Delusion-Elle

I swear that I am not turning this into a review blog. I swear it right now on my love for Kamelot and cats, and goodness knows those are some pretty strong loves. It's just that I recently finished Borderlands (the vidya gam) and wow, it was fantastic! Cue the fangirly ravings!

EDIT: If anyone's looking for a good deal for the Borderlands 2 pre-order, Green Man Gaming has a much better than Steam. It's a digital copy that can be added to Steam so don't worry about integration into Steam -- it's simple and easy!

Borderlands is a first-person shooter role-playing game, or FPSRPG for short. This genre in itself is one that I haven't seen before and Borderlands is probably the first of its kind to find such acclaim and garner this much attention. But this is definitely some well-deserved attention.

You don't usually see the letters FPS and RPG together, and there is a reason for that: how exactly are you going to take elements of a first-person shooter and role-playing game, and mesh them together in such a way that will appeal to fans of both genres and still be fun? Players of FPSs go into the game with intentions of shooting things, plain and simple. The storyline in an FPS is usually pretty scant, and that's totally alright. The plot is not supposed to be the focus in these games. FPS games offer quick gratification for those in the mood to just roam through a level and shoot things along the way, racking up as many kills as possible. Zombie apocalypse and war games tend to fall into this category. On the other end of the spectrum, you have your good old-fashioned RPG. These games are story-heavy; in fact, the storyline, supported by quests to move it along, is what drives the entire game. Coming in as a close second to the story is the actual role-playing aspect: your character. In most traditional role-playing games, your character grows with the progression of the story, a concept often captured with a skill tree or skill build. With a skill tree/build, a character is offered a series of abilities, but only so many points per level-up to put towards these abilities. This requires the user to strategize so that they first boost the abilities that would help them the most at a low level. Because of the intricacies and wide variety of skills available for skill builds, quite a few RPGs take place in a fantasy world in order to introduce magic skills. Also, magic skills are flashy and that gives their animators some work to do. :)

So. Borderlands. How did they do it? How did they take elements from both genres and make them into this crazy, fun, and one of a kind experience? The FPS element is an obvious one -- your character's perspective is (almost) always in first-person, and your weapons are all guns. But the way in which this is supplemented by the RPG aspects is really cool. Like in most RPGs you get to pick your "class", of which will be your character for the rest of the game. There are four options in Borderlands, but unlike the traditional 4 (close-range physical, magician, long-range with limited ammo, and quick-stealthy/balanced-basic damage), these are all ammunition-based classes: the Berserker, Soldier, Hunter, and Siren. Because all four of these classes use guns, grenades, shields, and a basic melee attack, the differences between them come out in their one special ability (which does follow the traditional 4 thing fairly closely). But, you may be wondering, where do the real RPG elements come in? Is there a storyline? Is there a skill tree? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. The skill tree for each character is broken into 3 specializations which focus on skill with guns, the power of elemental artifacts, and their own special. And the storyline? Well...

What?! You think cel-shaded is always like Wind Waker cel-shaded? With cutesy graphics? I'll show you!!!

What kind of storyline would you need to have to make an FPSRPG work? Guns... fantasy... war games have been done to death and so have zombies (no pun intended), which left Gearbox with pretty much the only option of creating their own world, a kind of space-western with a touch of steampunk. Borderland's story takes place in the future on a planet called Pandora. The planet was left practically uninhabited after some large mining companies left so the only remaining citizens are rogue bandits and a few eccentric townfolk, a lot of whom look like they have gone through a war or two of their own. Our four heroes, the Berserker, Soldier, Hunter, and Siren, are all Vault hunters, a small group of people who aim to find and take the stash from a possibly mythical thing called the Vault. The Vault is not something that has been confirmed to exist, but along the way, you find out that it is indeed very real, and you go and claim what you came to claim. The atmosphere is gritty and the cel-shaded graphics are an interesting take on the situation. Strangely enough, it's a working combination. There is very much a post-apocalyptic feel to everything -- the dilapidated buildings, the junk piles scattered through the region, the clunky vehicles that you get to drive, the dusty environment, the abandoned locales turned into bandit hideouts.

Of course, there's a lot more to the story than that, but I want to come back to the FPSRPG elements, because yes, the storyline is again driven by quests. They are pretty standard quests, and as it is a first-person game, you get a different perspective when doing the "activate this switch" and "grab & fetch" type quests. You really do have to look for things sometimes, but it's a pretty painless process with the map system. As this is more of an RPG than anything else, Borderlands also has a level-up system, which of course means that you can train and purely focus on levelling up. The enemies spawn and respawn after certain periods of time, which is quite different from your standard FPS. But hey, it works! And what with the amazing variety in the amount of weapons/drops you can find, it becomes apparent that farming is encouraged.

