along the lines of GTA now??

Throughout the game, you are given loads of places to hide in like Garbage Bins, trunks and closets. God sakes, this is not Agent 47's guide to Hide & Seek you're creating. But somehow the developers got carried away and added useless and inane stuff. And what about picking up objects, which at best could be flung at people. What good is that beyond trying to mislead the AI of your true intentions?

Conclusion

The real weakness of the game is that too much has been added to the story without paying sufficient notice to the gameplay. Even though it is a massive game spanning hours if you had the time to sit through it all and play the Contracts level, you don't get a new high with every accomplishment, like for example the ability to unlock some cool new weapons instead of picking up the standard fare—pistols made for pigeon shooting. The lack of firepower is what hampers this game and that's not what you want in a shooter like the Hitman. 

There is also no real difference between stalking and staying stealth versus taking out the entire troupe before they discover your unholy intentions. The game is actually much easier to play if you did the latter. If you loved snucking around, dangling from rooftops and hiding dead corpses, you're better off with a copy of Splinter Cell than Hitman. 

People play shooters because they want to have a fun time doing stuff that they can't do in real life but the game gets off on the wrong foot by allowing so many levels to be played via killing Cops. Then you have the storyline that is suppose to make him take an almost apologetic stand on a teenage girl.  

Hitman in all essence is a cold hearted killer. There is no two ways around it. If you made him anymore human, he won't be known simply as Agent 47. Gautama 47 perhaps?

Hitman Absolution

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Categories: agent 47, hitman, PS3, square enix, third person shooter, Xbox 360

Soul Calibur 2 HD

Namco Bandai has just announced Soul Calibur 2 HD Online at San Diego Comic Con, Shoryuken reports. The fighter is headed to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this fall, and as the name suggests is a high-definition, presumably online-enabled remake of the 2003 PlayStation 2 version of the game. As such, it will include the PS2 version's console-specific character, Heihachi of Tekken infamy.

No word on whether Spawn (the Xbox version's exclusive character) will ever be available, though we feel safe in assuming that Link won't be repeating his cameo from the GameCube port. We're keeping an eye out for the inevitable trailer and screenshots, but for now let's re-enter the stage of history with the game's original cinematic intro sequence.

Source: Shoryuken

Categories: Namco Bandai, PS3, PSN, Soul Calibur 2 HD, Xbox 360, Xbox Live

Console Gaming: What the FUSE is this about?

Insomiac's first outing with EA is FUSE. What the heck is it? Does it play any better than the Resistance titles it was responsible for?

Well, first you gotta understand that this is a third person shooter (TPS). It moves more slowly than a FPS and yes, you will swing the view around uncontrollably if you suffered from Tourette Syndrome but that's another matter. And this is the first consideration you should make when taking up a TPS rather than a FTS.

I am not a big fan of TPS, though the extra animated sequences make it look more fun when you butcher your enemies but besides this, it doesn't quite have the chops to deliver the intensity of action found on a FPS.

So how does FUSE measure up in this? It's not bad but not terribly good. For one, there are so many shades of borrowed ideas you'd find here. The four player action is nice, the skill tree is similar to the one found on Borderlands 2, and the storyline sounds like an action B-grade movie from the 1980s.

Working up a Sweat

If you own a treadmill or been to the Gym working out, you'd know how tiring it becomes when you only work on one machine at a time.

That said, the Campaign gameplay in FUSE is not much of a work out if you compared it to the other shooters. Everything is there for you and yes, it doesn't take long to figure out what to do and where to do it. This is nice if you are a brain dead zombie and not very challenging if all you ever had to do was to kill everyone in sight and put out a fire.

But the levels are not in the park variety either. As a four player mission, your job is to ensure everyone makes it thru all the levels intact and if one of your team mates got killed, you have to restart. This means that every time a player is in bleeding out mode, you cannot trust the other character AI to rescue his or her ass. It would have been much easier if there was only two or one character on screen at any one time instead of four but the power that be decided that the story was best told from a four player perspective.

You can of course choose any of the four characters to play even mid way during a campaign. That flexibility is a plus but not the weaponry.

Have you Seen my Ammo Pouch?

You weapon choices are limited. Machine pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol and semi-auto sub machine gun. The unique choices are meant for different characters, and this range from a Fuse action crossbow to some whacked out shield gun. Ammo is limited on all weapons. Run out of bullets on one, you'd be asked to switch weapons. Bummer. And ammo pouches are only found after you have killed an enemy, which is also limited to prevent you from being too trigger happy.

I would have preferred an option to carry any three weapons instead of being fixated on just three categories, one super weapon, one secondary weapon and a side arm. You can't switch your sidearm for a shotgun, which can only be swapped out with a secondary weapon type only.

Each badass has an armour meter. So it takes more shots to kill one if you used an inferior weapon. I found that a well placed shot in the head normally does the trick but that's hard to do with sub machine guns. For this, the pistol does its job best since you have more ammo for that. If you don't like the humble pistolero....well too bad. This self defeatist policy on weapons is probably the biggest flaw in the game so go figure. The game has two options of play, Campaign and Echelon, the latter being a Horde mode. This is where you will get strut your stuff after completing your campaign and though is fun, it has to be said that it is way better if you had four online players on screen.

Conclusion

I didn't like the two player co-op view. Instead of using a landscape view it gives you a tight portrait view—which makes shooting more difficult. When enemy fire hits you, the first thing to do is to hit them back but you have to swing around a lot more just to see where it is coming from due to the restricted view.

The limited weapon choices is probably the biggest downside for the game and the only redeeming feature here is the horde mode, which gives it more playability in the long run if you are saddle with a partner at home or online.

Beyond this, I can't really say it has the chops to be that one game you'd play on your own, over and over again.

FUSE on PS3
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Categories: EA, FUSE, insomiac, PS3, third person shooter, TPS, Xbox 360

Requiem For The Devil

Blizzard has announced that Diablo 3 will be roosting within the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 come this September.

Although the Playstation 4 is expected to get a version of the PC game, Blizzard were not forthcoming on a demonic invocation on the Xbox One.

Gamers will be glad to know that the absurd ‘always online’ feature will not be featured in the console versions and that all the ‘major content and updates’ will immediately be available. Apparently, Blizzard also said that the Infernal Helm will be made a pre-order bonus.

Check out the Playstation 4 trailer.

Requiem For The Devil

Categories: Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo 3, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360