0 Video Game Review - Borderlands 2

I was going to review the Schlock Mercenary board game tonight, but I can't because I haven't played it. I meant to play it last week, and then I didn't, because I was playing Borderlands 2. Then I was totally planning on making time to play it this afternoon, but unfortunately, I used up my whole day playing Borderlands 2. In fact, since I bought Borderlands 2, I have had almost no free time. I seem to be incapable of doing anything else. It's just so damned fun.

Borderlands 2 is a shooter, one of those games where you only see the end of your gun and bad guys are all over the place and you kill them. And I'm not entirely sure why I'm so hooked on it, because I get totally bored by most shooting games. I'm not even intending to play Halo 4, the Medal of Honor games actively offend me, and I don't intend to even sample the next Bioshock retread. The idea is sound, and I generally like the action part of the equation, but first-person shooters are so ubiquitous that I don't pay them much attention any more.

So why am I addicted to Borderlands 2? Why is it taking up all my time, so that I can't seem to get anything else accomplished? What is so damned fun about this particular shooter, when I am so bored by shooters in general?

There are a few reasons. It's funny. The setting is a riot. The story is interesting, with amusing characters and diabolical villains and tough heroes. There are varying missions, thrilling treasure hunts, and entertaining minigames. There's a tangible improvement system that gives the gives the game a sense of being a role-playing game. And best of all, the co-op game is awesome.

Borderlands 2 is (unsurprisingly) the sequel to Borderlands, which pretty much has all the same stuff - humor, action, story, and great co-op. Like the original, it takes place on the planet of Pandora, a far-off toilet of a planet overrun with bandits and mean critters and diabolical corporate soldiers. You can pick from a diverse cast of characters - the ninja, the siren, the commando or the gunzerker, plus the $10 DLC mechromancer. Each plays very differently, with bonuses for particular weapons and kick-ass special abilities, like capturing enemies in bubbles of pure energy or deploying automatic turret guns to cover you while you reload.

So you pick a badass killer, you start hunting for the mystical vault, and then you dive head-first into an orgy of off-center humor and deadly opponents. There are scags and bullymongs, varkids and spiderants, bandits and robots. Some run right at you, swinging for the fences. Others throw rocks or fire shotguns. Still others wrap you in webs or cover you with gooey acid. There are lots of different enemies, and even more guns.

Yeah, guns. From Maliwan's fire-spitting sniper rifles to Jakob's devastating rocket launchers, you'll find hundreds of guns. Some will suck, and you'll sell them for pocket money. Some will be so impressive that you'll have a new favorite. A huge part of the fun is looking for the rarest and most powerful guns, comparing your SMGs to find the best fire rate, reload speed, magazine size and damage rating. Basically, there's a huge variety of great loot, and finding it sometimes more fun than actually using it.

As you improve, you'll get better guns, not to mention getting a lot better at a lot of things. You'll regenerate health when your shields are full, or light people on fire when you punch them, or reload your guns whenever you kill a bandit. This is an over-the-top game, and you play over-the-top heroes. And if you're lucky, you'll play it with someone else.

Borderlands 2 has possibly the best couch co-op I've ever played in a shooting game. My wife and I are loving it. You can drive while your partner shoots. You can heal each other when you get shot down. You can share ammo and money and loot and experience. You'll snipe from above while your partner goes in close with a 12-gauge. You can catch your enemies in a crossfire. And you can do it all without having to get online, because this game works great when you're both on the same TV.

In fact, I think the main reason I'm addicted to Borderlands 2 is because it gives me something genuinely fun to do with my wife. She's got the mechromancer and I've got the commando. She drives better than I do, and I shoot the rockets like they were on a wire. We laugh at the jokes and swear when we get killed, and spend hour after hour blasting the piss out Hyperion security droids and mutated super-bugs.