L-R: Hunter, Siren, Berserker, Soldier

Another point I'd like to touch on is the multiplayer aspect. When I first purchased the game, I was a bit hesitant because the only multiplayer information I had noticed on the purchase page was something about player vs. player arena duels, and this is not the kind of multiplayer I usually enjoy. I prefer co-op games where you can team up with a few friends, work towards common goals, and get each others' backs. After purchasing the game however, I noticed that there was indeed a co-op mode. There were a few difficulties in setting it up -- apparently the PC version has a few more hoops to go through than it should -- but I was able to play through most of the game with my brother, which was a great help. The multiplayer co-op is done really really well in Borderlands. Like, really really well.

It's a different experience. True, the enemies are a little tougher (there's probably some sort of formula for determining their level for balance), but the fact that there's someone else to change the dynamic of the game just adds to the excitement. For example, I'm usually the kind of person who rushes into the thick of things (because I'm not patient enough to be a sniper), which usually results in me taking a lot of damage. But when my brother was playing with me (expert sniper that he is), it became a lot safer for me to play with my style. My brother also benefited because I am the type to loot everything and check every chest for money, meaning he could spend more time sniping and less time worrying about funds as the monetary loot is automatically split evenly. This is pretty standard for any co-op game/mode, but the best part about Borderlands co-op is that if one person finishes a quest, everyone else playing who also has to finish that quest, gets the same bonuses and rewards without even having to go in person to finish it. Although the environment is not completely open world, the maps are quite vast and there are usually several quests per area so it is great being able to split off, while staying in the one area, and do several quests at once.

It's apparent that Gearbox put a lot of time and hard work into this game, and truly it shows. From the atmospheric music that matches the environments perfectly, to the characters' dialogue, and the little details in the weapon design, it is no wonder that Borderlands achieved "game of the year" status and has become a much beloved franchise. The only weakness I have seen so far is the replay value, but as with any RPG, there is nothing stopping a player from just grinding on some enemies in order to reach level cap and max all their skills. The fact that they do offer subsequent playthroughs is a great idea, though, and my brother has already started his second playthrough because he just missed the game -- as simple as that. He missed the hectic pace, the variety of weapons, the satisfaction of gunning down enemies, the strategy involved, and building his character up to be equipped with the best weapons and skills. I have to say, too, that the game immersed me in its world and it really did become a major part of my life for a while. Maybe it's because Borderlands took two of my favourite genres and mashed them into such a perfect amalgamation, or maybe it's because the world was just built so solidly and consistently that it felt like home, but it is no doubt one of my favourite games in existence, and I very much look forward to spending more time on Pandora in Borderlands 2.

I am done with Diablo III. No, I didn't completely finish the game, but I did return my copy of it a few days ago. Now, I know that I didn't express my excitement and anticipation in regards to playing this, but this was a game that I had been looking forward to. Previous to this latest instalment, I was not a big fan of the Diablo series, to be honest. My dad got us Diablo II years and years ago, and I played a bit of that, but I remember the game being quite difficult, and a bit scary, though both of these aspects may have stemmed directly from the fact that I was about 10 years old when I played it. But I digress. This isn't a blog post about Diablo II or even the Diablo franchise as a whole. This is about Diablo III.

It was as though the entire gaming world was holding its breath waiting for Diablo III's release. The anticipation and excitement was palpable at my work place, and to an extent, it was infectious. Diablo III was the only non-work-related thing anyone talked about for 2 weeks after its release. Even a few folks who hadn't intended on playing it got it, just so they could be a part of the culture and see for themselves what the fuss was about. I admit that the hype did contribute to my own desires and I ended up buying a digital copy of the game a few days after release.

3766 hours? Oh, no time at all, then! No problems detected here, for sure!

Installation was a bitch. It took me an entire night to get it downloaded, and then another hour or so to get it installed. It was disheartening (see screenshot above) to the point that I regretted buying the digital copy -- if I had gotten the physical copy, I wouldn't have had to waste time with downloading. But this was all just a matter of time, and after it all finished, I was excited. This was going to be a great game, nay, an EPIC game, I thought. I mean, two of my co-workers took a week off solely for the purpose of playing this game. They wouldn't do that for just any game. So I started the game up and, since I had played the open Beta, dove right into the game, picking up where I left off in Beta thanks to the help of my friend who got my character back to that point. Things went fairly hunky-dory, and sure, there were a few connection hiccups here and there, but I'm used to playing games where internet is required so I've come to accept that server disconnections are bound to happen. All in all, I really enjoyed the game.

"But wait!" you cry. "Didn't you say that you returned it? Why did you return it if you enjoyed it?"

"Let me finish," I say, frowning slightly, and wagging my finger.