So while I really did mean to play that Schlock Mercenary game - it looks like a lot of fun - I don't feel bad at all. I am having a ludicrously good time, spending time with my wife, and irritating my teenage kids enough that they go hang out with friends instead of watching television all night. It's a win-win-win. It's Borderlands 2, and it's even better than the first one.

0 Video Game Review - X-Com Enemy Unknown

You probably have some fond, nostalgic memories of playing through the first X-Com game. Then the second, where they were underwater. Then the one in the big city, though that one sort of sucked so maybe the memories aren't as good. Then the first-person shooter that was an utter abomination and effectively killed the franchise because of how much it blew goats.

Well, in the world of video games, nothing awesome stays dead forever, so X-Com is back. They've rolled the whole series back to the first game, the one where the entire world was defined by a square grid and aliens only ever crash-landed in fields owned by corn farmers, and they retained that sense of wonder and amazement you got the first time a sectoid fired a plasma pistol at your barely-armored X-Com troopers. They also included the feeling of filling your pants the first time a giant walking tank took a rocket blast to its alien face and laughed it off right before shooting a fusion ray through your midsection.

Of course, the graphics are all updated. No more pixelated body armor, no more graph paper floors, no more clunky sprites. Now you get a line around the area where your trooper could move and still get an overwatch action, and a second line where he can go if he wants to hang his ass out over the side and ask aliens to blast him an extra bunghole. Those sprite-animated movements have been replaced with troopers who will jump over a stack of crates, run in a crouch across ground littered with burning debris and dead bodies, then flatten against the brick wall that they hope will provide some protection from the Muton's heavy plasma cannon.

The gameplay is all updated, too. If you did manage to play all the way through any of the X-Com games, you remember how tedious it got when you had to respond to yet another terror attack in Mombasa (a city that looked remarkably similar to Paris and Moscow) and it took forever to find that last alien, moving half a step at a time to make sure everyone in your squad could get an overwatch shot if the son of a bitch popped out behind you. This game is so fun.

In fact, where the original games recycled locations for the squad missions like an inner-city high-school using textbooks from the 1950's, Enemy Unknown actually shows you different terrain for different parts of the world. When I investigated a crash site in Japan, the burned-up forest looked completely different from the battleship I shot down in Arizona. This isn't entirely consistent, and sometimes I blew up the same gas station in Mumbai that I destroyed in Vancouver, but I didn't tend to see the same damned thing over and over. There was plenty of variety in the maps, enough that I never said, 'yeah, I know exactly where the bad guys are on this map.'

However, even with all the great updates that have been applied to Enemy Unknown, they still kept so much of what you loved about the original. Cyberdiscs and chyrsallids, sectoid commanders and ethereals, even the Firestorm with a plasma cannon. You'll still get totally attached to your troops and have a sick feeling when your entire squad of veteran ass-kickers gets devoured by hideous alien insects. And when your soldiers board an enemy ship, and their boots make that metallic ring against the floor that is exactly the same sound you recognize from the original, you'll be forced to smile. Unless some mutant cybernetic killing machine blows their faces off. That will ruin your smile.

If you've never played any of the X-Com games, maybe because you're only 15, you're in for a treat. Fast action in a turn-based tactical game, carefully planned research, and strategic satellite reconnaissance - this is what's waiting for you in X-Com Enemy Unknown. If you did play the originals, you're also in for a treat. Everything that was great about the original games is still here, including the brutal difficulty levels, the excitement of unlocking new enemy weapons, and the thrill of bringing back the bad guys in one piece so your slightly sociopathic science team can interrogate them before turning them into spare parts. This game is every bit as excellent as the original, and even better.

Summary

Pros:
Excellent turn-based tactics and long-term strategy
Exciting graphics upgrades make it fun to watch your troopers kill bad guys
Squad missions never get as tedious as they used to be
A great story with a surprising twist at the end
All the same nostalgic elements you loved about the original in a vastly improved package

Cons:
Slightly prone to crashing (mine froze up twice)