I got through the game on Normal difficulty fairly easily. It took a few days of not-very-dedicated-at-all playing, but I did finish it in decent time. The cinematics are gorgeous, there's no denying that, and the graphics in general are a nice step up from those of Diablo II. However, aside from the aesthetics, there were a few things which irked me after this first playthrough. Deckard Cain's voice for one, and a bunch of game mechanics for two. The storyline was short, and for a game that took a decade to come out, it felt disappointingly so. I'm not even going to nitpick at the absolute cheesiness of all of the demons vs. angels business. In terms of actual game mechanics, the drops annoyed me greatly. Equips in Diablo III, as with any other RPG, come in a few different varieties of rarity. The logic is that the rarer the equip, the more powerful it is. In Diablo III, this was not the case at all, and it became extremely frustrating finding "rare" equips that were no better, and at times worse than the common ones. Yes, okay, this may be nitpicking again, but let's continue...

I finished Normal difficulty and this unlocked the next difficulty up, called Nightmare. I launched straight into Nightmare and found that enough time had passed since I had finished these quests on Normal that I wasn't too bored of them. It took another week or so to get through Hell what with the updates Blizzard threw at us -- changes to the Monk's abilities, changes to the Wizard's armour skills, etc. etc. There seemed to be updates being churned out at a surprising rate, which raised the question: How much testing had Blizzard done beforehand? One of my diehard Diablo fanboy co-workers had told me that Blizzard had not bothered testing their highest difficulty, Inferno. This seemed a bit suspect at the time that he told me, but I didn't give it much thought until now.

The character I played as mainly was a female wizard. I love magic, what can I say? I always gravitate towards mage characters/classes in every game I come across. The changes that Blizzard made to the wizard class with their patches made things much harder for me as I advanced in the game, and I found myself dying a lot more. I was pretty much forced to use a different build to compensate for my near-constant dying, and it was very frustrating at first. I got used to it after a while and just went along with it in the end. It wasn't as though I could change Blizzard's mind about it. Despite my dying, I beat Nightmare with my friend on her monk character. At this point, we had realized some very disenchanting things about Diablo III.

For starters, neither of us wanted to play through the storyline for the third time. Sure, it would be on the Hell setting, another giant step up in difficulty, but were there any changes in storyline with each successive difficulty? Nope. It was the same old, same old. There are only so many times that I can stomach killing giant spiders and seemingly endless amounts of demonesque critters. Just thinking of playing through Hell disgruntled me. Call me a casual gamer for not sticking it out and finishing all 4 difficulties, sure, but there are much better games out there that DON'T resort to re-using the same plot and essentially the same game in order to get enough content to actually call this a game.

Another point that irked us, as well as a few of my co-workers is that there is no end-game. When do you actually finish the game? When you finish Inferno? When you hit level 60? When you get all of the equips that you want? It's unclear, and sure, you might think that it's great that they don't force an end-game state upon you, but there is such a lack of direction that it makes the game pointless. There are no skill trees to follow or worry about so getting to 60 doesn't mean all that much -- chances are that by level 50 or even before that, you will have a go-to set of skills that works for you. And if you haven't, then I can guarantee that someone on the forums already has. In order to make any progress on the insanely difficult Inferno difficulty, your character must already be level 60 or damn well near it. So when you actually finish Inferno, what happens? The truth is... nothing. Granted, I never reached that, but beyond level 60 and finishing Inferno, there is no more point to playing Diablo III. You could say that about any game with a level cap, I suppose, but with most other games, there is still the "I want to get the perfect set of armour" aspect so "I can be the very best". In Diablo III, with the lousy drop system, this aspect is completely gone. There is no replay value in this game beyond level 60 and Inferno.

The thing is that even the most diehard Diablo fans -- guys who grew up with the first two instalments, bought the special collector's edition of this iteration right at midnight on release day, and took time off from work to play it -- are not happy with this product. I've talked to them about the game, glad to have something in common to discuss, but our conversations often turned to complaints about the game and "there are so many things wrong with this game that I don't want to talk about them all and ruin it for you". I mentioned that I was toying with the idea of returning my copy to one of my co-workers, and he urged me to do it -- it was past the 30-day period for himself, and he had put in so many hours already trying to get good equips that he figured that he could just sell them in the Real Money Auction House. Perhaps the expectations for this long-awaited title were just too high. Maybe we just wanted too much. Regardless, I returned my copy of Diablo III about a week ago, and although I felt a bit of emptiness after giving it up, I haven't looked back and I am more than okay with my decision to return it. The visuals are A+, but everything else about the game is just too lacking. The target audience is unclear: certain aspects of the game seem to target casual players -- such as the simplified skill builds -- but beyond that, the difficulties beyond Normal are suited to hardcore players. Yet, as I mentioned before, hardcore players get bored with the game quite easily. Sure, they'll go through and hit level 60 and complete Inferno, but beyond that...?